National Australia Bank (NAB) is a financial services organization employing more

than 40,000 people, operating more than 1,800 branches and service centers,
and responsible to more than 460,000 shareholders. The company provides more
than 10.93 million customers worldwide with retail, business, and institutional
banking services.
NAB wanted to eliminate inconsistencies arising from storing data in 34 different
financial and operational systems. The organization lacked consistency in how it
maintained data about cost centers, branches, and general ledgers for various
business units. To remedy this situation, the bank wanted to establish a master
data repository underlying all of its information systems so that changes to data
elements in one system would be applied universally across all other systems.
In addition, by establishing a standard change-control process, bank officers
would be able to prevent ad hoc, unjustified and erroneous data updates that
could result in financial misrepresentations or inaccurate data in regulatory
reports. They wanted to ensure that all finance systems stored data and
produced results in a consistent manner.
To achieve these goals, the bank decided to replace an aging, inflexible
mainframe system used as a pseudo master data management tool with a more
sophisticated, true master data management solution. The bank implemented
Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management to manage master data assets
in 34 applications including human resources, general ledger, planning, and
finance. To prepare for the Oracle implementation, NAB spent weeks gathering
system requirements for interface designs. An Oracle consultant provided initial
training on Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management. The bank opted for
a centralized maintenance and governance approach, where one team looks
after the master data. The implementation team included one project manager,
two NAB team members, and a consultant from Oracle Consulting.
It took three months to deploy Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management
and the results have been exceptional. The new system ensures data
consistency by establishing a formal, automated change control process where
updates to the master data system are fed into or applied to all the other finance
and operational systems.
When master data was migrated from the banks mainframe and other systems
to Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management, NAB improved data quality
from 90 percent to 99 percent by cleansing the source data and reducing the
number of duplicate records.
In addition, improving data quality has improved data accuracy in regulatory
reports designed to improve supervision, transparency, and disclosure while
enhancing risk management and governance practices in the Australian banking
sector. Managers have greater insight into the state of the banks worldwide
financial operations thanks to having a single, master view of financial data.
BSI Improves Accuracy, Boosts Sales with Single Customer View
BSI (British Standards Institution) is the United Kingdoms national standards
body and the originator of many of the worlds most commonly used standards.
The company works with more than 64,000 clients in 150 countries. BSI used the
Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Management suite to create a single, accurate,
complete record of each client in just one month. As a result, the accuracy of its

customer and corporate data has improved to nearly 100 percent, and BSI can
refresh information four times faster.
The project began with a simple need: BSI wanted to optimize customer insight
by creating master customer records that captured each clients profile,
purchasing history, business relationships, and other attributes in a single view.
The goal was to eliminate inaccurate, incomplete, nonstandard, multiformat, and
duplicate customer and transactional data from the customer database, which
was growing 3 percent to 4 percent each year.
Senior officers knew that having complete and accurate data would improve the
organizations ability to segment customers, increase marketing effectiveness,
boost sales per customer, and reduce churn. In addition, by standardizing names,
dates, and values in corporate and customer records, BSI could improve the
performance and productivity of its marketing, sales, and operations teams,
improving the match between customer needs and BSI services.
The need for standardization also extended to the publications, training
documents, tools, and services that BSI sells online. They needed to ensure
consistent coding, description, and pricing formats in their electronic catalogue.
Always conscious of costs, BSI wanted to complete this master data
management project using its existing staff resources, despite a 20-percent,
year-over-year increase in data volume.
BSI chose Oracle Enterprise Data Quality automated cleansing, matching, and
profiling solutions for their intuitive functionality, adaptability, and value. IT
professionals used the software to aggregate more than 5 million disparate data
records held in multiple databases and formats into a set of golden customer
records that span a four-year period and include transaction histories of all
products and services. The results have been impressiveBSI:
Used the Oracle technology to deliver a single customer view to 2,000 workers
in 60 countries, while enforcing best practices in data governance and
management within the organization
Created better marketing campaigns that help improve sales by boosting
cross- and up-selling opportunities and, in turn, provide a more complete
customer experience
Has standardized product categorizations and consistent coding and
descriptions to accommodate a 20 percent expansion in data volume each year,
without having to add staff
David Baum is a freelance business writer and marketing consultant with 25
years of experience covering the high tech industry.