It’s all about the data! Fragmentation in the Financial Enterprise.

We live in a Fragmented Universe. This fragmentation is one of the leading reasons why everything always seems to be more difficult than expected. In this post, I break down what fragmentation is, why it happens, and how to avoid or fix it. I very much look forward to comments regarding additional approaches — and will update this post accordingly.

What is data fragmentation?

One of the trends that has emerged across almost all industries and professions is to become increasingly data-driven. Sometimes this data is an integral record of the core business (e.g. keeping track of trading positions) and sometimes it is a record of behaviours (e.g. how many phone calls are made before a sale is completed), but either way: data is king.

But herding data is like herding cats — it almost seems like it is constantly doing everything it can to leak across multiple systems and databases! Before we know it, we have business critical information all over the place — with endless copies being made to try and bring things together. The speed of business slows down, the operational costs go up and regulators get unhappy.

Causes of fragmentation: Spreadsheets

The band-aid of the Fragmented Universe is the spreadsheet. As data demands increase, they multiply like rabbits until they’re the glue holding the whole business together. But spreadsheets are fickle beasts — with…