Gartner Announces Finalists for the 2011 Master Data Management Excellence Awards

Finalists to Present at the Gartner Master Data Management Summit in Los Angeles, May 4-6

STAMFORD, Conn., Gartner, Inc. announced today the three finalists for the Gartner Master Data Management Excellence Awards. The finalists are Daymon Worldwide, Lexmark International and xpedx.

Each finalist will be asked to present their MDM case study to summit delegates at the Gartner MDM Summit 2011 on May 6, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, Los Angeles, CA. Summit participants will have the ability to vote for the finalist demonstrating the best example of MDM excellence using the Gartner Seven Building Blocks, a framework for success with MDM. From this feedback the winner will be selected and announced at the summit.

“Today, most organizations struggle to master critical business information across multiple sets of business applications spanning corporate, regional and local systems. At the same time, customers are demanding faster and more sophisticated responses from organizations, leading to challenges that hinders the organization’s ability to measure and respond effectively to the market. With MDM, organizations can create a unified view of critical data such as “customer”, “citizen”, “product” and so on, leading to greater customer focus, enterprise agility, simplified integration and, ultimately, improved profitability,” said Andrew White, research vice president at Gartner. “The tactics used by these finalists showed major improvements to business performance and efficiency across their organizations. These are great examples of the best practices needed to pursue successful MDM objectives.”

These three companies will present their case studies during the MDM Summit:

* Daymon Worldwide: Daymon Worldwide created a company-wide initiative making Daymon associates more effective and efficient by providing them accurate information in real-time, in order to make confident decisions that will help drive sales and profitability and maximize the value proposition for their customers and supplier partners. This initiative enables Daymon to make fact-based recommendations to retailer and supplier partners about new item opportunities that will be more efficient, effective and profitable based on a better understanding and analysis of their data.
* Lexmark International : The company implemented a global MDM program to improve service to its customers, partners and suppliers. The company’s multi-domain implementation includes customer, vendor, product, material and person data. By implementing global data standards, Lexmark has the ability to manage its information end to end – from sales through service. Lexmark’s data governance team built end-to-end processes to manage its master data and monitor and enforce data quality through a full suite of information management tools. By ensuring data quality, Lexmark is not only better serving its customers, but has also improved internal processes, systems, information and decision making.
* xpedx:The company’s MDM initiative created a single system of record, by managing items once, via a common interface that pushes to multiple operating systems. xpedx streamlined the item creation process company-wide by providing smarter choices during the initial item creation process and collecting additional item related data from those submitting item creation requests. As a supporting process, xpedx initiated system-to-system integration which electronically synchronizes its master data with suppliers’ master data. As a result, the company has significantly reduced the time and cost associated with data maintenance. Currently, xpedx is rolling out Datapoint, a cloud based application, which gives users across the enterprise the ability to view master items, initiate item creation requests and request changes to its existing master data.

The identification of a Gartner Award winner or finalist is not an endorsement by Gartner of any vendor, product or service. More information on the Gartner MDM Excellence Awards is available at http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/na/master-data-management/excellence-awards.jsp or on the Gartner MDM Summit Web site at www.gartner.com/us/mdm.

About the Gartner MDM Summit
The Gartner MDM Summit, being held May 4-6 in Los Angeles, provides an in-depth view of how MDM programs are moving into multiple domains — among customers, products and suppliers — gaining real-time integration with business applications and providing more support for smarter business decisions. Members of the media can register by contacting Christy Pettey at christy.pettey@gartner.com. Additional information is available at www.gartner.com/us/mdm.


About Gartner:
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the valuable partner to 60,000 clients in 11,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,400 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.