(upbeat music) >> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering Informatica World 2019. Brought to you by Informatica. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World here in Las Vegas. I am your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by John Lieto. He is the Director, Data Management at Wolters Kluwer. Thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Very welcome. >> So, Wolters Kluwer is a global provider of professional information, software solutions, tax information. Tell our viewers a little bit more about the company and about your role at the company. >> Yeah, so Wolters Kluwer, I would say probably 20 years ago, was a typical holding company. Has a very long history of publishing in Europe. It's over 185 years old in Europe. But, went on a journey to acquire businesses that were in the services business with a focus on legal, but there are also big concentrations in health divisions, tax and accounting, really a professional company. Very, very, very big in print. What happened over the last 10, 15 years though, it's completely flipped over to digital. In fact, it's been one of the more successful transformations. So now we're mostly in the digital space and electronic space. So where I come in, and my business unit comes in, CT Corporation is a 126-year-old company. Number one player in registered agent services. Legal information, helping companies like Informatica stay in compliance. United States is 50 states with 50 sets of rules, plus international. So typically, companies of any size get a provider. Sometimes their law firms will do it, but a lot of times, it's going to be CT Corporations, things like that. My role in the company, I've been there 19 years, I've had a mix of roles, mostly in the business but a little technical. I'm the Director of Data Management, I am basically in charge of managing governance and data quality for the business. It is focused on the customer right now and all things related to customer, but we're expanding into other domains like vendors, products, suppliers and supporting of pretty large digital transformation. >> So I'm sure in your role you have a lot of practical insights for MDM practitioners but before we go there, I want to hear from you about the customer mindset, I mean, this is a moment for data governance and security... >> Sure >> and privacy, a real inflection point, and like Wolters Kluwer, so many companies undergoing their own digital transformations. How would you describe the customer mindset about all of this? How are customers wrapping their brains around it? >> So for us, we're not in a very regulated business. We touch customers that are heavily regulated, but we're not, we're a service company, right? Most of the stuff, the data we deal with is public knowledge, right? A company's data is public knowledge, you can go in any state website and find out when Informatica was formed, who the board of directors are, so it's all public. But customers are extremely sensitive about where their data is, and what we're doing with it, so we were on top of that, especially for our foreign customers. Internally the CT and Wolters Kluwer we have to be very, very, very customer-focused 'cause it's a very direct service, right? So it's all about the customer. How we got to this point of using Informatica MDM, Massive Data Management, is trying to get close to the customer, trying to understand the customer. Our customers go from J P Morgan to these big, big, big companies that have investments in companies that you wouldn't even know they're related to that customer. So they rely on us to help them stay compliant. How do I deal with these diverse businesses that are under my portfolio, and how do I keep them compliant in the States? So we have all this data and we help our customers understand it, and know what to do next, almost anticipate where they're going to fall out of compliance in the State. >> So what is your advice for the people who are really starting, for the executives starting at square one, trying to think about a master data management solution? >> Yeah, great question. And it's really where the heart of my devotion has been the last year. I would say the most important thing is start with a business case. Understand where your business is going. Make it about what outcomes are you looking for. Really thoroughly understand that. Also take the systems or the subjects that are important to you, your company, and profile it. Understand that data. You can come to an MDM project, a master data management project, with so much knowledge first, don't just say, well everybody is doing master data management, we should do it too. I mean, it might be true, but you're really not going to get the outcomes. And then focus your project to hit those business goals, 'cause MDM is a process and a tool, it's not an answer. You need to use that tool to get to where you are, so for us the number one thing was reduce duplication, okay, MDM tools do that, so we're trying to get to the golden record, okay. Data quality, I don't have the good phone numbers I have bad email addresses, oh, mass data management does that too. So, again, it's going for the outcomes you're driving for, and MDM happens to be a good tool for that. >> So it's really about defining the objectives before you even jump in. >> Absolutely. >> Do you recommend experiments? What's the approach you... >> Wonderful question. In data we call it profiling, right? And you want to go in small wins, because one of the things that will happen to anyone in this space is the business is really not sure about this investment. These days, data is becoming so huge that's becoming a lot easier for guys like me to win a business case, but two years ago it was pretty hard. I'm sorry I just lost my train of thought. >> But that's an interesting point, just talking about the overcoming the skepticism within these companies to latch on to this idea, and as you were saying, the announcing the small wins, really getting everyone on board. >> Thank you. What we did is, we had profiled, found a problem, oh, we have definitive cost duplication, we've got email addresses that are completely bogus. Let's just to take those two. And we did small little pilots. We'd use tools we had, completely manual ad-hoc, let's fix 200 records, let's take a really important customer that we're trying to onboard, or expand, and let's fix that data, and then show the outcomes. Go for the quick wins. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Once we did that, and we did a series of, I want to say, 30 or 40 of these. That built our requirement set. We built the requirement set by doing. It was so easy that way to show victories, but too, to really get the requirements to a point where we could build the system. We happened to fall on that method, from prior learnings of not doing well on projects that had nothing to do with MDM. So for this one, I think the other piece of advice that I would give folks, is we built a data management team of business analysts that know our business and data. It is really critical that you keep this function out of IT. IT is your supporter and your partner. This does not go to IT. So we know our data. I have a guy on my team that's 45 years in the company, a woman who's 28 years in the company, just for example. So we can do a lot without a tool, and what's happening is now we are live for going on eight months now, and we're staying on top, making sure the tool's delivering what it's supposed to deliver, based on our deep knowledge. >> And I think that what you're talking about really, is introducing this technology and this new way of thinking, and it's really all about change management. >> It truly is. >> One of the things that we're talking a lot here in theCUBE about is the skills gap, and this is a problem throughout the technology industry. How big a problem is it for you at Wolters Kluwer? And what are you doing to make sure that you have the right technical talent on your team, and as we're saying, not just the technical talent but also the understanding of the business? >> One thing to understand is Wolters Kluwer is a fairly big company, and we as a company are just starting this journey. I have a small data management team in one business unit at Wolters Kluwer. There's another business unit within our health division that has data management, and that's all that I know of that is a formal data management. That's pretty small, so it's just beginning. What we're doing, we're trying to communicate, communicate, communicate. I am having some success because in our next huge journey, which is a digital transformation, a six-year project, data now is center. I've been asked to actually be the business sponsor for the data track, which, two years ago, that would not have happened. So I take that as a win, but you make a fair point, skills and understanding, both at the business and technical level is always a challenge, and it's justifying bringing in that skill set. No we can just outsource that, or we'll just use a consultant. I'm right now fighting a battle to bring in a data architect, full-time, they don't understand that... >> Just that role. >> You have to architect things. We've now done that, so what you have, because I' doing the data governance piece right now, and what I'm finding is, it's not the Wild West, but you can't always know what the parts of the organization is doing, and a lack of an architect is not keeping all the plumbing all centralized. So, a I build this data governance, I'm going to centralize data definitions and data glossary, data catalog, but I'm going to be looking around and going, okay, how do I actually have the technology piece architected correctly and that's the piece I'm really trying to pump, so hopefully when we build this data layer we're building my goal is to prove to the business that you need to fill this role. It's not me, it's going to be someone who really is deep, deep, deep in architecture. >> Hire a contractor, get that small win. >> That's what we're doing. (laughing) >> And then, the proof. I learned that from you, John. >> I'm actually in the process of just doing that. >> Excellent! >> One of those vendors is here. >> Well, we'll look forward to talking to you next year and hearing an update. >> Yeah, there you go. >> John Lieto, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. >> You're very welcome, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, we will have more of theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World. Stay tuned! (upbeat musing)