Is your reference data in shape?

At the risk of getting too techy, now might be a good time to revisit your reference data policies. One could argue easily that companies are being asked to monitor and capture more and more data about specific customers. Most of this stems from compliance imperatives. There's a strategic angle as well, this data, well cut and sorted, may be of business value. So there are good reasons for making sure your IT guys have a solid reference data scheme laid out. Reference data usually refers to the database schema by which attributes and roles of people are captured. So for all customers, the associated reference data would lead to a lot of information that could be useful strategically. If you can make sense of the schema. In other words, only if you've got a solid grip on references can you layer on other applications. The industry will make this point ad nauseum. Not without reason. Commentary