Interoperability, a word, my colleagues will confirm, I can barely say let alone spell, has become a central tenant of our data strategy. Primarily about connecting and linking our breadth of global data assets to ensure our end users have a much better client experience using our data, getting to answers quicker and gaining value from their investments sooner. Fundamental to that is the deployment of unique and persistent id's across our datasets. Where a unique identifier is "being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else" and persistent is "continuing to exist or occur over a prolonged period", that period for Pitney Bowes data is where a dataset is maintained and supplied to clients and where a record is made inactive that identifier does not become available for use elsewhere.
I quickly realised the most valuable part of this process was to be very clear about the rules of what it means to be unique and to be persistent. You have to be logical, consistent and transparent. We are just starting this journey but I am looking forward to getting client feedback and I hope great stories about how this makes our data much easier to use and implement.
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Andy Bell
Director
Global Data Product Management
Pitney Bowes Software & Data
Leeds, UK
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