Corporate firefighters – Joel Clark looks at enterprise data management initiatives on the buy side and concludes that firms’ approaches to managing data is more reactive than proactive due to spiralling costs and debilitating time frames.

Ask any expert to tell you about data management and you will nearly always get the same response; "It's not exactly the sexiest of subjects, but…" It doesn't make for a promising discussion and this goes some way to explaining why buy-side adoption of enterprise data management (EDM) systems and projects remains fairly low.

Although it may not have the executives jumping from their chairs, the business need for streamlined data management cannot be denied. Data may be dull, but it is certainly