Many multinational companies are waking up to find they have numerous, duplicative, and incomplete records stored in multiple repositories across the enterprise, in remote and isolated information islands. The result: slower responsiveness and higher costs. And when you're as big and spread out as Panasonic, this is not a trivial issue. That's why the electronics giant has set out to reconcile its product data on a global scale, in an attempt to gain the so-called single version of the truth. The end goal: to improve time-to-market and enable simultaneous, global product launches. Business journalist Duff McDonald explores the early returns of this work in progress, and examines the cultural barriers obstructing this monumental task.

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