Establishing a Trusted Source of Truth at Scale
A major financial institution restored confidence in its CMDB by standardising asset language, optimising discovery and reconciling multiple data sources into a single, governed source of truth.
Context
In large financial institutions, asset data underpins everything from service reliability to security and regulatory compliance. Despite significant investment in best-of-breed tooling, the organisation’s Configuration Management Database (CMDB) was failing to provide a reliable view of the enterprise.
Multiple discovery and asset platforms were generating conflicting information, naming standards varied across teams, and leadership lacked confidence in which data sources could be trusted. The result was uncertainty, not due to lack of data, but lack of coherence.
Approach
This engagement focused on restoring clarity through architectural discipline, defining a common language, aligning discovery mechanisms and governing how truth is established in a multi-vendor environment.
Define
The first step was establishing a shared foundation.
CMDB nomenclature was completely redefined, creating a single, consistent naming and categorisation standard across the organisation. This removed ambiguity around what assets were, how they were classified and how they related to one another, a prerequisite for any reliable configuration model.
At the same time, a clear distinction was established between owned data and discovered data, setting the baseline for how discrepancies would be managed rather than ignored.
Align
With the language defined, discovery and tooling were aligned to the architecture.
Existing discovery capabilities were optimised to close visibility gaps across the infrastructure estate, ensuring assets were consistently identified and updated. A reconciliation framework was then designed to manage data coming from multiple platforms, including ServiceNow, IBM, Microsoft and Flexera, mapping relationships and resolving conflicts based on architectural rules rather than manual judgement.
Big House provided high-level architectural leadership within a large, multi-sourced delivery environment, aligning vendor teams around a single coherent model.
Govern
Governance was embedded through architectural rules rather than process overhead.
Clear reconciliation logic determined which sources were authoritative in different scenarios, ensuring the CMDB could evolve without reintroducing inconsistency. This allowed the organisation to govern asset data continuously, rather than relying on periodic clean-ups or manual intervention.
Outcome
The CMDB shifted from a fragmented registry to a high-fidelity configuration model.
Asset visibility improved significantly, tooling investments delivered measurable value, and leadership gained confidence that decisions were being made on verified, reconciled data. With a trusted source of truth in place, the organisation is now better positioned to manage risk, support regulatory obligations and make informed infrastructure and security decisions at scale.