They say that data is the new oil and within every social media interaction, business transaction, and Google search lies valuable insight. However, most of today’s businesses have massive data silos that go unleveraged because they don’t have the proper organizational and analytics systems in place to process their business’s master data. Don’t fall behind the times — organize and manage your organization’s data with master data management today.
The Importance of Data Management in 2020
There’s no doubt about it — we’re witnessing an information explosion these days. More people than ever are connected to the internet (especially with so many working from home), and devices generate their own data with the Internet of Things and machine learning. The sheer volume of data is often too vast and complex for data stewards to process and analyze independently.
To make matters worse, most companies use several different systems to collect the organization’s critical data such as KPIs, CRM’s, ERP’s, and customer data. This fragmented strategy results in reduced operating efficiency, data quality, and security. To create a single point of reference that organizes and utilizes complete master data, businesses must implement a master data management solution.
What is master data management, you ask? Let’s start with master data: the organization’s information that drives business processes, analytics, and data governance. Master data encompasses a business entity’s asset data such as customer information, transactional data, and regulatory compliance data sources. A master data management program consists of the people, systems, and strategies necessary to connect all of this master data into a single source of truth that keeps it consistent and accurate. For master data management to work, then it must be implemented company-wide.
Your #data is useless unless it’s unified.
See how master data management and #datavirtualization can provide an integrated solution to your organization’s most complex challenges. #mdm https://t.co/RTHAG8yCEq
— TIBCO (@TIBCO) May 18, 2020
MDM Benefits and Capabilities
Master data management, or MDM, can greatly benefit your business by combining all of these different systems and data sources to reveal opportunities, risks, and improvement areas. Analyzing accurate, reliable customer data helps you better understand your customers, up-sell and cross-sell, and ultimately increase your sales and revenue. MDM will also increase your company’s efficiency and productivity by eliminating the need for IT and managing complex relationships between vendors, products, customers, and locations. Organizing supplier relationships, having an accurate inventory account, and forecasting future demand will optimize your supply chain. By utilizing MDM, you can also improve customer experience, satisfaction, and data governance compliance, among other benefits.
An MDM system’s capabilities include securely sharing real-time data, data and workflow visualization, and flexible data modeling. Potential analytics applications are endless, and user-friendly dashboards can be customized for different company roles. The simplicity of a drag-and-drop interface means more of your team will be able to access and build your company’s master database. This is a crucial element because, as mentioned before, for master data management to work — everyone must be on board.
Examples of MDM Use Cases
What do MDM solutions look like in action? Here are some top uses of MDM programs and strategies:
- Personalized marketing
- Brand consistency
- Faster product launches
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications
- Monitoring customer information
- Operational efficiency
- GDPR compliance
As you can see, master data plays a crucial role in business operations. Using several source systems and databases can lead to fragmented, duplicated, or inaccurate information. Under this kind of data management, you can’t easily clarify cross-domain relationships, identify actionable data analytics, or collaborate across departments. Consolidating all of your master data into one key source is an important step in today’s data transformation. Not only will a master data management solution improve operational efficiency and clarity, but it can even give you a competitive advantage by forecasting future trends and increasing revenue.
