A growing number of companies are turning their attention to customer master data management (CMDM). Why? Because they understand that a solid foundation of clean, up-to-date customer data is critical to reaching their revenue goals.
The most successful businesses are able to accurately target the right customers with relevant offers and services that improve the customer experience and boost loyalty.
They also know how important it is to have a stakeholder-approved process in place for managing this information throughout its lifecycle — from acquisition through retention, renewal, or disengagement — so customer data is always available when needed.
What is customer master data governance?
Customer master data governance is the process of designing and implementing rules that define how your data will be managed. It’s about setting the rules for managing your customer data so that you can make sure it’s used in a way that aligns with your business goals.
Customer master data governance is not just about making sure that all customer records are accurate, up-to-date, and complete—it’s also about ensuring they are being used correctly. For example:
- When should a customer record be deleted?
- Who should have access to which fields?
- Should certain fields be considered sensitive or private?
- How do we ensure we only send communications to customers who want them (and not those who don’t)?
What is customer master data management?
Customer master data management (CMDB) is a broad term used to describe the process of managing customer master data. It involves:
- Data governance. The process of establishing policies and procedures for the control of data, such as how to create and maintain it, who can access it, when it becomes obsolete, and how much is enough.
- Data quality. Ensuring that your company’s information is both accurate and consistent with other sources of information about customers across multiple systems or departments within your organization; this includes ensuring that each customer’s records contain enough information to be useful in its intended purpose(s).
- Data integration. Bringing together all information related to a particular customer into one place so that updates or changes can be made once rather than multiple times throughout different systems—for example, by linking them via an identifier such as a customer ID number saved in each system where they appear (such as CRM software).
What are the steps of customer master data management?
As part of your customer master data management and stewardship strategy, it’s important to consider your organization’s approach to data governance. Data governance refers to policies and processes that guide how data is managed in your organization. In other words, it’s a framework that helps ensure you’re both protecting and leveraging your data for maximum value.
Data managers play a crucial role in establishing these standards by setting policies for how customers’ personally identifiable information (PII) is handled internally or shared externally with third parties like external service providers or vendors who need access to certain types of PII in order to provide their services.
By setting clear guidelines for what constitutes PII and how it should be protected at all times, companies can protect themselves from potential compliance issues as well as reduce their risk exposure from external threat actors attempting malicious acts against them using stolen customer information
Where does customer master data stewardship fit in?
Customer master data management is a process, not a technology, solution, organization, or department. A CMDM program is built on the foundation of a holistic approach to managing an enterprise’s customer information.
A successful CMDM program will work on ensuring that there’s no duplication in your customer data across all systems and processes. If you have different information in different places about the same person—whether it be related to billing or marketing—you can lose track of who owns what piece of information and where it exists.
Content and process versus structure and systems.
The definitions of data governance, master data management, and stewardship are often conflated. This is because they share some characteristics: all three are focused on ensuring that the business can make decisions based on reliable data. However, each has different goals.
Stewardship is about the people who manage the data; it’s about ensuring that there’s someone responsible for maintaining its quality and integrity at all times. Stewards must be educated about their role as stewards of master customer records so they can take appropriate actions when problems arise with the content or structure of those records. They should also be trained in how to use available tools to ensure that changes made by other users do not break any rules or violate policies in place regarding how certain attributes must be populated with values (e.g., names only).
Customer master data governance, management and stewardship are critical processes to ensure effective management of your customer data.
Customer master data, including key attributes such as name, address, and email address are critical assets for any company. A well-managed customer master data repository is a powerful tool for enabling your business to achieve its goals.
For example, you can use this information to understand what level of service each customer expects from your organization – whether that be next-day delivery or free shipping – so that you’re able to meet their expectations with minimal effort on their part. This in turn will allow them to do more business with you in the future because they’ve had a positive experience buying from you before, or alternatively, it may encourage new customers who have heard about how easy it was for them last time so decide whether they should buy from you too!
When it comes to managing and stewarding your customer data, it’s important that your organization has a clear understanding of the different roles and responsibilities. An effective customer master data governance process will ensure that there are no gaps in oversight or accountability; this will help you avoid costly mistakes and improve customer satisfaction with your products and services.
To learn more about how Pretectum can help, contact us today!