Master data is the way to break down silos and converge on a single source of truth.
When customer data is managed and maintained correctly, that single source can flow like liquid gold to every far-flung corner of your organization; facilitating better decision-making and improving business strategy; driving value!
We are in an age of data, and customer master data management is where a business seizes control of critical customer data so that stakeholders can easily access one pure, consistent view of the customer. MDM is the framework defining what, where, and how data is captured, maintained, stored, managed, and distributed.
CMDM can be a great enabler for an organization that strives for a new day in customer intimacy; driving innovation, driving leadership; managing risk, and improving operational excellence but it doesn’t just happen overnight and it does not just miraculously manifest itself. Implementing any aspect of MDM requires some careful pre-steps of evaluation.
The purpose of funding any infrastructure project is with an eye on some sort of ROI (Return on Investment). MDM however, isn’t like buying a piece of off-the-shelf software, MDM cannot be implemented in isolation and cannot be a standalone entity that magically generates its own ROI. In the past, you would likely have had heavy IT involvement in the buy and implement decision but these days the decision is often that of the business area with the most to gain from MDM. They’ll leverage IT as required to make the technical implementation and ease of adoption work but there’s still more to be considered.
MDM as a unifying approach
Data silos are not unfamiliar to most of us, they exist for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they exist as a result of data domain control, they can also exist because of relative weakness in the technical integration between your systems of record. It was not unheard of in the past, for a business unit to run solo with a solution that solved their particular data problem accompanied by the expectation that the rest of the business was to be cut loose in the wind and needed to work out its own solution to solve for its data problems.
With resources as precious as they are, the risk of implementation failure, the desire for a more integration operation, the idea of multiple standalone approaches and tools for managing key master data, have pretty much been written up as tactically and strategically risky, often non-compliant and unnecessarily expensive. So there’s a new approach that shouldn’t surprise you at all. That approach is cloud-based MDM. In this instance, MDM specifically for customer data. Pretectum has you covered on that front.
Working in harmony, under the leadership of a key sponsor in the organization is the first step towards better customer master data. Combining the initiative with the definition of data-related KPIs and real business goals against the initiative and an articulated vision for what CMDM will bring in terms of benefits, is the best way to justify and codify the implementation’s aims. A brief that describes the aims and goals can serve as a guide not only for implementation but as a yardstick for success too.
Pretectum’s view is that adoption of Customer Master Data Management is a journey and along that journey, you will discover things that you do today that you want to do differently tomorrow. We also think that there is no absolute ‘best way’ to do things, we think that sometimes you have to look to industry best practices but sometimes you have to define your own. We’re interested in helping you shape and evolve your business and processes around using our technology to do that.
Contact Pretectum to learn more about how we can help you herald in the dawn of a new day in your customer master data management.