Many businesses today, especially global enterprises, have various distinguished applications and systems (i.e., ERP, CRM) where data that crosses organizational departments or divisions can quickly become fragmented, duplicated, and most ordinarily out of date. When this happens, answering even the most basic but vital questions on any sort of performance metric or KPI accurately for a business becomes tedious.
Getting answers to basic questions like, 'Who are our most profitable customers?', 'What product(s) have the lowest margins?', or in some cases, 'How many employees do we have?' become tough to answer – or can't be answered without a degree of false information. Basically, the necessity for accurate, timely information is a crucial requisite, and as sources of knowledge increase, managing it consistently and keeping data definitions up so far, so all parts of a business use equivalent information becomes a perpetual challenge.
To meet these challenges, businesses have to adopt master data management (MDM).The following three steps are a must if you wish to initiate Master Data Management:
Align with, and help deliver the business vision
All companies have different business visions as per their industry. The fundamental thing you should try to do is to establish a vision for your business, which also deals with future plans about growth and ownership.
You need to look at the vision and ask what your business differentiator is – What's your fundamental goal? It's always one among these three:
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- Customer centricity – We would like to deliver extraordinarily personalized and valued customer experiences.
- Product excellence – We have the most valued product(s) on the market.
- Operational efficiency – We would like to be the fastest and most convenient choice at the most affordable price.
Once you've got established this for your business, you need to configure the Master Data Management initiative into the framework. So, if your business 'goal' is customer-centricity, then you ought to probably focus your MDM efforts on the customer domain. If it’s operational efficiency or product excellence, then you presumably need to specialize in Product MDM and/or Supplier MDM.
Choose the proper strategy and approach.
Maybe you've got already done great things with Master Data Management in one domain, and now you would like to maneuver onto another master data area. Maybe you would like to restart or re-energize your Master Data Management approach, or even you're utterly new to this. All of those starting points are just fine.
To move on, you have to work out exactly where your organization is at an MDM maturity scale since organizations also as individuals are often in several stages with their master data.
Quantify and demonstrate the business value
No matter how well you reap the benefits of MDM, the business owner will need to know about the profit margins. In other words, the business value of a Master Data Management solution has got to be very clear. That's why you should present a business case and justify the ROI (Return on Investment) upfront to be ready to make a real business case for MDM. But how does one establish the ROI for MDM? This is almost intangible and extremely difficult. However, the worth of MDM is often made very visible with the strategy-supported business metrics.
