Register Now

insight
Blog
By: Manish Shewaramani

Enterprise Master Data Management Solutions - Helps to Fuel Personalization

In recent times, business leaders are facing immense pressure on deploying the enterprise master data management solution. The main reason behind such pressure is to make use of the master data for improving business operations by making it easily accessible to all departments.

Now you may question what is enterprise master data management.

Well, this article answers your question and briefs more about the enterprise master data management operations & the benefits it offers to an organization by fuelling personalization.

What is Enterprise Master Data Management?

Enterprise master data management ensures master data of an enterprise is synched with the business operation/workflow with the help of technology, tools, and a set of systematic processes.

The enterprise Master Data Management solution provides a unified master data service that ensures accurate, up-to-date, consistent, and complete master data synched across the enterprise systems and with the business entities.

Hope, you may get a clear picture of what is enterprise master data management. Let’s dig deeper into enterprise Master Data Management solutions in future sections.

Before exploring details about enterprise MDM, if you are interested to understand master data management, don’t miss visiting What is Master Data Management (MDM)? and Master Data Management – An Ultimate Guide.

Enterprise Master Data Management Essential Components

Data governance

It refers to how an organization ensures their business data are governed according to their rules by whom, when, and how. Also, the term data governance closely relates to data stewardship which encompasses the guidance of creating data policy for maintaining data integrity, quality, and data security.

Data integration

It means moving and merging related data together to get a consolidated view of the business data in a single place. It is a key component that makes business data accessible easily.

Master data management

It’s about reconciling the business data from the various scattered sources of an organization. MDM helps businesses to create a master version of the business data.

Data security

It refers to the safety and precautionary measures an organization needs to take for protecting its data throughout its lifecycle. Data security maintains data integrity and prevents data corruption & destruction.

How Does Master Data Management Enter the Personalization Picture?

Modern businesses are willing to take any action to engage and get connected with their target audiences. Many leading companies and organizations prefer enterprise master data management to meet the rising demands of modern consumers and to engage with them by offering personalized services & offers.

Enterprise MDM helps businesses to break down internal data silos and to manage all the vital business data including customer data. The ultimate goal of the Enterprise MDM solution is to offer a better customer experience by providing accurate and up-to-date data.

Here are the lists of aspects that make enterprise master data management differ from other data management solutions.

  • Enterprise MDM empowers marketers to link customer records with other records easily.
  • It helps data managers and marketers to create a complete picture of the customers and their interaction details made with the company.
  • Multidomain enterprise MDM solutions enable an organization to identify the customer at any point of contact.
  • Enterprise master data management creates a consolidated “golden record” view of complete customer data all over the enterprise. Mapping customer data with other domains will help businesses to create real-time personalization services.

Benefits of Enterprise Master Data Management

Enterprise master data management solution offers a wide range of benefits to an organization; the upcoming lists illustrate the key benefits. Take a look.

1. Drives efficiencies through data management

Enterprise Master Data management solution offers a single place for storing and viewing all types of business data or information, this helps a lot for an organization in managing & handling data. Enterprises can avoid spending a lot on managing scattered data across the organization with the help of enterprise MDM.

Also, having a centralized data repository from enterprise MDM will help businesses to avoid using siloed data or multiple versions of the same data. This brings more efficiency to the sales and marketing efforts taken by an organization.

2. Improves Data Quality

Perfect management of data will always improve data quality. With the enterprise master data management solution an organization can able to access the data in better quality which plays a key role in doing analytics.

In addition to that, the principle of enterprise master data management solution makes the business data stored and managed in uniform data format consistently. This allows businesses to utilize the business data more efficiently and for various business processes in a simplified way.

3. Boost business revenue through better customer experience

Having better quality data will always help businesses to improve their customer experience level since it manages to satisfy the needs of customers sufficiently.

The enterprise master data management offers a centralized storage location for storing all the customer-related information, this helps businesses and marketers to understand the needs of a customer and to deliver more personalized services to improve customer satisfaction.

In addition, enterprise MDM solution allows business stakeholders to carry out more personalized up-sell and cross-sell activities to attract the right audience. This will help to reduce the marketing efforts and money being spent on involving unnecessary customer acquisition methods.

Once the customer gets fully satisfied with the services offered by an organization, they will keep visiting back and purchasing more. This will eventually improve the overall business ROI.

4. Easy data backup

An organization with a perfect data backup plan can avoid unexpected data loss by recovering business-critical data much easier.

In addition, maintaining a regular data backup will help businesses to roll back to the previous data version in case any hiccups occurs in business operation due to the new or modified version of business data.

Enterprise master data management provides a centralized copy of all the business’s most critical data; this allows data managers of an enterprise to create a data backup much easier. Moreover, the centralized data storage option helps businesses to reduce the cost of data backup operation of an organization.

In addition, with the help of MDM solutions recovering business data will be much easier and simpler which will allow businesses to manage the disaster or data loss effortlessly.

5. Accelerates new product launch

For an enterprise it is key to accelerate their new products to reach the marketplace much quicker, this helps an organization beat competitors and to reach more potential audiences.

Moreover, reaching the new products to the marketplace much quicker within the deadline will always improve the trust factor among the target audience group. This will enhance the brand experience.

With the presence of an enterprise master data management solution, an organization can easily reach its new products to the market well within the time frame. The principles of the MDM solution will help businesses to carry out data cleansing and data enrichment activities at the supply chain level much more quickly and efficiently.

This helps businesses to create product information accurately and also by meeting all the requirements of the market condition quickly, allowing new products to reach the marketplace much faster.

6. Complying with regulators

Enterprise master data management strategy helps businesses to handle customer data in a much-simplified way. With efficient data management practices organizations can easily comply with the terms and conditions set by the regulators. The centralized data storage provision provided by the MDM helps an organization meet the conditions of local privacy laws.

The MDM solution allows businesses to carry out data management practices as per the rules of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). This empowers customers to utilize the option to manage their own data which an organization has.

Challenges of Enterprise Master Data Management

As data becomes the ultimate weapon for businesses to gain a better position in today’s competitive market, enterprises/organizations that have a better position to mobilize their data assets will have the advantage.

In addition, businesses that are capable of taking the right decision on important and powerful mission-critical initiatives for their business growth because of their data management policy will have a definite edge in coming years. On the other hand, businesses that fail to revamp their data management policies will face a struggle in managing their pool of old data and new business data.

Here are the lists of some common challenges businesses may encounter when they have no proper data management solution.

  • Operational failure due to inefficiency and inaccuracy of data.
  • Declination of customer trust due to poor data quality.
  • Inconsistency reporting with errors.
  • Wastage of time and effort on data reconciliation.
  • Losing partner’s trust.
  • Frustration among employees on working with low-quality data.

If companies start feeling data management is a daunting task, then they need to experience the above-listed challenges. However, with the enterprise data management solution an organization is able to get the appropriate support from the latest technology on managing their business data with the right strategies. It will help businesses to overcome all the challenges a business can face due to data quality.

Best Practices for Successful Enterprise Master Data Management

For every business data management is crucial for driving a standardized way of running a smooth operation. Effective data management is a key factor for businesses to create and deploy the right processes, this will ensure end users have high confidence that the data they are accessing are highly reliable and accurate.

Here are the best 7 practices to consider for business to make sure the enterprise master data management process is carried out effectively and efficiently.

1. Use strong file names and conventional cataloging

When you are collecting, storing, and managing data in a single location, you need to find it easily and quickly for better utilization when it is needed. For that, the file system needs to be named in a user-friendly and also in descriptive way, so that it can be easily identified when it is needed.

The file name and name format should be found easily when it is searched, so keeping all those aspects in mind the file should be named accordingly.

Here are the lists of standard sets you need to keep in mind while naming the file system.

  • For listing dates, the format should be like YYYY-MM-DD or YYYYMMDD.
  • For listing times, the format should be like HH:MM:SS. Also, you can prefer either a UNIX time frame or a standard 24-hour notation for storing times.

2. Consider naming metadata for data sets carefully

In general, metadata is a descriptive way of referring to the data information which you are going to use. Efficient metadata should have detailed information on data which includes content, structure, and permissions. With all that information stored in metadata, a user can easily discover the data in the future.

Here are the lists of top catalog items used in the metadata.

  • Information about the author of the data.
  • Set contains what kind of data.
  • Data descriptions.
  • Information regarding data creation.
  • Details of why, when, and how the data was created.

All the above-enlisted data in the Metadata or data set will user to understand the data presented in it. Also, guides users to create and path for the data set to reach its destination by documenting its data relationship.

3. Data storage with a backup option

Having a sufficient data storage plan is necessary for any business. Also, it is one of the essential processes for a business to access the data stored efficiently. Storage location or plan differs from business to business.

Here are the lists of various storage plan options to consider

  • Desktops/Laptops.
  • Storage drives connected in networks.
  • External hard drives.
  • Devices using optical storage.
  • Storages from cloud technology.
  • Simple flash drives.

Apart from the above-listed storage option, businesses can even consider a 3-2-1 methodology as the storage system. Here are the strategies followed in the 3-2-1 methodology.

  • Business data is stored as three copies.
  • Data is stored by using 2 different types of storage methods.
  • One set of data copies is stored offsite.

By using this 3-2-1 method, businesses can access their data smartly and make sure they have safe data backups in case of any hiccups that occur in the storage location.

4. Multiple levels of documentation

When it comes to data management best practices, we can’t ignore the documentation process. Having a smart multi-level of documentation for data management solutions will always provide you with the full information about the data’s existence including why and how the data can be utilized.

Here are the lists of documentation levels you can make use of in your data management solution.

  • Project level of documenting.
  • File-level documenting.
  • Software level documenting (In general, the software level document contains the details of the versions and how it differs from other versions.)
  • Context level documenting (In general, the context level of the document contains the details of why data was created and so.)

5. Considering data culture for perfect management

For better data management, an enterprise should consider the data culture for making any kind of data experimentations or data analytics. To do so, data management practices must have the proper acknowledgment from the departments or the company’s leadership members.

Commitment to data culture requires budget and time for conducting proper training among the workers. This will create strong data collaboration across the team members from various departments of your organization.

6. Trust in data quality, data security, and data privacy

To create a strong trust bond among the customers over the quality of data being offered, an organization must commit to creating a secure environment for data handling with strong privacy standards.

While working in a culture where many people can access the business data, you need to have strong security features to protect the data quality from being breached.

The enterprise master data management solution must be providing a safe and secure environment where your employees can understand the nature and importance of data privacy.

In today’s virtual market, data privacy is the biggest concern for top-level companies. So, make sure you have enough measures and precautionary actions that will create a strong impact on customers to make a buying decision.

7. Make sure you invest in the right enterprise master data management software

In general, data management software works in both internal and external data assets of an organization. So, it is important to invest in the right quality data management solution that offers a manageable business tool for creating the right data sets and scheduling data-related works according to the business need.

Having the right enterprise master data management solution will help data managers to retrieve all the essential information related to the data they are looking for from the centralized data repository.

Having a reliable data management solution will enable businesses to leverage the best practices of data management and build a strong trust bond over data quality.

Bottom Line

In today’s business world, data management has become inevitable for all types of businesses. Investing in the right enterprise master data management solution will help businesses leverage personalized individual touch points across the available channels and devices.

Personalization has a significant impact on driving customers to make positive purchase decisions. Moreover, delivering personalized services will be a win-win scenario for both businesses and customers.

Say goodbye to data chaos and embrace the power of PIM/MDM to supercharge your business growth!