Master Data Management (MDM)
Published on:
August 31, 2021
Reading time:
minutes
Master Data Management is a high-tech discipline at the interface of business management and IT.
What is master data management?
Master Data Management (MDM) is an end-to-end process that enables you to better understand your business by providing a single, reliable and complete view of customer and product data across the enterprise. Flexible self-service access, diagram-driven exploration, analytics, management, and an easy-to-use dashboard accelerate product information management (PIM) and master data programs.
It aims to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, semantic consistency, and accountability of the organization's disseminated or shared official data. Master data is a consistent set of persistent identifiers and extended attributes that describes an organization's entities, including current and potential customers, citizens, suppliers, office and production spaces, hierarchies, and account codes. MDM, along with reference data management, is a function of ReferenceDataManagement (RDM).
A source of truth
MDM is the "single source of truth" for your data-driven digital transformation, delivering reliable, accurate and complete data for outstanding customer experiences, marketing and sales, omnichannel retail and supply chain optimization for governance and compliance initiatives and more.
From your customers' purchase history to product availability and supplier interactions, master data is critical to transactions and relationships. MDM is used to address poor data quality issues or is the direct result of mergers and acquisitions. When two or more organizations become one, master data issues arise very quickly.
Advantages of MDM
Start with your biggest data challenges and business needs and expand as your needs grow. Get the full business value from your data.
- Single Data Version: Create an authoritative view of business-critical data from multiple, duplicated, and conflicting sources.
- 360-degree view of relationships: Use your data and insights to uncover relationships between products, customers, suppliers, and more.
- Comprehensive view of all interactions: Link transactions and interactions to get a complete picture of your customers' behavior.
What does it mean for your business to connect, share, and manage data from all systems, including ERP, CRM, and e-commerce?
For example, with MDM you can:
- Create business value. Improve your customer experience by using analytics to improve your business performance.
- Increase sales. Focus your services, products and business activities on activities that drive sales.
- Connect customer data. Provide personalized service to your customers and increase engagement.
- Improve analytics. Reduce wasteful activities that waste time and resources.
Objectives and principles
The objectives and principles of master and reference data management are largely the same. The objectives of the Master and Reference Data Management Program include:
- Ensure that the organization has complete, consistent, relevant, and reliable baseline and reference data across the process spectrum;
- Ensure the ability to share baseline and reference data across all functions and applications of the organization;
- Reducing the cost and complexity of using and integrating data through the use of standards, common data models, and integration patterns.
The management of master and reference data should conform to the following guidelines.
- Sharing of master and reference data should be managed so that it can be shared across the organization.
- Master and reference data is owned by the entire organization, not specific applications or departments. Because it is data that is widely shared, it should be managed at the highest level possible.
- Continuous monitoring and control of the quality of master and reference data is required.
- Business Data Managers(AmPnBsP) are responsible for monitoring and ensuring the quality of reference data;
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