The problem is frequently most acute within those enterprises that have advanced the furthest in
automating their business operations. Their readiness to adopt the latest connected technologies
and SaaS applications have left them painfully exposed to conflicts between data sources. They pride
themselves on delivering timely, agile business outcomes. Yet under the covers, they are struggling to
join up processes and data across the sprawl of applications deployed around the organisation.
The result is that business goals are thwarted by poor data harmony. Here are some examples of how
a cost-effective MDM solution can significantly impact business outcomes for the better.
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Real-time analytics. In today’s connected world, business success increasingly depends on
being able to present the right information in an instant. Whether it’s suggesting product
options to buyers on an ecommerce site, showing demand forecasts to an account manager
on a sales call or helping HR identify this month’s top performers, timely business analytics
depend on real-time data. Effective MDM enables clean, consistent data that fuels business
dashboards, operational BI and big data algorithms – providing employees with the data they
need, when they need it.
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Sharper execution. The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) estimates that data quality
problems associated with customer contact data alone are costing US businesses more than
$600 billion a year in postage, printing and staff overhead, at the same time as alienating
customers (TDWI, "Data Quality and the Bottom Line”). Introducing MDM brings operational
improvements such as eliminating billing errors, better tracking of delinquent accounts, and
more efficient upselling and cross-selling. It also ensures that management has an overview
of who are the company’s most profitable customers and best prospects, helping to
accelerate the sales cycle.
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Smarter operations. In the era of online commerce, customers expect to see what’s in stock
when they place the order, while suppliers need to know when to schedule top-up deliveries.
MDM allows accurate matching of product line items between inventory, logistics and sales
systems, reducing errors and enabling real-time automated data updates. According to
research by Aberdeen Group, using MDM to improve inventory accuracy can boost customer
satisfaction by as much as a fifth, while yielding a 4% reduction in inventory carrying costs.
MDM for today’s fast-moving enterprises
Traditional MDM technology was not designed to meet the needs of real-time enterprises.
Implementation was costly and complex, delivered with a labor-intensive and slow-moving data
governance process. Only the largest enterprises with vast IT budgets and governance staff could
justify the implementation and ongoing costs of these cumbersome, heavyweight integration and
data management suites.
The rest of us have done our best to make do with simple, ad hoc solutions – spreadsheets that run
macros to convert data, regular manual audits of linked databases, sporadic fixes in response to
problems as they occur. These manual processes are rapidly being overwhelmed by growing
information sprawl, especially as new applications are added to the mix. Without the time and
resources to afford a complex, heavyweight, labor-intensive solution, nimble companies need a
better alternative.
Fortunately for this emerging market, the next generation of MDM has arrived to meet these needs.
It has six core characteristics.
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Distributed. The one-way architecture of early generations of MDM was designed primarily
for reporting. Data was collated from multiple applications into a central store, but the
results were never harmonized back out to the operational applications. Next-generation
MDM has a distributed architecture that maintains the master data records in the source
systems where end users perform their daily tasks. Real-time synchronization and bidirectional flows harmonize data across multiple applications, business units and
geographies, respecting complex patterns of data ownership while providing the consistent,
up-to-date information that modern businesses need to be able to serve their customers and
stakeholders effectively.
Integrated. MDM works hand-in-hand with integration and data quality management. In
most conventional suites, each of these functions operates on separate technology stacks
that require systems integration to unify, increasing the burden of support and maintenance
costs. A single access management regime and a consistent look and feel allow for easier
account management and simpler, easier navigation across all functions.
Cloud. Satisfying all of the complex demands of an integrated, next-generation MDM system
far exceeds the IT capacity, sophistication and budget spend of the typical midmarket
organisation. The massively scalable, shared infrastructure of the cloud model allows
provision of a high-performance, real-time system with a low cost of operation and no
upfront technology acquisition cost. Enterprises can quickly get started and benefit from
cloud-native connectivity that greatly simplifies the task of linking data and processes across
a distributed ecosystem of domains and applications with a mix of on-premise and cloud
stacks.
Collaborative. Workflow and real-time collaboration across the distributed system help to
rapidly resolve outstanding inconsistencies around quarantined items or data errors. The
ideal is to check new data against the MDM system prior to its inclusion. Where that’s not
possible, workflow in the MDM system can use email or social media alerts to automatically
chase approvals and change management requests. This allows each user to fix issues as
they arise, minimizing the time the data remains in limbo. A multi-tenant cloud platform
brings another dimension of collaboration, allowing everyone on the platform to benefit
from dynamically updated domain models that continuously evolve as community usage
grows.
Connected. With partnerships and ecosystems becoming an increasingly important part of
business today, MDM must extend its reach out from the core to the periphery of the
enterprise and beyond into supplier or partner ecosystems, applying governance policies and
integration frameworks wherever data enters the extended application infrastructure.
External resources such as data quality services must also be available, not only to validate
and cleanse data as it enters the system but also to enrich and standardize it.
Agile. To properly serve the needs of a fast-growing, midmarket enterprise, the MDM system
must be capable of reconfiguration and updating to keep pace with changing business needs.
This is especially true when cloud applications can be deployed within weeks and have
significant functional updates three or four times each year.
How to get started
Fast-moving businesses face many technology choices. They succeed by adopting those that most
rapidly and cost-effectively deliver the most profitable business outcomes. For MDM to figure as one
of those choices, it must offer a quick solution to a pressing need, such as delivering real-time
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