Dears,
We have a variety of MDM Application Suites catering to Product, Customer, Site, Activity, Supplier..etc .Out of this whole bunch two highly successful types of targeted MDM solutions are customer data integration (CDI)/Customer Hub and product information management (PIM) / Product Hub solutions.
Customer Data Integration / Customer Hub
Customer data integration solutions center around the integration of an organization’s customer data. These solutions are highly integrated with a company’s CRM and ERP systems. Due to the nature of combining so many disparate sources of customer data, match merge and duplicate removal algorithms are critical areas of data integration within the CDI subtype. As this name implies, most of these solutions are focused on integration and require additional internal processes to maintain these systems.
PIM/ Product Hub solutions
Product information management solutions provide an organization with product-centric management. These solutions typically focus on managing, correlating, and merging product data as bills of materials and online catalogs.
Due to the limited scope of these solutions, many organizations can implement them in a relatively short time. The limited scope also keeps the number of stakeholders that must reach a consensus to a minimum. Quick wins and a narrow scope cause many companies to implement these solutions, ignoring the serious limitations these solutions provide from the perspective of organizational master data management.Neither of these solutions is designed to be applied to all of the data sets within the organization. An organization can implement a number of separate solutions to create coverage of all their possible master data sets. Implementing these multiple solutions reduces the number of possible integration points but maintains data silos. Cross-dimensional relationships are difficult, if not impossible, to manage.
Working with IT
It is critical for business owners taking on the challenge of MDM to work well with the organization's Information Technology group. While many of the MDM management tasks required for sustained success rely heavily on the business users themselves, management of the technologies associated with the data integration routines will need to work well with the IT current processes.
Implementing in a phased approach
Now that we have detailed all the possible techniques to implement master data management within the organization, let us lay out some efficient ways to implement MDM within an organization. Each of these processes can provide an organization a reasonable path to grow MDM through the organization. An organization’s structure will have a significant impact on which method will be the most feasible.
Single Dimension Build Out
Many organizations come to realize that master data management is needed in their organization through one significant business driver. Commonly, these issues revolve around only a few distinct dimensions within the business. These pains within an organization provide the perfect location to start the MDM process. A few common characteristics that will assist in this approach are:
Single dimension being affected
Low resistance to a new system of entry for this dimension
Minimal additional stakeholders required for complete implementation
Central data management (at least for the dimension in question)
For this example, let us discuss a fictitious company called Empire, Inc. This company spends at least 20 hours per month reconciling changes between seven systems that rely on account-related information. New accounts are created by three different groups. The Accounts Payable group creates a new account for each new supplier. Accounts receivable creates a new account for each new customer. All other account changes are handled by the financial controller. These changes and all the corresponding attributes must be propagated to all seven systems. Difficulties arise because many of these accounts are created a few months before a balance is shown in them. If a system is not in sync at that time, reports will not balance and it is difficult to determine where the error is coming from.
After reviewing their options, the finance and IT departments agreed that this problem was a commonly recurring issue with the master data within the organization. The IT department was able to identify at least six places within the organization where critical company master data needed to be synchronized. While the time and monetary resources were not available to implement an enterprise-wide MDM solution in the next quarter, it was determined that the solution provided should have the ability to scale across the organization.
Three months later, the initial implementation was a success. All three account creators were using the MDM solution to create new accounts. All of the account structures were being propagated to the seven internal systems. The company spends less than one hour a month reconciling issues between any of the financial systems. After seeing the initial success of the finance department's implementation, the sales organization is preparing a project to leverage the MDM system to manage its active customers. The accounting group will be able to leverage this data when creating the accounts receivable data as well.
This project is prepared to grow organically throughout the organization, each group taking advantage of the efficiencies learned in early phases of the MDM implementation. As the project grows into other areas of the business, it is imperative that clear ownership is determined.
Loving P&C
DC*
We have a variety of MDM Application Suites catering to Product, Customer, Site, Activity, Supplier..etc .Out of this whole bunch two highly successful types of targeted MDM solutions are customer data integration (CDI)/Customer Hub and product information management (PIM) / Product Hub solutions.
Customer Data Integration / Customer Hub
Customer data integration solutions center around the integration of an organization’s customer data. These solutions are highly integrated with a company’s CRM and ERP systems. Due to the nature of combining so many disparate sources of customer data, match merge and duplicate removal algorithms are critical areas of data integration within the CDI subtype. As this name implies, most of these solutions are focused on integration and require additional internal processes to maintain these systems.
PIM/ Product Hub solutions
Product information management solutions provide an organization with product-centric management. These solutions typically focus on managing, correlating, and merging product data as bills of materials and online catalogs.
Due to the limited scope of these solutions, many organizations can implement them in a relatively short time. The limited scope also keeps the number of stakeholders that must reach a consensus to a minimum. Quick wins and a narrow scope cause many companies to implement these solutions, ignoring the serious limitations these solutions provide from the perspective of organizational master data management.Neither of these solutions is designed to be applied to all of the data sets within the organization. An organization can implement a number of separate solutions to create coverage of all their possible master data sets. Implementing these multiple solutions reduces the number of possible integration points but maintains data silos. Cross-dimensional relationships are difficult, if not impossible, to manage.
Working with IT
It is critical for business owners taking on the challenge of MDM to work well with the organization's Information Technology group. While many of the MDM management tasks required for sustained success rely heavily on the business users themselves, management of the technologies associated with the data integration routines will need to work well with the IT current processes.
Implementing in a phased approach
Now that we have detailed all the possible techniques to implement master data management within the organization, let us lay out some efficient ways to implement MDM within an organization. Each of these processes can provide an organization a reasonable path to grow MDM through the organization. An organization’s structure will have a significant impact on which method will be the most feasible.
Single Dimension Build Out
Many organizations come to realize that master data management is needed in their organization through one significant business driver. Commonly, these issues revolve around only a few distinct dimensions within the business. These pains within an organization provide the perfect location to start the MDM process. A few common characteristics that will assist in this approach are:
Single dimension being affected
Low resistance to a new system of entry for this dimension
Minimal additional stakeholders required for complete implementation
Central data management (at least for the dimension in question)
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| MDM Phased Implementation Approach |
For this example, let us discuss a fictitious company called Empire, Inc. This company spends at least 20 hours per month reconciling changes between seven systems that rely on account-related information. New accounts are created by three different groups. The Accounts Payable group creates a new account for each new supplier. Accounts receivable creates a new account for each new customer. All other account changes are handled by the financial controller. These changes and all the corresponding attributes must be propagated to all seven systems. Difficulties arise because many of these accounts are created a few months before a balance is shown in them. If a system is not in sync at that time, reports will not balance and it is difficult to determine where the error is coming from.
After reviewing their options, the finance and IT departments agreed that this problem was a commonly recurring issue with the master data within the organization. The IT department was able to identify at least six places within the organization where critical company master data needed to be synchronized. While the time and monetary resources were not available to implement an enterprise-wide MDM solution in the next quarter, it was determined that the solution provided should have the ability to scale across the organization.
Three months later, the initial implementation was a success. All three account creators were using the MDM solution to create new accounts. All of the account structures were being propagated to the seven internal systems. The company spends less than one hour a month reconciling issues between any of the financial systems. After seeing the initial success of the finance department's implementation, the sales organization is preparing a project to leverage the MDM system to manage its active customers. The accounting group will be able to leverage this data when creating the accounts receivable data as well.
This project is prepared to grow organically throughout the organization, each group taking advantage of the efficiencies learned in early phases of the MDM implementation. As the project grows into other areas of the business, it is imperative that clear ownership is determined.
Loving P&C
DC*
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