Master Data is the heart of every Enterprise. In today’s world where we have an immense volume of data, so data analysis & management is becoming the toughest part of the operations. It’s difficult to foresee anything if data is inconsistent. Master data management (MDM) arose out of the necessity for businesses to improve the consistency and quality of their key data assets, such as customer data, product data, location data, seller data, etc.
Master data is never the same for every enterprise, It varies based on the domain and what data is critical to the enterprise. Like in the Banking domain, Customers are the key assets. And in Marketplaces (Amazon, Flipkart, etc.) most important is Product data (this is the central unit). “Seller sells the products and customer buys the product”. So every marketplace is concerned about its products, customers, and sellers (i.e. their master data)
This list is not the end of the world, Master data varies per enterprise so first is to identify what data is important for an organization. Above suits well for an E-Commerce or Marketplace domain.
Every organization wants to provide a good experience to theirs on the landing to their site, Fancy ambiance, greeting messages is fine to start with but in the end, if are able to solve the need of the customer then our customers will definitely visit us again and that is the best way to advertise about the product and services (give your customer a better experience).
Let’s see why customer experience matters and how it can impact the business.
Case Study ( E-Commerce)
John (my friend) wants to buy a microwave (model: “OVN01”) online and he heard about IAmGone.com, a renowned marketplace famous for its huge number of products on its portal (and very beautiful UI too). John visited the portal and searched for microwave OVN01. Fast response listed the products without taking any time.
After looking at the above list, it made him confused and he is not able to pick which one to buy, i.e different color, price & capacity (that too not standardized), different images. So this inconsistency brings distrust and he switched to another portal weserveyoubetter.com, since then every time he is doing online shopping on weserveyoubetter.com
Case Study ( Banking)
Two famous banks AAA & BBB decided to merge to a new bank Raxis to streamline their operations across the country (though it’s was a big decision but they were planning since long). During this merger, their customer's data should be merged as well, right? They did it but without Master data management tools.
John who was the customer of both of the banks. Earlier, he bought an insurance policy from Bank AAA ( $50/month) and has a balance of around ($100,000) in Bank BBB. After this Merger, Raxis (i.e. new bank name) system has both the information of John but they aren’t able to identify both records belongs to the same customer. This might be due to the lack of capability in merger tool or wrong rules defined in the merger tool. Even though John is having a balance of $100,000 in his account he received multiple calls for why he is delaying in paying policy monthly EMIs i.e. $50 (he was on a holiday trip :-). He got annoyed with this gesture and put his cash to another bank.
(This was a high-level example but there’s are lots of operations & transactions happening every day in banks inconsistency may cause some serious issues which normally ends with bringing distrust in customer’s mind)
Master Data Management
Master data management (MDM) tools can help in overcoming the above-discussed problems and helps by keeping your master data clean & consistent across multiple channels.
It enables the platform for the enterprise to define their business critical master data entities. Master data entities can be classified under the following groups
— Universal Master Entities
— Reference Master Entities
— Domain Master Entities
— Relational Entities
Enterprise can model and generate the required set of master whenever the need arises. The platform provides the flexibility to add new attributes as and when they are required by the business and tool supports the relationship between the masters.
Below are the few basic building blocks for any MDM tool.
- Hierarchy Management
- Business Rules
- Data Governance
- Data Quality
- Completeness
Will be writing in detail of each in the next post.
Please write to me @ info.anishgarg@gmail.com for any query.
Have fun, keep learning, Have a nice Day !!
