What You Need to know about Master Data Management

According to data management research by Experian, 69% of the respondent organizations believe that inaccurate data undermines their capacity to offer an excellent customer experience.

Business leaders worldwide have now realized the importance of using clean data to drive their enterprises’ success. To meet their expectations, master data management systems have come up.

Here is all that you need to know about master data management and how it can steer the growth of your organization!

What is master data?

Gartner defines master data as a continuous, uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that reflect the core entities of the enterprise such as the prospects, sites, customers, suppliers, hierarchies, citizens, etc.

In other words, master data refers to all kinds of nouns (locations, products, parties) that describe your business processes. Master data also has subdomains, like parties that include employees, salespeople, suppliers, customers, etc.

Why do you need to manage the master data?

Organizations spend great resources and time preparing data. According to a 2018 report by Experian, 91% of the executives say that collecting data for insights is highly demanding.

All this effort can be rendered meaningless if your data is erroneous. At the same time, several other data issues can creep up if you don’t manage your master data, like:

• Inconsistent data across the organization
• Lack of collaborative authorization
• Missing data governance
• Lack of cross-domain (customer, supplier, product, etc.) relationships
• Tracking previous versions of data

You can easily overcome all these issues if you start keeping your master data clean and synchronized across the organization.

What does master data management include?

Master data management is a combination of tools, processes, and technology to help you coordinate master data across your enterprise.

It enables a unified master data service to monitor and maintain the data structure and empowers the business to gain operational insights and enhance their decision-making potential.

What are the benefits of having a functional master data management system?

Now that we understand the importance of master data management, let’s understand the benefits of a master data management system.

• Seamless integration across channels: With proper master data management, you can create seamless sync between different business departments and customer experience. Be it structured or unstructured, a master data catalog of high-quality data makes it easier to find products and all other required information – anytime, anywhere. This leads to a reduction in data loss as a good data management plan also ensures the backup of this data on a secondary source, in case the primary source is inaccessible.
• Good quality data: Good data management makes it easier for all your employees across departments to find the information that they need for any task. They can easily get structured data to share with others, and store information for easy retrieval in the future. You can get an integrated view of all data sets on customers, products, suppliers, materials, etc. that can be in data silos right now. With proper data management, there is always good data at your disposal, enhancing your enterprise’s productivity and increasing your data’s accountability.
• Enhanced customer analytics: Customer data management helps organizations get a unified view of their customers, allowing them to sync the customer information with the organization’s information supply chain. This facilitates quick access to data and better decision-making as your employees can access information based on market trends faster than the competitors. With good data, you can also understand your customers well.
• Cost-effectiveness: With accurate master data management, organizations can avoid unnecessary duplication of data and ensure responsible archival. This also helps organizations in becoming cost-efficient as they do not have to engage technology or manpower to conduct the same analysis, research, or work that has previously been done.
• Increased security: Your data is susceptible to external threats, when not managed properly. A data breach is common for even large corporations like Domino’s, Mobikwik, and Big Basket. Recently, Restore Privacy reported a massive data breach on LinkedIn whereby the details of 700 million people were put on sale on the dark web. A strong data management system will largely reduce this risk for your organization, enhancing security.

How to get started with strategic master data management?

Master data management is not just a software technology that you can install and get done with. A strong master data management program operates strategically to ensure that you have all the disciplines covered. Let’s understand these disciplines and strategies before getting started:

• Governance: Data governance ensures data integrity, such that you have the accurate input to get the right output. It is required even after the master data management is in place, thus usually implemented as a program. Data governance refers to the maintenance of the system so that the data is consistent and correct in the repository.
• Measurement: Every enterprise has some goals behind incorporating a master data management system. Measurement of these goals should be an integral part of your data management strategy so that you continue improving the data quality and its management.
• Organization: Your structural organization, be it an in-house data management team or an external company, should have the right workforce who can ensure accurate data governance.
• Technology: The creation of a master data hub requires several technological integrations. The data management system also needs to adhere to several policies and standards, while following a defined process of the data life cycle. There should be specific consideration for all these inclusions in a master data management system.
• Change management and accountability: Any data in the system is constantly updating. For example, the customer address database. Or the product availability information. With changing times, this data must also be updated with proper accountability. Be it manual or digital, data managers or a management company that overheads this department need to ensure that the core access is in reliable hands.
• Auditability: Audits are not just integral to the finance department. They apply to the master data management system as well. Auditability here refers to the approval and proof of processes followed to make changes to the master data management system. With an accurate approval system with data governance in place to bring any change in the database, the integrity of the system can be maintained. This is how all the disciplines are interconnected and vital to follow.

Implementing master data management – how can Griha Soft help?

There is no better time than right now to start with master data management. If you are running short on resources or are clueless about how to proceed, seeking external assistance can prove highly beneficial. This is where Griha Soft comes in!

With outstanding master data management solutions and strategies, Griha Soft offers a plethora of services to enhance the productivity and performance of your enterprise. We have a rich knowledge of processing over 6 million items and have worked with diversified ERP software. Commit today to have a strong data management plan and secure your organization’s future.