In terms of developing and implementing an effective data strategy, understanding the true meaning of big data and master data management is absolutely crucial:
In the internet’s infancy, before search engines and browsers, you had to know exactly where to look to find the information you wanted.
With the emergence of search engines, the entire wealth of information became available at our fingertips just by inserting a keyword. Google’s most significant achievement involved making sense of big data served up from over a billion websites globally according to user preferences, location and history. Google simply and elegantly integrated the world wide web to deliver information with speed and relevance for the user.
Today, big data does not only exist on the internet but within single companies and organizations who need to capitalize on that data. Searchability no longer suffices; businesses need advanced data analytics that can both accurately describe and predict behavior and movements.
That’s the power of analytics — to discover new correlations of different data sources and blend data so that meaningful patterns of information emerge.
Master data management is the natural application hub for bringing together this diverse array of data in a way that provides structure and data confidence.
The reason: master data represents your most essential business assets, including products, customers, locations, suppliers and vendors, digital and physical assets, employees and more. Each of these data domains and their interrelationships can have hundreds of attributes and billions of records that need to be clean and consolidated. High-quality master data is the foundation to this — as well as any digital transformation initiative.
For many retailers, manufacturing companies and financial institutions, a master data management solution is a critical data management tool because it streamlines master data for running operations and provides reliable data quality for analytics across both structured and unstructured data sources.
Having a powerful analytics engine embedded in your master data management solution enables you to derive new kinds of insights from these sources when correlating them with your master data.
Data analytics, when embedded into the master data management solution, further fuels the multidomain efforts.
With embedded data analytics you can blend other types of data into the master data view and discover new connections in the landscape of big data.
Data analytics shows its full potential when it is not limited to a certain type of data but instead integrates data from a multitude of sources: IoT, transactions, social media, production workflows to name a few. Each of these sources creates data that flows into various data repositories and data lakes where you run the risk of having valuable data lying idly around because it is not easily accessible to your organization.
A master data management solution facilitates developing a single source of truth for any desired data domain. The single source of truth, often labelled as the “golden record,” lays the foundation for:
An MDM solution can integrate data sets from many providers while standardizing data formats. This helps to ensure both accurate and consistent customer information and other types of master data for ongoing or later use.
The effective management of customer master data, product information, reference data and others enables accurate informational touch points across relevant touch points. This can result in an improved customer experience, highly targeted marketing campaigns and operational efficiencies across the board.
The best MDM platforms can seamlessly integrate with your current ERP and/or CRM. In doing so, it provides a unified view of your enterprise data, allowing for easy information sharing among all stakeholders.
An effective master data management strategy paired with a capable MDM platform allows for dynamic data modeling and data integration — both are critical during mergers and acquisitions. Further, high-quality data assets and a robust data governance strategy facilitate rapid growth, change and innovation.
Master data management helps to break down and connect data silos and prepares a true enterprise solution with global potential by enabling a rich ecosystem of interconnected data and processes.
But having a powerful analytics engine embedded in your master data management solution enables you to derive new kinds of insights from these sources when correlating them with your master data. Examples include:
User-friendly visualizations of blended data embedded in your master data management application can provide quick answers to the questions:
Most importantly, having this insight at your fingertips motivates users to take action and improve decision making. Embedded data analytics democratizes data and empowers business users to become effective data analysts.
Master data management is essential for creating a single source of truth, streamlining business processes, and improving operational efficiency.
Explore our comprehensive range of cloud-native master data management solutions to learn more about how to leverage MDM for your business needs.