Master Data Management in 3 steps

When a simple Google search on "How to start a master data management strategy" gives you 6,100,000 results, it is not surprising that you do not know how to approach Master Data Management. Whether you're considering a MDM solution for your enterprise data, or you've already started a strategy, these three initial steps will help you get started or optimize your thinking.

Align MDM sur with the company's vision to achieve business goals

All companies have different business visions depending on their activity sector. The first thing you need to do is establish your business vision. Then, you have to look at the overall vision of the business and ask yourself what is its differentiator. It should be able to fall into one of these categories:

  • Customer-focused – we want to deliver truly personalized and rewarding customer experiences
  • Product excellence – we have the best market product(s)
  • Operational effectiveness – we want to be the fastest and most convenient service / product at the lowest price.

Once you have established your business vision, you need to incorporate your basic data management initiative. So, if your business is customer-focused, you should probably focus your MDM efforts on the customer domain. Whether it's operational effectiveness or product excellence, you'll probably need to focus on the product and / or the supplier. Note that if your vision is more than 10 years old, it probably needs to be updated. Your vision for 2020 will probably be very different from your previous vision of 2000 (because of digital development). As with your MDM efforts, your vision needs to be updated from time to time.

Choose the right strategy and approach

Have you achieved great things with Master Data Management in one area of your business and now want to move to another area to apply this strategy? Do you need to restart or reinvigorate your approach to master data management in a particular area? These angles of attack are good starting points for your MDM! You must now determine exactly where your organization is on the Master Data Management maturity scale. Looking at this MDM Maturity model – originally created by John Radcliffe when he was with Gartner – ask yourself the question: Where are we today? Where do we want to be? What is the gap? Your master data strategy should explain how Master Data Management will make your business vision a reality and how to reach the maturity required for MDM.

Quantify and demonstrate business value

As the future Head of Master Data Management in your business, your most powerful weapon against the leader will be proof of ROI. In other words: the business value of a Master Data Management solution must be very clear. That's why you need to present a business case and justify the ROI. But how do you establish the ROI for a MDM? The value of the MDM can be made concrete through business KPIs. You will need to identify the challenges faced by each stakeholder in the company. By identifying these business issues and the probability that they will be solved by Master Data Management specific to this area, you can easily identify the KPIs to be used and their evolution through MDM. Indeed, by working hand in hand with a company service, you will be able to identify their problems, understand where they want to project themselves and how they think that their problems can be solved. By bringing these people to the table and asking financial services to help them define what these problems cost the organization and how much it can save by solving them, you will easily prove that a MDM strategy is a winner.