Master Data Management
An introduction to the master data management manual
It is a known fact that data is at the core of today’s digital workplace. While data-driven businesses and data-intensive industries stand a lot to gain from the sheer volumes of data, its disjointed, scattered, and unstructured nature makes it difficult for the workforce to find, access, understand, and use it to their benefit.
Data redundancy and inconsistencies are common problems for all types of businesses. What you really need is a master file to which all your business-critical data (key data assets like product data, asset data, customer data, location data, etc.) can be linked.
That is where the concept of master data management (MDM) comes into the picture. Here’s looking at the concept of MDM, why it is so important, and how you can implement the right MDM solution for your business.*
What is master data management and why is it important?
According to a leading research and advisory firm, MDM is a tech-enabled business discipline that blends business and IT to ensure the semantic consistency, accuracy, stewardship, governance, and accountability of an enterprise’s official shared master data assets.
MDM is an integral part of the enterprise data management architecture designed to help businesses get a consolidated view of the data scattered across the organisation. These include managing enterprise data across key domains such as products, materials, customers, vendors, pricing, and employees, to name a few.
Challenges faced with master data
- Redundant data
- Inconsistent data
- Inefficiencies in business processes
Redundancy or duplicity is a common problem that businesses face because of the same data being maintained across different processes, systems, or applications for various purposes. The problem with this model is that the same data will have multiple attributes depending on who is saving it and where it is being stored.
When you try to consolidate data scattered across systems or applications, errors and inconsistencies are likely to appear. The biggest challenge here is that data discrepancies can lead to loss in revenues and brand value and even invite legal action in some cases.
Wrong entries, data redundancies, and discrepancies in product or customer information can take a toll on the business by affecting the cost and performance of your operations.
What is the role of master data management?
According to Harvard Business Review Analytic Services (June 2021), 87% of executives say that having a strong MDM program is crucial to ensuring improved data quality, effective decision-making, and future success.
An enhanced MDM solution or a platform helps businesses gain the following benefits:
- Reduced transactional costs due to drastically lower error rates
- Consolidated/integrated data for better visibility into the entire data ecosystem
- Standardisation of data across processes, applications, and systems
- Simplified data architecture and navigation for easy data accessibility
- Efficient collaboration and data sharing between employees and teams
- Third-party apps or software integration
- Automated data governance
MDM essentially helps organisations offer better (more efficient) services, stay on top of logistics, and deliver an exceptional customer experience.
Get started on Master Data Management with Infosys BPM
Our MDM services help enterprises consolidate disparate records and build a unified hub to better manage product, supplier, distributor, and customer data so you can get a 360-degree view. Backed by the Infosys Global Delivery Model, our master data management services ensures cost reduction, process improvements, and efficient unification of your data.
Our phased implementation approach is tailored to suit your business process maturity and financial requirements. Discover our organised, flexible, and scalable MDM hosting and implementation solution.
*For organisations on the digital transformation journey, flexibility and agility are critical to respond to a rapidly changing technology and business landscape. Now more than ever, it is crucial to deliver and exceed on organizational expectations with a robust digital mindset backed by innovation. Enabling businesses to sense, learn, respond, and evolve like a living organism, will be imperative for business excellence going forward. A comprehensive, yet modular suite of services is doing exactly that. Equipping organisations with intuitive decision-making automatically at scale, actionable insights based on real-time solutions, anytime/anywhere experience, and in-depth data visibility across functions leading to hyper-productivity, Live Enterprise is building connected organizations that are innovating collaboratively for the future.
