How MDM Software Can Optimize Your Organization

Master data management (MDM) is turning from an optional tool for boosting growth into an indispensable tool for all medium and large-sized companies. The reason is a hike in data that organizations collect and produce due to accelerating digitalization of business processes in all realms. Dealing with data means that a path to a better business organization is a master data management software.

MDM Strategy As Part Of Overall Business Vision

Master data governance facilitates business growth in two ways. The first is a  reduction of risks and elimination of failures associated with poor-quality master data. The second is extracting insights from data accumulated over business activity which provide new ideas on how to earn more or spend less.

The both ways require cleansed master data as well as complete, integrated, and valid. Transparent instructions on data handling encompassing all operations -- collection, storage, transfer, deleting of records -- are also needed to keep the master data management running smoothly.

Needless to say, a master data management strategy must fit into a general company’s strategy. Practices of master data governance should help other functions across an enterprise, not act separately from production, marketing, logistics, etc.

There are various solutions on the market, both cloud-based systems and on-premises platforms varying by functions and cost. No matter which one you choose, software, if meticulously selected and tuned, will help a company accomplish its business tasks.  

Here are a few benefits that a high quality software can deliver.

Master Data Cleansing

The term “cleansing” regarding master data is close to what cleaning procedures look like in our everyday life. But this time it’s being done automatically, saving great time for staff and reducing the possibility of mistakes to nearly zero.

First of all, why is data cleansing important? Over the course of business activity, an organization collects a large amount of various data. With no MDM strategy in place, records are stored in different databases throughout a company. If no standards for handling data exist and implemented, then the records are held in different formats and often in different forms. For example, the same person can be input as Mr. J. Stewart and John Stewart which can lead to mistakes and obviously lead to a distorted picture of the company's clientele as you don’t understand the exact number of customers.

Cleansing ensures that master data is refined from duplicates (only one record of John Stewart is left) and inconsistencies (only one version of the record exists) and that they are complete (it will be Mr. John Stewart, not J. Stewart or Stewart or any other incomplete variant).

What if a company’s database contains 10,000 or 100,000 or even more items? Enormous labor resources would be needed if cleansing would be conducted manually. Luckily, it’s now up to sophisticated smart software that’s taught to define the type of data and detects errors and incompleteness and automatically corrects it.  

Rapid Data Handling

Technologies have been changing our life enabling us to do things previously unthinkable. What earlier took days or hours, now only takes seconds.

Computer programs make master data transfer fast and convenient in a few ways. An user-friendly interface contributes to faster and more reliable data input, storage, and transportation from user to user. That might seem a not-so-important detail, but anyone who had new systems implemented and had staff trained to use them perfectly understands that a well-designed interface encourages staff to more actively use advanced methods.

Another way how software speeds up communication is a smart handle of data formats. Master records emerge in multiple domains. They come from different functions, so a wide variety in formats reflect a variety in business tasks. But diversity is often a barrier to communications and serves as the main reason for inconsistencies and duplicates. Modern software allows for this diversity. Computer programs for master data handling soften the pain the diversity brings by facilitating fast formats conversion tools.

Big Data Management

A company’s master data is a stock of highly valuable marketing information. But retrieving tips and ideas from it is only possible through targeted analysis which suggests processing a huge amount of information. If a company's clientele consists, let’s say, of 150,000 customers across three countries, the number of items to analyze may exceed one million as  each client has such characteristics as age, sex, location, deals, sums of deals, etc., which must be taken into account.

Big data technologies use various algorithms depending on a task to find trends and correlations. Such an analysis can both answer concrete questions like which categories should be primarily addressed through ads in November, and find new niches and markets by revealing correlations.

As big data is about processing huge amounts of kilobytes of master data, it’s all about software without which technologies just don’t work.

So, master data management centers around a corporate strategy that defines an MDM framework and is done by software that brings a lot of positive effects throughout all business areas where master data is used. Synopps provides state-of-art software designed for fast and effective master data handling.