Implement MDM Successfully

Master Data Management (MDM) provides companies with a lot of added value. Consolidating data across all relevant areas creates the necessary big picture to meet today's consumer requirements. On the one hand, MDM forms the basis for targeted and personalized customer communication and, on the other hand, MDM enables a high level of transparency – an aspect that is becoming increasingly important for consumers. They want to be able to find out where the products and their ingredients that they buy come from. They want to be able to understand which suppliers and intermediate products make up the supply chain so that they can make conscious and sustainable decisions. But even internally, greater transparency means many benefits. Employees from marketing, sales and customer service always have reliable access to correct, complete and up-to-date information, and decision makers benefit from reporting with cross-divisional insights. However, until this level is reached, companies must set a few basic steps in advance.

Outline Your Starting Position Precisely

A comprehensive set of information forms the basis for such a long-term and central project as the implementation of MDM. All parties involved must have a common understanding of what the chosen technology can and cannot do and how the system supports key business initiatives. This also requires a collective understanding of which core processes actually exist, where there is potential for optimization and where synergies can possibly be created. In the next step, the parties involved must agree on how the implementation should be designed and which processes and tasks should be prioritized. This is particularly important because MDM is not “done” with the system implementation, but develops in the long term together with the goals of the company and the business areas.

Define Clear Goals

The individual business areas, such as marketing, sales, management and customer service, always have their own goals, which they achieve with a MDM implementation track. As part of the MDM project, however, it is important to link these goals with the data and thus also to specify the implementation goals. For example, if marketing aims to increase the conversion rate, it is the task of those involved to translate this goal into data requirements that help achieve this goal. If communication managers want to implement measures to address customers in a personalized way, the marketing requirements could be that they have access to current information anytime and anywhere, about which customers bought which products in which contexts and what were the reactions to recent campaigns. Such information is a good basis for creating messages tailored to specific customer groups and delivering them in a targeted manner – which ultimately contributes to the goal of increasing the conversion rate.

... and Keep an Eye on These Goals!

It is important for all parties involved to continuously measure the success of the project – in particular as a basis for reporting. To do this, meaningful key performance indicators (KPIs) must first be defined. This includes not only topics such as process speed or data quality, but also cost reductions due to replacement of old systems or other resource savings.

It is also important to document these goals cleanly – MDM is implemented in the long term and it can be useful from time to time to recall what the original vision for the project was and whether one area or the other was perhaps neglected.

Build Your A-Team

Getting the right people into the project team is very important for the success of an MDM project. This is the only way to ensure that all participants who pursue their own interests always have the same level of information and work on the same, coordinated goals. This includes team members from IT, business areas and possibly even external parties such as suppliers or agencies. The requirements and priorities of all these stakeholders must be taken into account accordingly and at the same time, these areas must provide the necessary resources to ensure a well-established MDM project requires. However, it is not only necessary to pick up their perspective, but also to get everyone involved up to speed on what MDM actually means and includes how it differs from other technologies and why it should be implemented. This is the only way to ensure that a clear vision is drawn in the company and that no false expectations arise.

As the implementation progresses, it is also important to provide additional support for the system from a user experience perspective and to ensure that user expectations are also taken into account. It is just as important to establish an effective feedback process that steers the project in the right direction and keeps employees motivated. Feedback is therefore an essential component of a successful change process, which is extremely important, especially in such a central and comprehensive project.

Finally, it must also be ensured that stakeholders and users attend regular training from the MDM provider in order to learn about updates and stay up to date with regard to the roadmap. In this way, relevant innovations can be evaluated at an early stage and integrated into your own processes in a planned manner.

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