Master Data Management in Practice: Achieving True Customer MDM

Introduction

The quote from Confucius says it all. Preparation is key. Priming the MDM engine is about proper preparation. It not only requires evaluating a multitude of vendors and solutions in the marketplace, but it also requires understanding your own company at many levels, including: company culture, objectives, and strategies; current state of data segmentation and fragmentation; data management maturity; technical infrastructure and competency; IT and business readiness; change management preparation; market pressure; and so on.

Customer MDM is complex because it brings together disciplines that were traditionally decoupled in the past. IT and business are now required to work even more collectively than before. Plus, business units have to collaborate at a higher level, too.

This chapter describes the proper considerations to be taken when analyzing MDM tools and making the final decision between build versus buy. A huge step for MDM preparation is understanding and integrating existing data; therefore, subsequent sections discuss those topics in detail along with many techniques for data integration and migration. After that, there is a section to weigh the need for customer data consolidation while preserving the proper segmentation required by multiple LOBs. Finally, the chapter ends with sections about reference data and metadata management, which are also foundational concepts to a successful MDM program.