There is an increased focus on all things digital and one of the characteristics of these programs is an increased focus on data governance. Some companies are discovering quite late in the game that the lack of a coherent and centralized master data management program is slowing down their digitalization initiatives.
Historically, MDM projects have been big and expensive and principally only undertaken by global brands and organizations with deep pockets. One of the characteristics of embarking on such programs is that they typically require a large investment, the most senior leadership’s sponsorship and they’re often software-driven. Pretectum’s view is that this is the first problem area and the piece of the solution that holds the greatest risk.
Implementing Master Data Management as a sub-discipline of data governance cannot be considered in the context of simply another piece of software. Any investment in process influencing technology today needs to focus on the business value, drivers.
Contemporary MDM solutions are often additive and cloud-based. They don’t suffer the encumbrance of the CRM, ERP or CDP system. What this really means, is that your business can implement such a system without negatively influencing your existing systems but at the very least jump-starting your knowledge of, and insights into your customer master data.
From an early stage implementation or even a proof of concept, you start to gain insights that can demonstrate immediate business value for any and all systems and processes. As you continue to explore functionality and integration you start to derive additional understanding about the data collection, curation and management processes that you have and the mechanisms that Pretectum feels constitute best-in-class master data management practice.
This approach helps teams and business units to get familiar with key concepts of data governance and Master Data Management in particular. Rather than wholesale “rip and replace” approaches which are both risky and traumatic, the approach to implementing a customer master data management hub for all your systems, can be gradual and layered, adding controls and functionality in a progressive way.
The business of MDM
By tackling master data management as a strategic business project instead of a tactical IT project your business has the strongest chance of a successful implementation, with Pretectum you will be leveraging a cloud based platform that supports multiple business areas, multiple users and multiple ways of looking at the customer. The pay-as-you go model of a Pretectum subscription allows you to grow your platform footprint as you expand your use .
You’ll start your implementation with a basic signup which allows you to define the number of users, the number of business areas and the peak of your anticipated data sets and data records. Accelerators at various stages allow you to fast track your implementation or you can go the more hand-crafted route where you manually define the characteristics of the data you wish to manage. You pay for a term subscription with no additional costs unless you explicitly request the addition of more capacity, users or features.
Implementation can take as little time as a few days from organization definition through schema definition and then you’re ready to start loading data in bulk or singly. If you wish to hook the C-MDM up to your other systems of record that can typically be achieved in the same day unless you have some exotic connection needs.
Pretectum’s C-MDM is there for the basic and most advanced of organizations, irrespective of where you are on the Master Data Management maturity ladder you will quickly be able to start gaining beneit from centralized management and governance of your customer master.