Master Data Management in Practice: Achieving True Customer MDM

Selecting the Right MDM Approach

As discussed previously, companies typically use three main reasons to justify an MDM implementation: (1) cost reduction, (2) risk management, and (3) revenue growth.

But once a company selects its main area of focus for its business case, how does it decide which MDM approach to implement?

Enterprise MDM represents a combination of analytical and operational MDMs. To be sure, companies can use enterprise MDM to solve virtually any data and integration problem. Furthermore, if a company does want to address all three business cases described earlier, then obviously, an enterprise MDM implementation is the way to go. For some issues, however, enterprise MDM is simply overkill. This section aims to recommend the right solution to each problem, ensuring that companies do not attempt to kill an ant with a machine gun.

Note that Table 1.1 should be used only as a general guideline. Further, each of the three business cases overlaps the others to an extent; one does not start where the other ends. One could correctly argue that by mitigating certain risks, companies lower the costs of doing business. This, in turn, raises questions of whether this should be in the cost reduction category instead. Also, better data could reduce costs and improve marketing, and consequently grow revenue.

Table 1.1 Business Rationale for Different MDM Approaches.

Business Case	Recommended MDM Approach	Rationale
Risk mitigation	Operational MDM	The biggest concern is ...