Master Data Management in Practice: Achieving True Customer MDM

Preface

A steady movement toward Master Data Management (MDM) practices is underway. While managing data has always been a key component to a company's success, the emergence of MDM practices has provided a much more stable foundation for business intelligence (BI) and process improvement to build on. MDM also creates perhaps the most pervasive business and IT challenge that any data management initiative can present. MDM is a forcing function that, if implemented right, can uncover and enable correction of long-standing dirty laundry and systemic business problems related to a company's data and the associated processes.

In parallel, there are many excellent what and why focused books that are establishing the overall recognition, definition, and value proposition, which is driving companies to consider and position MDM initiatives in their business planning.

At the forefront of this movement, and typically the starting point for a company's MDM discipline, is the focus on the customer data domain, or what is commonly referred to as Customer MDM. Customer MDM is primarily aimed at achieving better cross-functional discipline, quality control, and standardization of a company's customer identity data in order to achieve an accurate and shared source of truth about an existing or prospective customer.

However, the dilemma with executing MDM is that it is an emerging discipline and there has been a general lack of any substantive and practical instruction for MDM planning and implementation ...