As a customer, I must admit that I enjoy when I see the brands and retailers that I frequent using my data properly. Commonly, this is represented by a personalized email with some suggested products based on my latest purchases. Companies can also introduce products due to my interests while surfing the web within search engines or social media. In today’s market, providing a quality shopping experience that is based in part on an accurate customer profile is a complete must. Painting a picture of each customer based on personal information, social media activity, and buying habits is something the world’s leading organizations are doing well! Customer Master Data Management, also known as CMDM, has become an absolute must in this arena.
How is CMDM Helping Organizations Serve Customers?
Establishing workflows and standards to manage customer data is quite an effort, but starting small can give organizations a major value-add. Take, for example, one of our clients, an innovative, industry-transformative manufacturer, that opted to take on the challenge of implementing a CMDM solution. We began with a very well-defined and small scope for the initial solution implementation phase. With our clients focused on implementing the core data of its customers (mainly contact information), the project team was able to address the quality of customer data with a workflow plus the inclusion of an external service for address validation. Having a CMDM solution quickly reduced the need for resources to be focused on the taxing matching and merging of customer profiles and data validation, allowing the company’s data management resources to focus on other critical initiatives
Quite often organizations miss the mark on large master data management initiatives and potential business-altering opportunities due to the absence of quality customer data. For example, consider a company in the retail space that wants to continue evolving as a brand by expanding its offerings to customers. When taking on the challenge of offering consumers new experiences, as well as different merchandise, the profile of the customer is critical. Downstream impacts of the solution are not only the introduction of these initiatives via campaigns but ongoing marketing needs based on different elements of a customer such as interests and previous purchases. The inclusion of these types of data points in the CMDM solution will provide the company with a solid foundation to perform the analysis needed to inform the brand’s interaction behavior with customers and continue to grow its business.
With most multi-domain master data implementations consisting of product and location, the inclusion of customer is approached as the final part of a holistic enterprise solution. While CMDM is often the last data domain to be tackled, once coupled with other domains, the value that companies can derive from accurate customer data is exponential. This calls for a powerful customer master data management tool that has the functionality to support the processes of organizations with workflows, provide systematic data governance through the use of business rules, and give organizations that must adhere to HIPAA / GDPR regulations (as well as their customers) the assurance that their data is protected on a compliant platform.