Digital transformation is on the agenda at almost every enterprise. Top management in these enterprises understand that the long-term survival of the business is dependent on a successful shift to digitalization of business processes and building new digital business models.

Data management has a crucial role in this transformation with multi-domain Master Data Management (MDM) as the central component and key enabler for digital transformation. Let’s take a closer look at how different master data domains in your MDM strategy contribute to digital transformation:

Customer Master Data

Engaging with your customers across a range of digital platforms is a core part of any digital transformation. This includes participating in social media, emailing activities, web-shops, account-based marketing and more. Having a 360-degree view of your customer has never been more important, and that starts with well-organized and maintained customer master data.

Customer data is gathered from many sources with digital self-registration becoming the most commonly used method.

In a digitalized world a yearly clean-up of your customer data can be 360 days too late. Operating with customer data always fit for multiple purposes must be an ongoing business process. For most enterprises, only a sustainable multi-domain MDM solution can underpin this objective.

Vendor Master Data

The self-service theme has also emerged in handling vendor master data as self-service based supplier portals have become common as ”the place” where vendor master data is captured and maintained. Times have changed, whereas making the first purchase order or receiving the first invoice was the starting point for vendor master data in the old days, this is often not the case anymore.

Handling vendor (or supplier) master data shares a good deal of the same challenges with customer master data, as we are describing entities that have a role as a second party to your enterprise. For example, in more cases than what often is acknowledged, vendors also have a role as a customer or other business partner role at the same time. “Knowing your business partner” will become a new level of “knowing your customer” and “knowing your vendor”. Having an MDM solution that caters for all business partner roles, no matter the complexity will be essential in digital transformation.

Product Master Data

Interacting with your trading partners on digital platforms and having the most complete product information in front of your customers in self-service online selling scenarios requires a solid foundation for product master data.

As a manufacturer of products, you need to streamline your product master data and key product information in order to push this data to dealers and retailers, to marketplaces as well as to your own ecommerce engine.
As a merchant, you need to do three things: 1) pull product data from manufacturers, brand owners and perhaps distributors, 2) make this data conform to your standards and 3) push this data to the market in your unique way.

Protip: Overviewing and controlling product master data with your customers and vendors in mind, calls for a multi-domain MDM solution.

Asset Master Data

With the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) and the related Industry 4.0 theme, asset will become a frequently addressed master data domain. Product master data is traditionally dealing with data about a product model. An asset is each physical instance of that product model. Many of these things will become intelligent and require a lot of master data about such things as: Who owns them, who operates them, who maintains them, where are they, what are they specifically equipped with and more. We need this master data in order to make sense of the big data these assets (things) are generating.

Your multi-domain MDM solution must be in the digital age to be able to handle assets and their relations to parties, products and locations.

The Digital Voyage with MDM

A capable multi-domain MDM solution will be your trusted companion in your organization’s digital transformation. This solution is the foundation for how well you will engage with your customers, how you interact efficiently with your business partners in business ecosystems and how you intelligently and timely make sense of a huge volume and variety of data.