“There would be no Christmas if there was no Easter” – Gordon B. Hinckley
For an online business, ‘Christmas’ is pretty much synonymous with making it big in eCommerce. The foundation of this success lies in sound data management, and a platform that enables the same; an Easter egg that you don’t just stumble upon by chance. To find the right master data management platform – the awesome Easter egg to beat them all – you need to know how to start, where to look, and what to look for.
Why focus on data, Afterall?
Organizations create a large volume of data, structured and unstructured, and may not always be in the best position to leverage it for business success. In fact, many business decision-makers perceive data management to be strictly IT-related, leading to reluctance in investment. Data management, however, is not merely about enterprise data warehousing or better integration; rather, it changes the way organizations manage and leverage its most critical data assets.
From the organization’s point of view, bad data = a bad Easter egg; decorate all you like, it’s not going to do the business any good. Duplicate, inaccurate and/or incomplete data leads to poor business decisions and substandard customer experience.
The right data management tools, on the other hand, can steer businesses in the right direction, enabling better business decisions, and powering engaging customer experience by streamlining the data life cycle. Find the winning egg in the data management egg hunt, and this is what you can expect:
- Improved productivity by the provision of consistent and high-integrity master data sources across disciplines
- Improved compliance and cost reduction in terms of compliance penalties and reporting
- Supply chain optimization via centralized access to accurate information across the supply chain leading to improvements in forecasting and inventory management
- Easy cross-team collaboration supported by highly consistent, clean data
- Improved data connectivity to multiple data sources and platforms
- Improved monitoring and administration enabled by metrics and performance reports
- Data consistency and integrity achieved through elimination of duplicate data and normalization of disparate data
- Increased usability and business value with a boost in operational efficiency
- End-to-end control over data life cycle management
Mapping the Egg Hunt: How do you Start?
Before a business can embark on auditing a platform for master data management, it is integral to perform a thorough self-review to understand one’s current state and requirements. The audit can be broken down into four simple steps and further granularized as required.
Step 1: Prepare, in advance, to ensure that the audit is smooth and not too time-intensive
Step 2: Classify data by identifying and creating inventories for all data sources touched upon by end-users
Step 3: Manage data by determining stakeholders for data sources
Step 4: Analyze audit findings and provide recommendations to key stakeholders for the required action to be taken
What do Internal Audits Provide?
Simple as the process may seem, internal audits provide businesses with great visibility of areas of improvement from the point of view of data. Apart from indicating the presence of incomplete, inconsistent and inaccurate data, these audits give visibility of data sets that are non-compliant with privacy and/or regulatory laws and those possessing gaps in data security processes or levels.
From the point of view of onboarding data management platforms (DMPs), these audits help zero down on the location of an organization’s data sources and also point towards untraceable or unverified data that organization stakeholders may not be aware of. They indicate the need for data stewardship, process changes, revisions to existing policies or creation of new policies.
Platform Audits: Knowing When You’ve Found the Winning Egg
While internal audits provide vital indicators in terms of a business’s current state and requirements, auditing data management platforms provides clarity on what they have to offer. Some of the key points to look out for when auditing a DMP include:
- The platform should be scalable horizontally and vertically
- It should be future-proof and adaptable for changing business requirements
- The solution should support all architecture constructs including consolidation, registry, centralization, coexistence, and hybridization
- Flexible deployment options including on-premises, cloud and data management-as-a-service should be made available
- The service should support integration connectors out of the box
- The technology should use a single set of technology or hardware to handle multiple domains
- Additionally, it would be a great benefit if the tool acts as a single-technology-stack platform for data management for not just data management but also data quality, business process management (BPM) and data integration
- It should ensure low cost of ownership enabled by open integration to operate on disparate customer environments with flexible and rapid integration
- The licensing and pricing model should be scalable as the data management solution is rolled out
Pivotree Makes Your Egg Hunt Truly Frictionless
Pivotree’s Data Management services help businesses identify and setup up the right platform for optimized workflow and establishment of governance rules to make the most of data. We take an Agile Scrum approach best suited for varying data domains and provide the right consultation for accelerated implementation.
Pivotree is a leading and preferred data management consultant and system integrator with partnerships with Stibo Systems, EnterWorks, Informatica, Contentserv and Syndigo (Riversand). Our extensive expertise and experience ensure accuracy, semantic consistency, stewardship and security across the board to facilitate truly frictionless commerce solutions.