Tag Archives: Ecosystems

Digital Transformation Success Rely on MDM / PIM Success

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It is hard to find an organization who do not want to be on the digital transformation wagon today. But how can you ensure that your digital transformation journey will be a success? One of the elements in making sure that this data driven process will be a success will be to have a solid foundation of Master Data Management (MDM) including Product Information Management (PIM).

The core concepts here are:

  • Providing a 360-degree view of master data entities: Engaging with your customers across a range of digital platforms is a core part of any digital transformation. Having a 360-degree view of your customer has never been more important, and that starts with well-organized and maintained customer master data. The same is true for supplier master data and other party master data. 360-degree view of locations is equally important. The same goes for products and assets as pondered in post Golden Records in Multidomain MDM.
  • Enabling happy self-service scenarios: Customer data are gathered from many sources and digital self-registration is becoming the most common used method. The self-service theme has also emerged in handling supplier master data as self-service based supplier portals have become common as the place where supplier/vendor master data is captured and maintained. 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 and Product experience Management (PxM).
  • Underpinning the best customer experience: Customer experience (CX) and MDM must go hand in hand. Both themes involve multiple business units and digital environments within your enterprise and in the wider business ecosystem, where your enterprise operates. Master data is the glue that brings the data you hold about your customers together as well as the glue that combines this with the data you share about your product offering.
  • Encompassing Internet of Things (IoT): Smart devices that produces big data can be used to gain much more insight about parties (in customer and other roles), products, locations and the things themselves. You can only do that effectively by relating IoT and MDM.

Digital Transformation Success

Multidomain MDM and the Next Big MDM Thing

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Mutidomain MDM has been a trend in the Master Data Mamagement world for some years as told in the post Golden Records in Multidomain MDM.

Gartner, the analyst, firm, says in the latest MDM Magic Quadrant that “Several patterns have emerged whereby “customer,” “party,” “product” or “thing” master data have become the highest priority for a large number of organizations. The MDM solution should be capable of supporting all domains that are “in scope” for an MDM program, through either client-driven or prepackaged data model styles.”

Gartner has also together with the included vendors estimated the number of multidomain licenses sold on the market as seen in the post Counting MDM Licenses.

On the Hype Cycle for Information Management Gartner sees Multidomain MDM as sliding into the through of disillusionment while the customer and product single domains are at the slope of enlightenment.

Multidomain MDM Hype

Multiple domains are in the Gartner world one of several vectors of MDM. Other vectors are industries, usage scenarios (operational vs analytical), organizational structures (central vs local) and implementation styles (registry, consolidation, coexistence and centralized).

Another MDM theme that is trailing multidomain is multienterprise MDM – aka business ecosystem wide MDM.

Forrester, the other analyst firm, puts it this way in their latest MDM Wave: “As first-generation MDM technologies become outdated and less effective, improved second generation and third-generation features will dictate which providers lead the pack. Vendors that can provide internet-of-things (IoT) capabilities, ecosystem capabilities, and data context position themselves to successfully deliver added business value to their customers.”

What do you think: Will multidomain MDM prevail? Either way, what will be the next big thing(s)?

Multienterprise MDM

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One of the terms on the move on the Gartner Hype Cycle for Information Governance and Master Data Management is Multienterprise MDM.

Doing Master Data Management (MDM) enterprise wide is hard enough. The ability to control master data across your organization is essential to enable digitalization initiatives and ensure the competitiveness of your organization in the future.

But it does not stop there. Increasingly every organization will be an integrated part of a business ecosystem where collaboration with business partners will be a part of digitalization and thus we will have a need for working on the same foundation around master data.

The different master data domains will have different roles to play in such endeavors. Party master will be shared in some degree but there are both competitive factors, data protection and privacy factors to be observed as well.

MDM Ecosystem

Product master data – or product information if you like – is an obvious master data domain where you can gain business benefits from extending master data management to be ecosystem wide. This includes:

  • Working with the same product classifications or being able to continuously map between different classifications used by trading partners
  • Utilizing the same attribute definitions (metadata around products) or being able to continuously map between different attribute taxonomies in use by trading partners
  • Sharing data on product relationships (available accessories, relevant spare parts, updated succession for products, cross-sell information and up-sell opportunities)
  • Having access to latest versions of digital assets (text, audio, video) associated with products

The concept of ecosystem wide Multi-Domain MDM is explored further in this article about Master Data Share.

8 Forms of Master Data Management

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8 forms MDM

Master Data Management (MDM) can take many forms. In the following I will shortly introduce 8 forms of MDM. A given MDM implementation will typically be focused on one of these forms with some elements of the other forms and a given piece of technology will have an origin in one of these forms and in more or less degree encompass some more forms:

1.      The traditional MDM platform: A traditional MDM solution is a hub for master data aiming at delivering a single source of truth (or trust) for master data within a given organization either enterprise wide or within a portion of an enterprise. The first MDM solutions were aimed at Customer Data Integration (CDI), because having multiple and inconsistent data stores for customer data with varying data quality is a well-known pain point almost everywhere. Besides that, similar pain points exist around vendor data and other party roles, product data, assets, locations and other master data domains and dedicated solutions for that are available.

2.      Product Information Management (PIM): Special breed of solutions for Product Information Management aimed at having consistent product specifications across the enterprise to be published in multiple sales channels have been around for years and we have seen a continuously integration of the market for such solutions into the traditional MDM space as many of these solutions have morphed into being a kind of MDM solution.

3.      Digital Asset Management (DAM): Not at least in relation to PIM we have a distinct discipline around handling digital assets as text documents, audio files, video and other rich media data that are different from the structured and granular data we can manage in data models in common database technologies. A post on this blog examines How MDM, PIM and DAM Stick Together.

4.      Big Data Integration: The rise of big data is having a considerable influence on how MDM solutions will look like in the future. You may handle big data directly inside MDM og link to big data outside MDM as told in the post about The Intersection of MDM and Big Data.

5.      Application Data Management (ADM): Another area where you have to decide where master data stops and handling other data starts is when it comes to transactional data and other forms data handled in dedicated applications as ERP, CRM, PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) and plenty of other industry specific applications. This conundrum was touched in a recent post called MDM vs ADM.

6.      Multi-Domain MDM: Many MDM implementations focus on a single master data domain as customer, vendor or product or you see MDM programs that have a multi-domain vision, overall project management but quite separate tracks for each domain. We have though seen many technology vendors preparing for the multi-domain future.

7.      MDM in the cloud: MDM follows the source applications up into the cloud. New MDM solutions naturally come as a cloud solution. The traditional vendors introduce cloud alternatives to or based on their proven on-promise solutions. There is only one direction here: More and more cloud MDM – also as customer as business partner engagement will take place in the cloud.

8.      Ecosystem wide MDM: Doing MDM enterprise wide is hard enough. But it does not stop there. Increasingly every organization will be an integrated part of a business ecosystem where collaboration with business partners will be a part of digitalization and thus we will have a need for working on the same foundation (doing Multienterprise MDM as Gartner coins it) as reported in the post Ecosystem Wide MDM.

PS: If you are a vendor on the MDM, PIM or DAM market you can promote your solution here on the list and emphasize on the forms you support. Registration can be done here.