A simple test for any CEO to do

Ask your teams responsible for the CRM, ERP, Billing or Logistics systems for a list of customers, suppliers or products.

Probably each of the systems will return a different list, and none of the systems will have the true view of any of these domains.

When this happens you might be left to think what kind of company doesn’t know who their customers or suppliers are?

And if this happens then most likely there will be issues related with product and material information across multiple disparate systems, multiple IDs for the same product or inconsistent product attribution and/or units of measure across markets, systems, business units or facilities or interactions with multiple suppliers with no catalogue consistency.

Well, you’re not alone. Not many companies have this exact view about their customers, suppliers or products, maybe even employees. Every time a new system is added to your company’s ecosystem it adds to the general complexity of the corporation’s data and reduces the capacity for an integrated view of the organization.

This fact is in the origin of the growing importance for the organizations to create a single, unified view of its master concepts.

MDM can be challenging, as it depends on people, as well as technology, but it is vital for business success.