WHAT MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IS and why you need it

White Paper White Paper 1 CONTENT

3 Introduction

4 What is Master Data?

5 What is Master Data Management?

6 What Master Data Management does for you

8 Master Data Management in Retail

9 Master Data Management in Manufacturing

11 Master Data Management and Your Customers

12 Master Data Management and Online Sales

14 A World Without Master Data Management

15 Summary

White Paper 2 INTRODUCTION

Are you puzzled by what Master Data Manage- ment (MDM) is?

Or do you understand the concept, but can’t see how it helps companies like yours?

Whichever you are, this short whitepaper tells you everything you need to know in plain English so it’s easy to understand.

Then explains why it’s becoming a problem for almostThe whitepaper every company. starts by defining master data.

Next you’ll discover what Master Data Manage- ment is and what it does for you. There are then four detailed examples of how companies have successfully used Master Data Management.

The examples cover Master Data Management and retail, manufacturing, customers and online sales.

Finally we consider a world without Master Data Management. Which is, probably, the world you’re in right now.

Now you know what to expect, let’s begin with Master Data ...

White Paper 3 WHAT IS MASTER DATA?

In simple terms Master Data is:

the data items shared across your business – and possibly beyond – which your company needs to operate.

So your master data could be about customers, Now all this master data should be a very good products, employees, materials, suppliers, vendors, thing - an asset for meeting the customer’s etc. needs, cutting your time to market and dramati- cally reducing costly administration. Undoubtedly you’re now collecting master data from more and more sources. Yet most organisations are noticing the exact opposite. Why? For example, your customer information might come from: Because they – and possibly you too – keep their master data in several unconnected places. With Email sign-up forms incomplete and / or duplicate records scattered E-commerce sales everywhere. Customer service calls Surveys Third-party sources It’s a big problem

And what about your products? In a recent study, Harvard Business Review found only 3% of companies met basic data You might have hundreds of stores selling standards. A separate study from Stibo Systems thousands of products – millions of individual and the Aberdeen Group found 45% could not details to manage across your inventory. even locate their data effectively.

Then there’s the deluge of master data from According to Gartner - the world’s leading re- employees, suppliers, manufacturers, etc. search and advisory company - poor customer data alone could be costing you 30% of your revenue.

The solution to your master data woes is Master Data Management ...

White Paper 4 WHAT IS MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT?

Master Data Management captures:

Your existing data – wherever it’s stored New data as it pours in

But MDM doesn’t just manage your data:

It removes duplicate records combines incomplete records for a particular customer, product, etc. to create a single golden record.

This golden record is then used by everyone in your organisation, your websites, apps and stores. As well as by your suppliers, partners and customers.

Of course, you control who has access to what.

Unlike other data solutions, MDM manages multiple domains from a single platform.

This means you can leave it to handle all your customer, product, employee and machine data at once.

White Paper 5 WHAT MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT DOES FOR YOU

If records need editing, updating or deleting, What’s more, CMDM is proven to: just change the relevant golden record for the Increase average order size. Boost customer retention. Theamendment administration to be reflected savings everywhere.alone are colossal. Mushroom your customers lifetime value. Expand your cross-sell and upsell opportunities A recent study from Aberdeen Group found MDM cuts labour costs 67%. And it’s a valuable tool to deliver outstanding customer service. You can appreciate why. With Master Data Management all your relevant Take the General Data Protection Regulation departments see the customer’s information at- (GDPR) as an example. a-glance.

Your phone-staff discuss the customer’s prob- GDPR creates some very specific issues for you, including: ease. And all your departments can see the same information.lem with confidence, So if your putting customer them is attransferred, instant Scope of coverage - they don’t keep answering the same questions. al data now covers a raft of areas including They always know their needs are understood. the usual personal- Thedetails definition as well of as person possi- ble items like photographs and social media ­content. According to Accenture, simply Right to be forgotten - Customers can ask for knowing a customer’s purchase their personal data to be deleted when it’s no history makes them 65% more longer required for its original purpose. likely to choose you.

Guaranteed data portability – Customers can request their personal data be transferred to your competitors.

With MDM compliance is a breeze. All your customer information is accessed, deleted or edited from a single point.

White Paper 6 Launch new products up to 4 times Using Master Data Management faster with Master Data Management: to make better decisions

From the same dashboard set deadlines, You’re probably already using analytics. milestones and handle change orders in seconds. Perhaps, like 80% of companies, you’re now Or update your Bills of Materials (BOMs).

All your manufacturers, suppliers and Bothconsidering of these Artificial use patterns Intelligence in your (AI).data: engineers are updated on product detail Analytics to help you make informed decisions. changes as they happen. AI to quickly make these decisions for you.

Having dramatically cut your development costs, But if your data is jumbled, duplicated, or ­scattered across different departments neither throughout your entire supply chain. you or AI can make intelligent decisions. Master Data Management improves efficiency Everyone – from shipping, handling and logistics Use Master Data Management and every - ­judgment is based on fact. cations as they’re updated. – has real-time access to your products’ specifi Now, let’s look at some examples of Meanwhile ... where Master Data Management has made an astonishing difference.

These remarkable benefits of MDM are proven

Which is why it’s already being used by companies such as:

White Paper 7 MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IN RETAIL

MARKS AND SPENCER

Any retailer must keep product details accurate And PIM also allows M&S to: and up-to-date. Use rules to control their data. For example, Marks and Spencer (M&S) have 852 stores in the clothing can’t be published online until all the UK another 480 in 59 different countries. sizes have appropriate labels.

... and over 7,000,000 registered users on their Tailor their product range for each country. website - which carries 20,000+products. If they don’t have the license to sell something in a particular country, the product doesn’t With all these users and products, relaunching show on the relevant website. their website on a new platform was going to be a challenge. Manage all the content in English. MDM

After all they couldn’t afford to lose users or internationally – only this text is sent for sales. And they needed to keep track of all their ­automaticallytranslation. flags products which are sold 20,000+ products. Product details are updated in seconds. They M&S also had to: only do it once, with the new information ­published across their websites, stores and apps. Tailor product availability for nine different, And supply chains have real-time access to an international versions of the website accurate, updated set of product details.

Save money by making their internal system simpler

Remove pain points

So they use MDM as their Product Information Management (PIM) solution.

This brings all the product information into one place to create a single approved source.

- even when, like M&S, you have 585 different product attributes ... eight international websites using five languages.

White Paper 8 MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT IN MANUFACTURING

NGK SPARKPLUGS

Any manufacturer must work to exacting standards across:

DESIGN SAFETY BUILDING TESTING COMPLIANCE

So if the right person can’t access the right infor- You can imagine the setbacks. Suppose you’re mation - or, worse, accesses the wrong information an engineer in Japan waiting for compliance - you could face serious delays. This was NGK information from Europe. Sparkplugs’ problem. When you send your request, they’ll be asleep. They had 13,000 employees, 43 group com- panies, 24 production plants and 5 technical And there’s no telling who else is missing the centres. information they need. Quite simply, the entire production process is vulnerable to human error. Every stage of the manufacturing process was divided across different countries – even different continents.

White Paper 9 MDM brought all NGK’s data to a According to Seller Insights, each new supplier – single dashboard. This means: after selecting, managing and processing – costs an average $20,091 to recruit. As mentioned, you Bill of Material changes can be handled in a can expect this to cut labour costs 67%. few clicks. All the relevant parties – including That’s a potential $13,460.97 saving every time you onboard a new supplier. Everyexternal stage suppliers of the manufacturing– are notified automatically. process meets compliance, because all the relevant A MDM solution gets you maximum value from a legal information is available and up-to-date. product’s entire lifecycle.

It is shown to reduce your time-to-launch up to as it’s being developed. Everybody across your 75%. supplyProduct chain, specifications logistics andare updatedmarketing in havereal-time the exact information they need. So not only do you understand your customer better, you’re able to meet their needs faster Do you frequently switch suppliers or add new than your competitors. SKUs? This means you can beat them on price too. If so, this could be your most compelling reason to consider a MDM solution.

White Paper 10 MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT AND YOUR CUSTOMERS

WEGMANS

You’ve seen how MDM works wonders as a Prod- What did Wegmans do to keep uct Information Management (PIM) solution. customers happy?

But what about your customers? Wegmans turned to a Master Data Management solution. Imagine you have 10,000,000 of them ...

and created one complete, golden record for each They’re rabid supporters of ofMDM Wegmans took the 10,000,000 data from thecustomers. five separate systems your brand. They: As it created the golden records, MDM cleaned Line up overnight to visit a new store on the the data and got rid of any duplicate records. day it opens. The data from any incomplete customer records Write love letters asking you to open in areas was used to populate the relevant customer’s where there currently isn’t one of your stores. golden record. Then the incomplete records were deleted. Have their own twitter hashtag.

... and give you an annual revenue of $6.8 billion. Now Wegmans have:

No, this isn’t Apple. This is Wegmans - voted the A single, accurate, customer record for each top (American) grocery store every year since customer. 2006 by Consumer Reports subscribers.

Wegmans have 92 physical stores and, of course, lines of business: catering, pharmacy, restaurant, a website. wineThis is outlets shared and across ecommerce. all systems in their five

A personalised shopping experience for every customer. business.But their customer data is held in five different systems – one for each of Wegmans’ five lines of A loyalty program fed with rich, accurate and So they can’t provide a personalised shopping clean data. experience for their customers. And their loyalty program is stuffed with poor quality data... Wegmans are delighted with MDM. Next up is adding a planned 1,000,000 new customers every - not good for anyone, even worse when you year. And using MDM to manage the data for their have such devoted customers. 70,000 products, locations and suppliers.

White Paper 11 MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT AND ONLINE SALES

BOL.COM

Selling online has one major problem: What if a detail changes?

Customers cannot hold the product before they How can they be sure the update was successful buy it. across all their webpages, apps and departments?

It’s why e-commerce stores rely on mountains of Similar to Marks and Spencer, MDM brought product data. all of bol’s product data to a single, approved source. Photos which zoom and rotate Detailed product descriptions Now when product details are added or changed, Videos the fresh information is published across all Social media reviews their relevant channels. And more Customer service personnel are automatically With 3.4million active customers, bol.com is the updated. largest e-commerce store in the Netherlands. Since using a MDM solution bol.com have intro- Their website features over 5.5million products - duced new product categories 80% faster. each with complex sets of data to manage.

“Incredibly quick and simple. That’s a crucial capability that translates immediately into sales.”

- Menno Vis, software development manager, bol.com

White Paper 12 A MDM solution de-duplicates your It means: customer records, so you do away No more emails sent to the wrong name. with personalisation mistakes. No more embarrassing phone calls about a Another capability is the handling of customer matter they’ve already resolved. records.

No more duplicate catalogues and letters sent As mentioned, you’re probably collecting to the same address. ­customer data from several sources. You save up to 50% in marketing costs, because So it’s likely you have several variations of the you stop wasting money on duplicate messages. same person. same record - or two conflicting records for the (For example, one system with a customer’s maiden name and another with their married name.)

White Paper 13 A WORLD WITHOUT MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT

Now you’ve read the four examples above, just So, for example, send them: imagine how these companies would have coped without Master Data Management. Any communication which gets their name – or other personal details – wrong For Marks and Spencer, migrating 7,000,000 registered users and 20,000+ products to a new Something completely irrelevant web platform would be a herculean task. The same offer twice over 8 websites – almost impossible. ... and you won’t just annoy them, you’ll lose To then efficiently manage all these products But let’s consider an even simpler – very costly ­reputation. This is – I’m sure – obvious to you. – problem. One which could well be losing your sales, damage your profits and your brand’s company money. With Master Data Management none of this will happen. At the beginning of this whitepaper a recent study by the Harvard Business Review was men- Each of your customers will have a single golden tioned. record, created from every piece of data you have on that customer – no matter where it was To remind you, the study found: only 3% of com- held. panies met basic data standards. There are no more incomplete variations of And according to IBM the cost of this poor data ­customer records. No more duplicate records. quality is staggering:

Now with your good quality $3.1 trillion every year - and that’s just customer data you: in the United States Know every email, letter, etc you send to your Possibly the worst kind of poor quality data is customers will have their correct details. the information you have about your customers. Why? Only make relevant offers to your customers.

Because – compared to a new customer making Don’t send multiple copies of the same ­communication. 4 – 8 times as likely to buy from you again. their first purchase - your existing customers are - tors are leaving on the table thanks to their poor-quality... and you pick data. up the profits your competi

White Paper 14 SUMMARY

You now should have a good understanding of what Master Data Management is.

And if your company isn’t already using it, you’ve probably identified several areas where having ShouldMaster youData wish Management to discuss would these reap- or have benefits. any further questions about Master Data Manage- ment - please email [email protected]

White Paper 15 ABOUT STIBO SYSTEMS

Stibo Systems is the global leader in multidomain Master Data Management (MDM) solutions. Industry leaders rely on Stibo Systems to provide crosschannel consistency by linking product, customer, supplier data and other organisational data. This enables­ businesses to make more effective decisions, improve sales and build value. During the last 30 years, Stibo Systems has helped leading companies to develop a trusted source of strategic information. A privately held subsidiary of the Stibo A/S group, which was originally founded in 1794, Stibo Systems’ corporate headquarters is located in Aarhus, Denmark.

For more information visit www.stibosystems.com or email [email protected]

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