It’s clear the technology that shapes successful companies is rapidly changing, but is enterprise software affected by these same kinds of changes? Yes, and it’s one surprising application that’s transforming customer loyalty. Organizations are seeing more and more value in Master Data Management (MDM) than ever before. As companies place more emphasis on turning customers into fans, MDM is seen as a critical foundation to that success.
Do You Know Why You Need MDM?
For companies to properly engage customers, they need the right information about them. Industries across the board, from insurance providers to cable companies, are shaping their decisions and solutions around the customer relationship. They have realized that personalized and targeted loyalty programs can fortify their client relationships, and this realization is driving use of MDM solutions.
Often, these companies are not always sure how an MDM solution fits into their portfolio. A complete and thorough solution requires justification and consideration. The last thing you want is a poorly integrated MDM system that is misaligned with your business goals.
Help IT Channel the Right Information
Take, for example, a cable company that fed customer data into its enterprise service bus (ESB) and implemented an event processing system to analyze the data. The business was concerned about the frequency and reasons behind customer churn, but was not gaining insight from their systems. When they looked at their ESB, they realized they were missing a critical piece of information—connectivity data from customer cable modems. When this data was added, they found that when a customer’s Internet connection drops three times in one month, they are very likely to change service providers. Without the right data, the company had little visibility into the real issue, even though they had all the tools they needed. IT and business must see eye-to-eye to ensure they are using their ESB, MDM, and other applications to their full capacity.
To learn more about key considerations around MDM implementations, read Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management in customer and product data.
