“We needed to consolidate our customer data to get one view of a customer,” says Daniel Newbern, senior director for enterprise projects. “SunGard is a multidimensional company, and we could be selling multiple products to the same customer in different ways. We wanted to know if a customer has one, two, or four products, and if any were coming up for renewal. We needed that one story about a customer so we could efficiently arm our executives and sales team.

“Better data means greater efficiency and better targeting of customers, knowing who we’re selling to and where we could sell more. On the internal side, MDM would better and more easily tie our systems together and allow us to build a better reporting repository for all information.

“If we chose not to implement MDM, we would have continued to spend a significant amount of time building reports. We wouldn’t have been able to generate customer and vendor information in various data dimensions fast enough to meet operational demand.

“We weren’t going to invest in something that would only target customers, or vendors, or legal domains. We needed to handle all domains, around five or six; we needed a multidimensional model supporting a significant number of attributes. The platform had to make standard database connections so we could access financial systems with legacy file loads, and it had to communicate via web services, so we could process information being requested and authored in real time. Throughput and performance were important as well.”

“When we started selection, TIBCO was one of four that we heard from within 24 hours, and when we asked for a quick demonstration, TIBCO was more than happy to oblige,” says Mr. Newborn. “That was one of the greatest tells of what the future would bring. Some of the other companies had lots of questions about who was going to be involved, and what their level was, and it just didn’t start off as easily as it did with TIBCO. We knew within that first hour that we had a contender.

“We had heard that, although TIBCO Professional Services were a bit more expensive than a consulting company, it would give us one place to go when there were issues. We didn’t want to get into the game of having an implementation vendor blaming the software provider if it couldn’t do something or vice versa.

“Our main two objectives were accuracy and speed, and TIBCO® MDM is allowing us greater governance over authoring and updating of information. Data then becomes more reliable, so we don’t have to spend time double- and triplechecking for reporting. We’re putting information in our data warehouse that users can rely on. And we’re providing a quick return, which is what they want.”

Better Customer Insight, Experience, Information
“We’re tying sales and revenue data together,” says Newborn. “We now have one solid view of the customer. We know much better the customer as a legal entity and all the financial and sales accounts associated with it.

“The main thing is insight into customer activity. We’re going to use the links we’re building to provide a better customer experience because we’ll have a better view of who they are. TIBCO® MDM helps us tell a better story about the number of customers we have and the opportunities and revenue related to them. As we build more intelligence around our customers, we’ll know what products they’re using, and we’ll identify which other similar customers could potentially be using the same product.”

Better, Faster Reporting and Decision-Making
“TIBCO MDM is providing stronger reporting for business organizations, as well as for executives and corporate groups,” says Newborn. “It’s going to allow them to make better business decisions related to operations and customers. And the time needed to generate requested information has significantly decreased.”

Reduced Overhead, Development, Support
“We see a decrease in overall operational overhead and in the resources needed for development, for building integrations between systems,” says Newborn. “We’re also anticipating a drop in support time. With TIBCO MDM, we get more done because we don’t have to spend as much time creating reports, and authoring and maintaining information. Resources can now be allocated to more important tasks.”

“The biggest positive is knowing that whenever we need to build a connection, we have the right tool to do it. We intend to tie in more domains so we can know what someone is buying, where, and who’s working on their projects. We’ll be able to see into all the various aspects of it: the project, its timeline, when revenue is being recognized.

“We want to expand MDM to our HRIS, active directory, and other systems to reduce overhead. One challenge for a company our size is keeping current on people who leave and businesses we acquire. We want to use MDM for more plugand-play business integrations,” says Newborn.