Customer Master Data Management – what to expect

Defining the approach for Customer Master Data Management (MDM) for your organization means also understanding the boundaries of functionality. Define it right and you will have a goldmine of opportunities.

The term MDM has become progressively ambiguous over the years as vendors have branched out into areas of functionality that are not necessarily aligned with the optimal concept of master data management. This is just as true for the customer MDM as it is for the supplier, the employee and other master data elements.

While different classes of MDM can be defined as providing particular functions, MDM as a broad tool description is probably not that useful to business leaders. The ultimate question has to be, what do you want the Customer MDM to do for you? Knowing the answer to that question will direct you to the right combination of features and functionality to evaluate in a vendor or homegrown solution.

MDM technology and functionality overlap many types of software solutions that have addressed the issue of customer records and customer engagement in the past. These include Customer Data Platforms (CDP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Marketing Automation (MA) platforms and technologies.

CRM and MA systems focus on customer interactions at the account level as well as at the individual contact level. Many CRMs are not purpose-built to be master record management systems, though they will have data mastering as an important part of their architecture. CRMs in particular, focus on sales events and pipeline call-off activities. As CRMs and Marketing Automation systems evolve they will subsume more MDM functionality and they will converge, however, CRMs will remain focused on what they do best, which is to gather and curate the interactions that your organization has with its contracted audiences and prospects. CRM and MA tools typically focus on known users.

CDPs capture anonymous data and verified or authenticated data. CDPs can also collect data on the customer journey and are built for the integration and collection of large amounts of data.  The core functionality of CDPs is focused on building out a unified database of existing and prospective customers, but they can also be used to manage customer engagement, provide analytics, campaign and event attribution and market segmentation, as well as enable personalization, message selection and campaign management.

Customer Master Data Management programs seek to have a golden record of the customer but probably should not include interactions from other systems except when those interactions alter the main customer record. While some MDM solutions are aimed at technical audiences, they do not necessarily need to be exclusively for technical teams since many mid-tier organizations don’t necessarily have data stewardship or data governance function. You’re either working in the business or you are in IT.

The view, at Pretectum, is that IT should not own or manage the content of the MDM, they should care for the platform but the ownership of the data and the quality of the data should rest within the business and business users.

Since MDMs come in all shapes and sizes, your needs will be determined by how you choose to frame the challenge and the degree of maturity of supporting processes for customer master data management. A suitable solution will support a litany of pieces of functionality, not all of which you will need.

As an example, if you need a master but you have teams that require personalized structures and attributes for specific tasks, then you should be able to do this the golden thread of the core master record is always accessible and at hand. There will be prerequisites but the system should support flexible usage and appropriate data syndication accompanied by high-quality data and a detailed understanding of what you have at your disposal in terms of the customer master record.

Learn more about the Pretectum CMDM advantage for your organization