Data streaming and MDM
Data streaming, so what does this mean? What does MDM means for data stream? Good question read on.
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March 11, 2010
January 18, 2010
Doesn't Cloud movement make your MDM investment a must?
Cloud Computing is no longer an innovative idea to be hyped about and then shelved! It’s a big a reality and next generation industry giants are likely be guided by who wins in the cloud. Couple of years back when it was a privilege to be in the cloud has turned out to be a necessity now. Driven by reduced TCO for application conceptualization to build to maintenance, improved agility and QoS is aligning the industry to move into Cloud. On top it transforms your company into Opex based IT spend from Capex model. Recession hit almost at the right time to give it the push it needed for this shift.
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December 24, 2009
Oracle PIPs: Redefining Real Time Integration
I am sure a lot of us are already aware; few months ago Oracle released Process Integration Packs (PIP) based on Oracle Fusion Application Integration Architecture (AIA) framework. These PIPs establish pre-built integration between applications via AIA layer and are modeled on the SOA best practices. Through this article I have attempted to analyze the key features of the PIPs as well as the challenges that might surface while implementing.
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December 11, 2009
Enterprise Content management integrated with MDM
We are at a stage, to bid adieu to year 2009. It is now time for us to evaluate the trends in the MDM domain for the year 2010. Ray wang in his blog titled “Master Data Management 2010 - Focus On Outcomes Drives Push For Value” has referred to the need for managing additional data type in MDM.
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December 04, 2009
MDM Products – Are they becoming too big to consume?
What existed before MDM (Master Data Management) term started being used so frequently? CDI? EII? Do they sound familiar? If you take out a part (customer-only) of today’s MDM, it becomes CDI (Customer Data Integration). We have been seeing the trend of Customer Centricity and creating a 360 degree view of customer so that there is always one golden record of customer data across multiple channels of an organization. I think the intent is still the same to improve customer experience and increase cross-sell/up-sell opportunities. But, look at these so called 4th generation Multi-domain MDM products. Aren’t we getting more and more entities/domains in MDM products with every new release?
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September 16, 2009
MDM - Can it evolve to stay?
by Venkataraman Ramanathan
The comment from Ray in my previous post cannot be more relevant. The sooner MDM embraces social media the better it can serve and evolve. This is one parameter that will take the game more closer to the CRM+MDM realisation.
It was a hectic day for Michael (young Mike to us) and was traveling home, when he caught in a downtown traffic jam. “Well, why not tweet something for the lousy 15 minutes that I spend here. Let me vent out my ire here” and he picks up his iphone and puts in a tweet – “ Today, at work I found it very difficult to resolve all the false positives and false negatives. This just isn’t the way it should be for what I paid”. Now Michael is a consultant at his firm and has close to 3500 followers on Twitter. Some of them being the vendor consultants and sales people he is constantly in touch with. The next minute, he sees an alert on his iphone that says – “ Let’s set up a meeting tomorrow Mike, to discuss your issues with our product”.
September 07, 2009
Value of BPM tool in MDM implementations
Of late, while going through the proposed solution architecture of MDM implementations at major enterprises by product vendors, I see more often that BPM tool is one of the solution components in the overall footprint. The immediate thought I got, was that there is no stoppage of prospective vendors introducing more and more products into the overall solution footprint and hence making things more complex. But recollecting my recent experience of MDM implementation based on a industry leading product for a major bank, where there was no separate BPM tool in place, I started appreciating the value add a BPM tool could bring in such scenarios. The kind of challenges we faced in orchestrating various fine grained services into composite services and the performance bottle necks in calling the services of other enterprises of the systems using the integration layer available within the product, I felt that it makes more sense to use a BPM tool for large MDM implementations.
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September 03, 2009
MDM – Is it here to stay?
by Venkataraman Ramanathan
When young Mike called up the Pizza delivery to find out why his most favorite pizza was not delivered on time, it was time to think how important customer satisfaction was necessary for successful brand recall and for repeat customer business. CRM was born. CRM grew to encompass service, sales, support to improve service quality and hence provide a greater and much richer interaction with the customers. ROI swelled, it became the buzzword and lo! and behold - “You do not have CRM in place? I think you need to include that in your IT budget this year. It’s the strategy and vision that will help your ROI” - Years later, when Michael (young Mike to us) went in for a couple of policies for himself and his family he was getting frustrated of doling out his information everytime he had to touch base with the insurance provider. MDM was born. And - “ How can you NOT have a metadata management in place, how do you think your customers will be served better?”. Well, back to Square one, are we?!
August 24, 2009
B2B and B2C CDI in the Same Package
· Some clients mandate that one tool is used for both
· Others use different packaged apps for each
· Others use a packaged app for one and a custom application for the other
August 11, 2009
Master Data Management hub shoot out
Master Data Management (MDM) has evolved over the last couple of years, and it is time to talk about the next version of MDM (MDM2.0). Recently I was discussing evaluation of a hub of hubs concept with one of my colleague. So what does Hub of Hubs means? Typically every organization has multiple LOB's or divisions, that is geographically dispersed, with varying level of IT budgets and procurement objectives. This led to certain divisions having an already existing MDM foot print be it on different platform and on different styles of implementation. The issue is further compounded when there is a Merger and acquisition happening. This blog helps to give an overview of MDM2.0.
August 06, 2009
Mergers and Acquisitions – Typical MDM Challenges
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August 04, 2009
The Ultimate Customer Master: A ripening opportunity
The Context
One of the core components of a CRM system is customer data. The system maintains both transactional data (the data around the relationship with the individual) and personal data (the data about the individual per se).
Once an individual is established as a customer in a CRM system, all the transactional data – like interactions, opportunities to sell products and services to the customer, products and services actually sold, issues with them, resolution to those issues, etc. - is captured and maintained in the system.
However, the personal data typically comes from the individual. It is collected from the customer himself (unless gotten in a list with some amount of personal details) during the process of setting him up as a customer in the system. There could be exceptions like collection of data on credit worthiness, which could come from credit monitoring agencies. While the process of managing this data is not exactly one with numerous pain points, there are opportunities for improvement both from the perspective of the customer and that of the companies.
From the perspective of the customer, for instance, he needs to go through the details all over every time he sets up a relationship with a new company. And every time he changes his address, he needs to call up the companies and update. Would it not be better if the individual can keep updating the data in one system - the Ultimate Customer Master - and let the companies subscribe to it either on a going or an ad-hoc basis?
From the perspective of the company, for instance, the data becomes stale over a period of time. While basic data like date of birth remain static, others like mailing address keep changing. Companies don’t have a foolproof way of keeping the data up to date – unless the customer himself calls and provides an update. Contacting the customers on a periodical basis to keep this information up to date could be both expensive and time consuming for the companies. Besides, the customer may get annoyed as well. Would it not be better to have a central repository - the Ultimate Customer Master - which can supply this data to companies at the click of a button?
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July 28, 2009
Master Data Management and BPM toolset - a strategic fitment?
Business rules are typically in an organization and these define the various process measures that organizations depend on for hardwiring various departmental activities. Business rules are typically imbibed in the way organization do business and the agility of an organization depends on the way an organization is able to configure, modify and manages these business rules. Retail Industry is predominant with business rules and it is ideal to externalize these rules into a central rule engine that can be configured once and consumed many times.
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July 21, 2009
MDM vs. SOA…What takes priority in Mergers and Acquisitions?
In the ongoing economic mayhem, we have seen many small to even big companies are taken over by other big and bigger companies. This act of merging two companies leads to consolidating key business entities across companies so that the merged entity performs better and benefits from this merger and/or acquisition (M&A).
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July 10, 2009
Enriching the MDM Repository
Reading Anshuman's post on transactional data elements in the MDM repository for increasing business value, I was reminded of an interesting solution we defined for a Japanese publishing company. I am a fan of Japanese culture, and it was exciting to work with people who produce manga, anime, and lots more cool stuff.
July 08, 2009
Meta Data management the less talked about cousin of Master Data Management?
Meta data management, so what does this mean? We all know that “meta data” means data about data. However how many fully fledged, Master data management project starts off with a Meta data definition project. A true “strategic” level adoption of Master data management requires having a fully fledged meta-data management solution integrated seamlessly with a master data management solution. I happened to work in an enterprise data warehouse solution for an insurance major in US, where the primary stakeholder and project sponsor realized the need to arrive at a consensus on the various KPI’s used across insurance LOB's (be it Buyer protection plan, Property and Casualty - Mortgage based insurance, Life and Health insurance etc.). A brave initiative, leading to humble beginning of an Data governance initiative, very critical, in a fully fledged enterprise level MDM initiative.
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June 24, 2009
Federated MDM Data Domains - A Perspective
By Madhukar N.S.M.
You might feel that the word “federated” is generally associated to data models and database designs. Federated MDM Data Domains means a union of “disparate" data without which the enterprise MDM hub is incomplete. I will take the example of a Customer MDM enterprise hub and elaborate further.
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June 12, 2009
Identity resolution – Strategic goals for an MDM implementation
Recently I was watching the movie “21” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_(2008_film)) in sitcom, where students from MIT including a professor was able to use probability and sign language to win millions of dollars from multiple casino houses based out in Las Vegas. The movie featured usage of technology and manual investigators to help resolve the “identity” of the fraudsters using data points, and finally resulted in each of them being caught. So what is Identity resolution? As an organization it is an ideal objective to reach the strategic level in an MDM implementation. Identity resolution is basically driven out of the strategic usage of MDM implementation. Identity resolution means able to truly identify an individual based on his/her relationship.
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June 03, 2009
Customer Master Data : Plan or Perish
“Customer” – looks like the most coveted entity in a CRM application. Isn’t it? Of course that is the back-bone of any CRM application, but what if I say that its database is often the primary reason for many CRM implementations failures and lack of user adoption. Sounds intriguing, but it’s true. Turn the clock behind and sense that as users or consultants, have we not found it to be one of the most neglected or maligned entity in the system. Probably yes….
May 28, 2009
Customer Relationship Management/Enterprise Application Integration/Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing (CRM/EAI/BI) products can fulfill MDM Needs - Biggest Myth!!!
Fully fledged Master Data Management (MDM) packages have been in the market space since the turn of the decade and many fortune 500 companies have implemented the MDM solution to achieve tremendous value within their industry domain. I have been in the MDM Consulting stream for the last couple of years but still realize the need to evangelize the need for an MDM solution among peers within the CRM/EAI/BI domain space. Many of the renowned implementation using matured products such as CRM, EAI and BI has put forth a view that the respective products within various domains can indeed be customized to meet the MDM specific requirements. This is predominantly wrong for the very reason that just because each product stack (CRM/EA/BI) can fulfill a partial subset of requirements within the MDM domain, the central core of an MDM suite (360 view of customer including Data stewardship process to manage the golden copy of the customer) cannot be customized on a CRM/BI/EAI product stack. This blog helps in acting as a myth buster for some of the common misconception around CRM/EAI/BI products fulfilling the MDM requirements.
May 15, 2009
Extending transactional data elements in MDM Hub: Desirable or Unnecessary?
By definition Master data is core data which does not change frequently. The very objective of Master Data Management is to consolidate master data, cleanse, enrich, and publish to consuming applications, like CRM, ERP, Data Warehouses, etc. This leads to a belief that Master Data Hubs should only have master data like customer, product, assets etc and there should not be any (or limited) transactional data in MDM Hub. E.g. Sales Orders, Opportunities, Service Requests, Invoices.
Contrary to the above, MDM vendors like Oracle are offering MDM Hub license with additional options of integrating Sales Hub, Service Hub, Activity Hub with MDM Hub. IBM and Siperian too have a very flexible Data Model and their out-of-the-box data model could be extended to include transactional data elements. What are the real implications of this? Would the Organizations that are implementing MDM or have plans to do so in their IT roadmap, be better served by extending transactional data elements in MDM Hub?
The answer could be both yes or no and depends on the Organizations’ Business Case for MDM. Moreover, it needs good consulting proficiency on the part of SI’s to help clients refrain from establishing incorrect expectations from MDM. MDM is not supposed to replace any existing transactional application; it is to consolidate the master data from various application silos and to aid the business functions that need accurate representation of master data. Expectations from MDM like ‘Ability to raise customer invoices’ or ‘Ability to Create Sales Orders / Service Requests’ should be laid to rest, even while preparing/validating the Business Case. Usually, during the initial assessment of MDM programs, we have seen a huge list of master data (customer, product etc) related pain points being set forth by client IT after duly collating such pain points from various departments. While it may be prudent to analyze the list and recommend solution to all pain points, the customer is better served if the non-MDM pain points are identified and an alternate solution proposed to address those.
This being said, MDM application may still have the Sales, Service and Activity related details but it should only facilitate establishing the accurate customer profile to help with customer segmentation, prepare target audience for campaigns, various reporting purposes etc.
The MDM space continues to be dynamic and as the leading vendors (Oracle, IBM, SAP) and niche players (Siperian, Initiate etc) carry on with their roadmap, we will witness quite a few new products being introduced and in relatively newer domains E.g. Site Management (to streamline supply chain) etc. In addition to this, the concept of Enterprise MDM, or a true ‘multi-entity MDM’ has already been widely recognized and the newer versions of leading packages should see support for both ‘party’ and ‘product’ based entities. This would make MDM consulting even more exciting and would call for greater refinement in MDM solution offerings E.g. Data Modelling, Data Rationalization, Consolidation etc.
April 02, 2009
MDM - The Road Ahead
March 12, 2009
Retiring legacy applications – Is it an easy decision?
Recently, I have been involved in few client engagements where they want to retire legacy customer systems and replace them with new products and technologies. In all such experiences I noticed that retiring a legacy application is not as simple as it may sound. Below are some of my observations when I started digging into it.
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March 02, 2009
Investment in CRM – Is it relevant NOW?
I was browsing our internal Blog community and came across some interesting points penned down by Khanchana on the relevance of CRM investments in the current economic scenario. Here are some interesting excerpts to take away from her blog.
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February 19, 2009
Cloud Computing Part 1 : Are we doing it already?
Join us as we discuss the evolution of the cloud and try to understand how the clouds might transcend horizons and come offshore.
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January 19, 2009
Blue Ocean Strategy and Master Data Management?
W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne in their “Blue Ocean Strategy” (ISBN 1591396190) have predicted that companies should move away from competition and create opportunity where profit and growth exists. Apple has been able to turn around its business, by creating a new market and new product offering through its iPod offering.
The application of Blue Ocean strategy to a Master Data Management opportunity space would be
a) Creation of a hosted Master Data Management solution using preferred vendor packages (IBM, Oracle, Siebel, Initiate etc) - Small and Medium Business (SMB) can subscribe to these hosted MDM solution, that currently act as a clear technology differentiator for large companies.
b) Colluding of complimentary technology such as Open Source technology, SaaS, Collaboration, Web2.0, and MDM and Federated security.
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January 09, 2009
Master Data Management - A Key Strategic Enterprise Trend
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