As customers, we’ve all experienced the frustration with organizations who don’t understand us. We’re baffled that these organizations—retailers, insurers, health care providers, and B2B provides in our work life – miss seemingly obvious facts that would make our lives easier:
- The products – from your company – that I already own
- Relevant medical information that I’ve given to a health system
- Contact information that I’ve already provided multiple times recently
What’s going on?
Of course, the people who work in these organizations know that the seemingly obvious isn’t so simple. Every consumer, patient, account, product, part, drug, or other domain changes, and the law of large numbers make keeping track of changes difficult.
Consider how many people may have similar names, how a single person can interact with you online and in person, or how complicated company entities can be, particularly with acquisitions. Unfortunately, in an increasingly digital world, customers expect more of every organization, private or public, and the fact that “it’s hard” to do MDM well doesn’t stop customers from doing business elsewhere.
MDM Benefits – Marketing and the 360-degree view of the customer
MDM benefits – like consistency and accuracy – are becoming necessities with the trend towards marketing’s need for a 360-degree view of customers. As noted in another post, the world is approaching 175 zettabytes of data. As marketing pushes organizations to digital transformation, more fine-grained customer interactions are being collected, faster, and across more touchpoints.
“Conversational technologies such as AI-based voice assistants, chatbots or intelligent personal assistants” are expanding and deepening customer interactions. The omnichannel trend will only continue to proliferate. The customer experience (“CX “) imperative is driving MDM: a better CX is a direct MDM benefit.
Insist on MDM services that shorten time-to-value
Gartner emphasizes a “use-case-based approach” as a critical capability for MDM solutions. Of course, every industry and every business has unique characteristics, and MDM by definition enforces consistency across the extended enterprise. Suppliers need to communicate effectively with others in the supply chain. Everyone needs to have a common understanding of what “things” mean, whether parts, products, or people.
MDM benefits from a use-case emphasis helps in two important ways: 1. MDM efforts and MDM services are deployed to focus on domains that matter most to an organization, and 2. MDM efforts are not bogged down by trying to cover too much too quickly before any real value is realized.
While the demands for multiple domains and omnichannel support increase, it’s easy to lose sight of the need to achieve MDM benefits early. MDM services providers need to balance complexity and scope with successful outcomes.
Your MDM services partner needs to be well versed in these considerations. Syntelli can help. Syntelli has experience with successful MDM projects, helping customers to navigate the complex world of adding meaning and context to the data that runs your business.
