Top 8 benefits of master data management (MDM)

Master Data Management (MDM) is a crucial framework for categorizing, deduplicating, and consolidating critical business data (products, customers, suppliers, and more). At its core, MDM is about creating a single, authoritative view of data, often called a “golden record.” As a result, you can ensure consistency, accuracy, and accountability across all systems and stakeholders in your data landscape.

Aligning your master data management strategy with your business objectives and data initiatives is not just beneficial. It’s imperative. This alignment ensures your organization can grow market share, expand its customer footprint, and confidently accelerate AI and analytics initiatives. Knowing that decision-making is based on accurate, trusted data is a must. 

Read on to learn about the benefits of master data management and how MDM can make an impact across your company.

What are the benefits of master data management (MDM)?

MDM can help you achieve business objectives

Chasing big business goals? Transform data chaos into clarity with MDM.  One of the biggest benefits of master data management is that it offers organizations a unified view of data. Learn how a unified data view can skyrocket market share, slash costs, and maintain compliance.

1. Grow market share

Growing market share in today’s dynamic landscape requires a deep understanding of customer needs and trends. By consolidating customer and market data into a trustworthy source of truth, MDM empowers organizations to tailor their offerings and engage customers more effectively. Target better and spend smarter by:

• Automating the enrichment of specific datasets to reduce go-to-market times and maximize campaign launch efficiency.
• Collecting and cross-checking external data based on master records with seamless third-party tool integrations.
• Consolidating records across products and departments to clearly define your ideal customer profile.

Client example: Facing evolving customer expectations and hindered by slow, batch-processed marketing data, a renowned car manufacturer revamped its approach to data management.

Implementing Ataccama ONE MDM led to instant data stewardship adjustments and a unified customer view. The company integrated seven source systems and consolidated 600+ million customer and vehicle records, moving towards a data-driven, customer-focused model. This significantly contributed to the manufacturer’s market share expansion.

2. Customer footprint expansion

Another benefit of master data management includes identifying and eliminating redundant customer data, thus ensuring the maintenance of unique records. It can give you a deeper understanding of customers’ preferences and purchasing patterns by:

• Easily consolidating diverse data points like party details, purchase histories, and contractual information. 
• Delivering a seamless online experience and dramatically reducing the need for troubleshooting and call center interventions. 
• Providing personalized interactions that resonate with consumers and maximize revenue through effective cross-sell and upsell strategies using up-to-date customer data.

Client Example: AutoTrader, a dominant force in Canada’s automotive sales, faced challenges due to disparate consumer data and siloed systems. Ataccama ONE MDM consolidated data across over 30 systems. 8 to 10 million unique consumer records were enhanced, and Autotrader experienced a significant increase in dealer-purchased leads. The introduction of the Consumer Actions Tool (CAT), powered by MDM, revitalized their approach to customer engagement. 

3. Reduce cost & improve efficiency

By streamlining data processes and eliminating redundancies, MDM reduces the need for unnecessary or outdated hardware and software. This cuts down on IT expenses and related business processes by preventing costly duplicates and optimizes resource allocation.

As a result, companies can achieve better outcomes with fewer resources, significantly improving profitability and responsiveness to market demands.

Client Example: After multiple acquisitions, one of the world’s top three chemical distributors faced a fragmented data landscape; 13 ERP systems that contained inconsistent data records. This fragmentation hampered the company’s global reporting ability and slowed down critical transformation initiatives.

By adopting Ataccama ONE MDM, the company wanted to create a single source of truth for its global operations. This transformation resulted in:

• A new margin-based pricing model
• Optimized supplier negotiations
• Accurate performance comparisons across manufacturing sites
• Reduced internal waste associated with data quality issues.

Mitigate regulatory and security risk

4. Centralized data management

In a business landscape where data breaches and regulatory scrutiny are rampant, master data management benefits businesses by consolidating data from multiple sources into a centralized hub for simplified management of sensitive data.

By creating a single source of truth for sensitive data, MDM provides a robust framework to ensure adherence to evolving regulations and data consistency. It also offers a straightforward path to compliance with data access, erasure rights, and consent management, reducing the risk of penalties and breaches.

Client Example: Following a series of acquisitions, Raiffeisen Bank recognized the need for a comprehensive data strategy to ensure regulatory compliance and prevent customer data duplication. With Ataccama ONE MDM, the bank successfully consolidated the customer portfolios of three different banks into a single MDM hub and ensured full GDPR compliance.

By incorporating external registries and blacklists, the bank also enhanced address validation, legal entity verification, and person relationship detection, reinforcing its commitment to data security.

Stronger data initiatives for improved business outcomes

Transform your data strategy to unlock business success. MDM’s role in creating trustworthy data, enhancing connectivity, and reducing manual labor positions your business for growth, efficiency, and agility.

5. Overcoming lack of trust in data

Master data management benefits also include maintaining the accuracy of your data by consolidating it in an MDM hub. From there, you can manage consent and easily edit, update, and author new records, all in one place. It should also help you implement tailored workflows to approve data changes, notify relevant stakeholders, and publish updates.

Connect data trust to business success: Trusted data enables:

• Accurate market analysis and customer understanding, directly contributing to market share growth and customer footprint expansion
• Efficiency improvements and cost reductions by ensuring decisions are based on reliable information

6. Solving data silos and integration challenges 

Data silos fragment the landscape, hiding valuable insights and complicating data-driven initiatives. An MDM solution can break down these barriers by integrating data from a diverse array of sources, including databases, cloud platforms, and message queues, without relying on external tools.

Data availability will improve with two-way sync via real-time APIs, streaming, or batch interfaces. Overall, MDM improves data integration, data accessibility and usability across business units.

Drive business growth with expansive connectivity: A unified data ecosystem: 

• Enhances the ability to cross-sell and upsell effectively, understand market dynamics, and respond to customer needs promptly
• Enables centralized control over data, significantly easing the burden of regulatory compliance and minimizing security risks

7. Eliminating data duplication

Data duplication is when two or more records about the same entity exist in the one or more systems. A benefit of master data management is that it tackles this directly, identifying and consolidating duplicate entries to establish an authoritative golden record for each entity. This consolidation is bolstered when embedded data quality management capabilities are used to identify anomalies, rectify them promptly, and enrich records with external data. Using AI for additional matching proposals furthers the accuracy and utility of the data.

Catalyze business outcomes with clean data: High-quality, deduplicated data is critical for

• Accurate customer segmentation, targeted marketing strategies, and effective customer engagement, driving growth in market share and customer footprint
• Reducing costs associated with data management and improving efficiency by minimizing unnecessary data storage and processing

8. Reducing manual tasks and resource shortages

Manual data management is time-consuming, error-prone, and inefficient. MDM automates critical data management tasks like validating and cleansing data, configuring data models, and generating necessary interfaces.

These capabilities support improved data quality, ensuring your data is accurate and readily accessible. This also facilitates the transparent management of data lineage, relationships, and hierarchies, making the data landscape navigable and manageable.

Unlock strategic opportunities with MDM automation: Automating data management processes: 

• Directly impacts the organization’s ability to scale efficiently, reduce operational costs, and mitigate risks. 
• Minimizes manual data handling errors and supports an organization’s capacity to adapt quickly to new market opportunities and compliance requirements. 
• Frees up your teams to focus on what they do best: driving your business forward.

Key takeaways on the benefits of master data management

By addressing data challenges like data duplication, siloed information, and manual processes, MDM fosters an environment of trusted, accessible, and actionable data to help you align business objectives and data initiatives.

From achieving AI readiness to enhancing customer relationships, MDM is instrumental in driving market share growth and operational efficiencies for organizations with large volumes of data.

See how Ataccama’s master data management software can support and enhance your business operations!

Your Next Step in the MDM Journey

The journey to implementing a successful MDM strategy begins with understanding its full potential. If you’re ready to dive deeper and secure organizational buy-in for MDM, our buy-in guide offers practical steps and insights to navigate the complexities of MDM adoption.