by Angela Guess
A recent article covers several points you might want to cover when trying to sell the value of MDM to your business. The article states, “Making a business case for MDM tools must focus on improving the bottom line or the top line. Thus, it has to be pitched from the angle of bettering the operational functionalities or the decision support and marketing philosophy of the organization.”
The first point to be made is cost reduction through item master: “For organizations with multiple, disparate systems, MDM tools can bring about tangible cost savings. To illustrate, let’s consider a company in the manufacturing sector. The company would routinely procure raw materials and other inventory from a range of vendors. MDM tools can help reduce cost as they eliminate duplication of procured resources. Such duplication occurs due to lack of a unique identification system for procured items, and this is effectively addressed by any MDM tool. Without structured master data management tools, procurement could be haphazard and might lead to wastage of resources. When engineering and manufacturing giant Larsen & Toubro implemented MDM, a 13-14% reduction was seen in the item master.”
Another key point is consolidated data wins: “Your pitch for MDM tools should also highlight benefits such as consolidation of a BI/DW project. Raise the issue that since there is no consolidated view of customers or products, no customer benefit can be derived because it is not known how the customer appears in disparate, non-integrated systems. It is crucial to identify customers providing the biggest business, in order to plan appropriately. Promotion schemes will also be dependent on these factors. For the percentage of customers are not consolidated, what needs to be calculated is the quantum of overall business that they bring in. Using standard statistical methods one can link these figures to estimated outstanding credits to arrive at an overall cumulative picture.”
photo credit: MelvinSchlubman
