Implementing an MDM Solution
The bank decides to implement an MDM
solution with a Master Data Repository and
a supertype-subtype master data schema.
The supertype entity, nested in the Master
Data Repository, is Person. The bank
purposely didn’t make the supertype Customer because customer doesn’t reach high
enough—a bank employee or a vendor can also be a customer. The bank is trying
to eliminate the informational silos and has
embraced the concept of master data at the
highest level. Therefore, all people associated
with the bank—employees, customers, and
vendors—will be listed in the Supertype
table. Each of the subtype entities will contain additional information that’s relevant to
the associated application. For example, the
subtype for home mortgage loans will contain connections to a person’s home address,
and the subtype for commercial loans will
contain connections to the customer’s
business address. In each case, a person has
a single identifier by which she or he is
known in the Master Data Repository and
in each of the applications. At the end of
the day, when the applications transfer their
transactions to the Historical-Analytical
System, the analysts will have an accurate
and complete view of each customer.
Getting an unfragmented view of customers is especially important in the customer relationship management (CRM)
arena, in which companies are vying for
customer loyalty. Automatic rewards programs are designed to reinforce customer
loyalty. Because qualification programs for
rewards are based on the amount of business
the customer does with the company, companies need to be able to consistently track
customer activity across all departments of
the company. Without being able to keep
track of a customer’s activities, a company is powerless to differentiate services according
to customer loyalty.
Don’t Miss Any More Business
Opportunities
Incomplete, inaccurate, and fragmented data
costs companies every day in lost opportunities, diminished revenues, and time spent
trying to reconcile discrepancies found in
the corporate data stores. Even Microsoft
has jumped on board the MDM train.
According to a report in DM Review (dated
July 2006), Microsoft has selected a third-party software package, Initiate Systems’
Initiate Enterprise Integrator, to help it
create an internal global data infrastructure.
Microsoft has cited that it needs to integrate
its internal data with external data into a
single, trusted source. Doesn’t that sound
familiar?