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MDM PROJECTS TURN A hodgepodge of POORLY MANAGED DATA INTO SOMETHING that truly helps THE BUSINESS.
MANY OF TODAY'S cost-conscious food shoppers buy store brands - like Costco's Kirkland or Stop & Shop's Nature's Promise - rather than national brands. Industry figures show that nearly 1 out of 4 products bought in U.S. supermarkets last year was a private-label brand.
For Daymon Worldwide Inc., which helps retailers market private brands, the industry boom required a major overhaul of IT and business processes to support 5,000-plus suppliers, over 120 retailers and 500,000 products. "We've had to quickly change to stay ahead of the market and keep up with growth," says Abhishak Beniwal, senior director of IT.
A key step was to get control of the company's sprawling collection of product and supplier data, by using a set of processes and technologies called master data management (MDM).
Before Daymon began its MDM initiative last year, its product and supplier information was maintained by numerous people in 200 offices around the world, and each change had to be made directly in every line-of-business application.
Today, one centralized group validates the data, which flows to an MDM system from Kalido Ltd. The data is stored in an enterprise data warehouse and is routed to the appropriate line-of-business applications. Invalid or incomplete data is routed to the right individual in the business who can correct it, to maintain data quality.
Now, when a new product is introduced or new packaging is requested, the change is "a simple business exercise" that can be accomplished without touching operational systems, Beniwal says. Furthermore, the cost of managing supplier information has decreased, and Daymon can move into the types of advanced analytics that will enable it to capitalize on future growth opportunities in the private brand business, he says.
So, What Is MDM?
As companies such as Daymon tackle today's business challenges, many are facing the hard truth that they need to go back to the mountains of poorly managed customer, product, supplier and employee data that has accumulated over the years and make some sense of it. That's where MDM comes in.
In a recent survey of 131 companies by analyst firm information Difference Ltd., 42% of respondents said they had implemented...