The reality is different in many companies, because the IT landscape has grown historically and is characterized by siloed data. Accordingly, the quality of the master data is poor and heterogeneous. Although quality measures are repeatedly implemented, the effect does not last long, since the master data quality quickly erodes again. This is usually because the effects are dealt with and not the cause. Rather, the multiple maintenance of master data in data silos and the manual consolidation and evaluation are time-consuming, error-prone and confusing. That is why there are often different reports and results on the same topic. This in turn leads to the fact that there is no uniform view of the facts and the company loses confidence in its own master data. The decisions made in this way are suboptimal or simply wrong. The resulting risks are real and lead to repeated losses. In addition, the operational processes based on the Master Data suffer, the course of which is flawed and disrupted. This leads to defective products and services, which are reflected in recourse claims and the occurrence of product liability. The financial losses are often enormous and occur only after a time delay, which makes them particularly insidious. To cut a long story short, if you can’t rely on your master data, every decision you make is simply an opinion. You can be right, but you don’t have to. How it ends is determined solely by chance.
To ensure that your operational and strategic decisions do not become a game of chance, you need master data integrity and master data competence in your company. These two basic prerequisites always go hand in hand with excellent master data quality. The first step is to improve and stabilize the integrity of your master data, and, in turn, the reliability and trustworthiness. In this case, the previous siloed data and data sources are brought together in a central database. On the one hand, this eliminates duplicates and redundancy and, on the other hand, creates Golden Records, i.e. master data records that are complete, correct and up-to-date. In this way, you also get a permanently high data quality, which can also be controlled more easily by merging it into a database. Furthermore, by consolidating Master Data, you finally get an overview of all the information available in your company. In future, you will receive all reports, analyses and interpretations from a centralized, common and reliable master database.
As a result, we are already at the next and last step, the master data competence. It is all about handling the master data correctly in your company and also providing the right tools for non-technical users. Because the best master data is of no use to you if only your IT and experts have access to analyze and interpret it. In order to give all employees the access to your master data that you require, you should opt for an all-in-one master data management software that combines the database, data storage, data hub, work system, workflow and reporting tool. This is the only way to continuously check your master data and at the same time ensure the required high master data quality. If the Master Data Management System additionally follows a no-code approach and has an intuitive, user-friendly user interface, you can make your master data easily accessible to non-technical users. This is because in this way, employees who are not IT-savvy are digitally supported at every step in the maintenance of master data, cooperation, reporting and analysis of master data. This creates a common, cross-departmental understanding of master data in your company that refers to a centralized, complete, reliable, homogeneous and up-to-date master data base. Since access to master data is easy, it is used for analysis and then interpreted. The more this approach prevails, the more often data-driven insights are used for decisions in your company. Which is ultimately the goal for any data-driven organization that builds its success on data-driven insights.
