Master Data Management and the Top 10 Business Priorities in 2009 (Part 1)

I was recently referred to the Gartner EXP Worldwide Survey of more than 1500 CIO’s by a newsletter from DMReview.

According to the survey, IT spending in 2009 is expected to be flat as companies are investing in some areas and pulling back in others.  Further, according to the survey, the Top 10 Business Priorities in 2009 are:

1. Business process improvement
2. Reducing enterprise costs
3. Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness
4. Attracting and retaining new customers
5. Increasing the use of information/analytics
6. Creating new products or services (innovation)
7. Targeting customers and markets more effectively
8. Managing change initiatives
9. Expanding current customer relationships
10. Expanding into new markets and geographies

The overall theme of the survey is that CIO technology priorities will concentrate on gaining more value out of existing assets.

As the purpose of Master Data Management and Customer Data Integration is to help organizations realize more value out of its existing data assets, I thought it would be a good idea to discuss how CDI/MDM fits in with The Top 10 Business Priorities in 2009.

Today, I will focus on a couple of the Top Business Priorities for 2009 and how they relate to CDI/MDM and tomorrow I will finish commenting on the remaining Priorities.

Priority #1 Business process improvement

The other Priorities in the Gartner Survey are specific areas of Business Process Improvements.  My comments on these specific areas address how CDI/MDM software’s ability to properly count and to utilize information from multiple data sources can play an important role in determining what business processes to improve and how to go about doing so. 

Priority #2 Reducing enterprise costs

I recently posted a blog entry, Master Data Management and Rightsizing the Business, on this very subject.  In summary, matching and linking using a CDI/MDM solution’s numbering schema is the key to generating proper counts, such as number of customers and prospect, and querying information from separate data sources.  This information can help determine the maximum expense consolidation to manage profitability. (How many sales reps, service personnel, service locations, etc. do I need?)

Priority #3:  Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness

In a previous post, I had written, Increase Effectiveness with a Common ID.  In summary, CDI/MDM systems enable reports using information from separate data sources that are more accurate with proper counting.  This enables better planning and decision making.

Priority #4:  Attracting and retaining new customers

CDI/MDM can help attract and retain new customer in several ways.  Here are just a couple of examples:

1. If the prospect is somehow related (subsidiary, division, other location, etc.) to an existing customer, the system can link the prospect with the current customer enabling sales and marketing to use the existing relationship to help with the new sale. 

2. If the prospect has had contact with customer service, the solution’s Single Customer View will enable the sales and marketing team to see the information that is correlated with the prospect and use it in order to help close the sale. 

3. Analysis across multiple data sources can help understand your customer profiles and trends to develop programs and campaigns to obtain and retain customers.