IBM Software

A Journey to Adaptive MDM

What is Master Data? Why is it Important?
A Journey to Adaptive MDM

Contents • Improving customer service and customer intimacy

– gleaning a better understanding of the breadth and depth of
2 MDM Business Drivers and Business Value customer relationships and making that information readily
4 MDM is a Journey available to help increase customer retention and loyalty.
• Lowering operational costs – improving operating
7 IBM MDM Portfolio – An Adaptive MDM Solution
efficiencies and reducing costs through better quality master
data that enables optimized business processes.
Master data management (MDM) is a top priority for many • Improving strategic decision making and business agility
organizations as they aim to deliver and leverage trusted – using single trusted views to improve the effectiveness of
business information. Master data – high-value information strategic decisions.
such as customer, supplier, partner, product, materials and • Entering new markets, introducing new products, gaining
employee data – is critical for addressing business problems new customers – providing single trusted views to the
and is at the heart of every business transaction, application people, processes & applications that most affect revenue,
and decision. profit and customer insight.
• Complying with regulatory requirements and reducing
The problem is that these data are often incomplete, missing, risk – using trusted master data to improve regulatory
duplicated, or inaccurate, are growing exponentially, and are compliance processes that depend on accurate representations
typically scattered across the enterprise in heterogeneous of data to function properly.
application silos. The result is that many business processes are
inefficient, ineffective and costly, increasing organizational risk. The business demands above and the business drivers for
To make better business decisions, improve profitability, MDM in general span four key areas: revenue growth, cost
leverage relationships and reduce risk, companies need to efficiency, agility, and regulatory compliance or risk
provide an accurate trusted view of important data and make it management.
available to all key business processes across the enterprise.

IBM is a market leader in delivering adaptive MDM solutions MDM Increases Revenue Growth
that support an organization’s short and long-term strategic MDM implementations provide better, cleaner, more accurate and
vision for solving business and IT challenges associated with complete data about customers and the products they purchase to
poor quality master data. This white paper will discuss the help companies increase revenues in a number of ways.
• Enabling cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and lead-passing
business drivers and business value that can be derived through
the master data management journey, describe the capabilities across channels and lines of business.
• Supporting new points of contact and channels and customer
characteristics of an adaptive MDM solution, and provide an
overview of the IBM MDM portfolio. experience improvements by delivering consistent information
and messages across channels from the web to mobile, call
centers and storefronts.
MDM Business Drivers and Business Value
• Enabling customized offers and experiences to customers
An effective MDM strategy can assist organizations in
based on their preferences, demographics or purchase history.
responding quickly and easily to existing and changing business
• Facilitating faster times to market than competitors for new
needs. Some of the most common business demands that
products and services.
MDM can assist with include:
• Identifying high-value customers, households, relationships

• Cross-sell and up-sell – increasing wallet share and between customers, and hierarchies to reduce churn and ensure
profitability of existing customers through better and more consistent levels of customer service across all channels.
complete information about customers and their relationships.

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MDM Improves Cost Efficiency

Reducing costs by automating business processes is a key A leading telecommunications company leveraged
business driver for MDM. IBM MDM solutions to introduce products to
• Decreasing the number of multiple mailings sent to the same market faster than its competitors and increase
customer or household by better recognizing customers, who revenue – time to market was reduced by two
they are related to, and who they may share an address with,
to allow organizations to implement targeted mailing weeks and potential revenue increased by more
strategies, reduce mailing costs and improve brand image and than $10M.
customer service.
• Ensuring mergers or acquisitions processes run smoothly by
efficiently integrating legacy information systems and data from
the acquired company, and analyzing and rationalizing data, so
A leading software manufacturer deployed IBM
that they can be leveraged by all systems and operating units MDM to increase customer retention – customer
across the enterprise to make better business decisions. churn was reduced by 5% and cross-sell and
• Streamlining the onboarding of new customers, products and
suppliers into the systems already deployed by the acquiring up-sell revenue increased by 10%.
company, so that customers and suppliers receive excellent
ongoing customer service and support, and products and services
are delivered efficiently by the newly combined organization. A leading electronics manufacturer decreased
data entry errors from 5% to 0.1% with its IBM
MDM Enhances Business Agility
MDM increases the agility of IT systems to enable organizations
MDM deployment – realizing cost savings of €2
to better meet the demands of new business channels. million per year and reducing the time to create
• Responding to changing consumer preferences and methods
and maintain product information by up to 50%.
of interacting such as using a smart phone to review bank
statements or check in for a flight.
• Accommodating rapid business growth, and the large amounts A leading bank implemented IBM MDM to
of new data it creates, while eliminating or preventing manual
prevent duplicate customer records – identifying a
processes, efficiently managing growing data volumes, and
decreasing duplicate, incomplete or inaccurate data. 10% duplication rate in existing client data and
• Enabling existing systems to scale or new systems to be reducing it to less than 1%, which resulted in
brought online quickly because they can already access
accurate and complete data from a single location, obviating
millions of dollars in annual cost savings
the need to build new interfaces to acquire or cleanse data.
• Providing organizations with valuable insight about why they
are growing rapidly, whom their most important new
customers are, and what products are delivering the greatest
value, so that they can leverage that information to continue
to grow while focusing limited resources on the highest
profitability areas of the company.

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 A Journey to Adaptive MDM

MDM Streamlines Regulatory Compliance

MDM can help organizations streamline the processes of
A leading retailer deployed IBM MDM in two complying with changing and evolving internal security policies,
phases. Phase one improved customer experience by customer privacy preferences and government regulations such
providing advanced customer and household as Sarbanes Oxley, Health Information Privacy and
Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm Leach Bliley (GLB), and
recognition capabilities, and increased patient Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) watch lists.
safety within its pharmacy operations by reducing
MDM systems make it easy to:
errors related to inconsistencies and inaccuracies in
Add external data sources, such as the OFAC watch list.
patient data. Phase two enabled the retailer to •

• Introduce new data fields that indicate whether someone has

market programs and point customers to locations opted in or out, to support GLB compliance or customer
that offer relevant services by mastering additional privacy preferences.
• Add a domain that provides access to information in a newly
data domains (prescribers, products and locations) required code table.
that resolve customers to prescribers, to products
and services, and to locations. MDM is a Journey
Entering new markets, and financial and legislative demands
put increasing pressure on organizations. Many IBM customers
A leading health insurance company initially are deploying enterprise-wide MDM solutions to help them
meet these demands.
deployed IBM MDM to reduce costs, by
IBM customers that have already begun their MDM journey
consolidating source systems, and improve service,
have realized some significant gains. Manufacturers are doing a
by enabling provider self-service for checking status better job managing their supply chains. Healthcare providers
of claims and reducing the time and costs of are delivering more accurate and comprehensive patient
records. National, state and local governments are providing a
manually auditing claims against a provider’s more complete view of citizen information and serving their
negotiated contracts. The company’s multi-year citizens better.
MDM strategy evolved over time and it added However, these organizations have also realized that MDM is
new goals to increase revenue opportunities by not a destination but a journey. Organizations are not static.
Environments and goals change over time due to changing
improving marketing and customer acquisition.
technical and business requirements. As a result, many
The health insurer is now in the process of building organizations will want to adapt their MDM deployments to:
an application on top of its MDM infrastructure to • Address new and wider sets of business requirements.
enable provider referrals. In the future it plans to • Enable different deployment and implementation architecture
expand MDM to include member data. options.
• Expand beyond customer and product data into other data
and relationships inherent across those data.
• Provide access to information rich systems for broader use.

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Organizations need an adaptive MDM solution that supports Provide Flexible Deployment and Implementation
their short- and long-term strategic visions for solving business Options
and IT challenges resulting from poor data quality. Business value drives MDM requirements and pace of
adoption. As a result, adaptive MDM solutions should be based
Characteristics of an Adaptive MDM on an architecture that supports adding incremental value over
time and enables an organization to begin its deployment with
Solution
one architectural style and migrate to a different approach as
Address a Wide Set of Business Requirements Within business needs require.
and Across Industries
To improve business processes and address common To determine the best architectural style to meet its needs, an
challenges, an organization must reduce its risk of having bad organization needs to answer the following questions:
data. Thus, the most important characteristic of an adaptive
1. Is the organization made up of a collection of highly
MDM solution is to provide access to an accurate and
independent business units or is it dominated by strong,
complete view of data that ensures better business decisions. In
centralized governance and decision-making?
addition, adaptive MDM solutions need to:
2. Who or what systems own the data? Note that this may
• Demonstrate value quickly – provide a way for organizations change over time and an MDM solution must adapt.
to master 2-3 systems across 1-2 data objects rapidly and 3. Are there political, security or privacy reasons that prohibit
immediately begin to demonstrate the business benefits of the the centralization of data? Or, is centralization key to
initial deployment. governance of the entire initiative?
• Support enterprise standards – prevent the need to spend 4. Will the primary function of the MDM deployment be to
unnecessary time and incur expenses to build proprietary systems. assemble composite views and provide accurate
• Grow with the business – expand to meet changing functional identification, or to serve as a repository of operational and
and data needs, rather than requiring rebuilding or ripping transactional applications? Or both?
and replacing. 5. Does the organization want to leverage MDM to improve
• Understand and leverage relationships in data – identify existing processes or applications, or create new business-
customer and vendor management opportunities that weren’t changing processes or applications?
obvious before. 6. Are there plans to add additional source systems over time or
• Increase productivity of IT and business teams – enable teams retire or consolidate source systems?
to focus on strategic business decisions rather than on whether
An organization’s answers to all of these questions are likely to
or not they have accurate data.
change over time due to changes in funding, ownership,
• Offer expertise across a broad range of industries – financial
governance and business processes. Therefore, an MDM
services, insurance, communications, government, healthcare,
solution must be flexible, scalable and enable multiple or
retail, hospitality, manufacturing, and energy and utilities.
hybrid deployment options. In addition, the MDM solution
should be able to withstand any performance requirements,
effectively handle growth and change, and successfully meet
pressing business challenges and opportunities.

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A Journey to Adaptive MDM

Enable Information-Rich Views of Data Operations Research and Development); and persons, objects,
Adaptive MDM solutions play a significant role in the lifecycle locations and events (POLE) in government.
of data and its governance, and create a unique and complete
version of the truth that no other system in the organization An adaptive MDM solution also needs to support multiple
holds. However, MDM is only one piece of a broader domains, understand cross-domain relationships of data and be
enterprise information management solution that also includes able to link to additional content as needed.
business intelligence, information integration and content
management. MDM solutions enable businesses to make better IBM MDM Portfolio – An Adaptive MDM
decisions because they not only provide access to complete rich Solution
views of master data, but also to additional information-rich IBM is a recognized market leader in delivering MDM
content such as analytics, unstructured content and data capabilities via the IBM Master Data Management portfolio.
warehouses. Given that 80% of an organization’s data is IBM offers an adaptive MDM solution that addresses a wide
unstructured, it is important that an MDM solution provides a set of business requirements within and across industries,
clear understanding of unstructured data, as well as master provides flexibility in deployment options and implementation
data, and enables views into how they relate. styles, and supports the ability to migrate from one style to
another during the MDM journey. With the IBM portfolio,
Adaptive MDM should provide: customers can master the most common data types – customer
• A pre-configured bridge that links unstructured data, such as and product data – and other types of unique and industry-
images or documents, to their corresponding master records. specific data domains.
• Automatic updates as unstructured content changes or is By delivering a single version of truth of an organization’s
manipulated. critical data assets and their relationships, and by supporting a
• Information-rich views across multiple channels. For example, wide and varied set of business requirements, IBM MDM helps
state or local governments may want to provide a way for all organizations produce better business outcomes and minimize
agencies to access an image of a citizen’s birth certificate, so cost and risk.
that the citizen only has to provide the information once and
it is available to any agency that requires it. As MDM projects grow and evolve, the portfolio of IBM
MDM technologies can be deployed separately or together to
fulfill long-term strategic requirements and generate even
Master Common, Unique and Industry-Specific Data
Types greater business value. The IBM portfolio includes IBM®
Most organizations start by mastering customer or product InfoSphere™ MDM Server, IBM® Initiate® Master Data
data, but, after seeing the benefits of their initial MDM Service™ and IBM® InfoSphere™ MDM Server for PIM.
deployment, soon realize there is value in mastering other
unique and industry-specific data types. MDM solutions IBM MDM Portfolio Highlights
should enable easy and rapid development and deployment of • Pre-packaged solution offerings
the most common data types, such as customer, product and • Multiple solutions to meet all business needs
account, other general business types, such as location and • Cross-industry experience with MDM
transactions, and custom domains, for instance those needed to • Application centric with a focus on business process
meet regulatory requirements, such as code tables. In addition, • Rapid time to value
MDM must address specific industry needs and support • World’s largest MDM customers and implementations
industry standard data models: patients and providers in
healthcare; ACORD in insurance (Association for Cooperative

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The full IBM MDM portfolio supports companies that have a

mandate for rapid organizational growth by providing them
IBM InfoSphere MDM Server
with the fastest time to market, lowest total cost of ownership,
and the ability to adapt and grow with their business IBM InfoSphere MDM Server is a physical master repository that
delivers a single version of truth of an organization’s critical data entities
environment. IBM MDM offerings have the broadest set of
– customer, product, supplier and more – helping them make better
capabilities to ensure that organizations have what they need to decisions and achieve better business outcomes. With InfoSphere
define, maintain and deliver master data, and run, grow and MDM Server, organizations can easily centralize and manage multiple
data domains, across a wide set of business requirements, wherever
transform their businesses.
trusted data is required.

About IBM MDM IBM Initiate Master Data Service

The IBM MDM portfolio delivers a single, unified, trusted
IBM Initiate Master Data Service is a virtual master registry that
version of truth about an organization’s critical entities – assembles a single view of master data and their relationships from
customer, supplier, product and more. Armed with this single, across existing systems, and delivers these views whenever and
trusted view, organizations can make better decisions and wherever they are needed. By helping organizations unlock the value of
their data assets and elevate the effectiveness of their most important
improve business outcomes – higher revenue, better customer or
business processes, IBM Initiate Master Data Service enables
citizen satisfaction, improved patient care, lower cost and risk. organizations to improve business processes and results, lower costs,
With IBM MDM, organizations can understand their core reduce risk and meet current and future business needs.
master data (customers, patients, products, etc.) at all touch
points, improve cross and up-sell, optimize the value of ERP, IBM InfoSphere MDM Server for PIM
CRM, analytics and warehouse systems, support governance InfoSphere MDM Server for PIM allows companies to create a single,
initiatives and make business processes more effective. up-to-date repository of product and other core information that can be
used throughout their organization for strategic business initiatives.
For more information, visit: Customers using MDM Server for PIM benefit from its flexible data model,
workflow collaboration tools, data aggregation and syndication
www.ibm.com/software/data/master-data-management
capabilities, and granular access privileges to represent their specific
information needs and business objectives.

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