Because now is the time to invest in your data

Manish Sood is its CTO, founder and president Reltioa modern cloud-native SaaS core data management (MDM) platform.

Data has become every company’s most valuable asset, a reality that hit home during the pandemic. If an organization was not already “digital first”, the benefits of doing so were quickly apparent. Customers, sellers, employees and suppliers expect a seamless “Amazon-like” experience in almost every interaction. As organizations continue to play catch-up on the digital front, however, recent market challenges and slower growth prospects are adding more complexity to these efforts.

That’s why there’s no better time than now to invest in your business data. In these challenging times, there are two critical reasons to invest in your data—improving organizational efficiency and managing risk through enhanced data protection and compliance.

Gain efficiency and reduce costs with unified, reliable data

The key to any successful digital transformation is producing high-quality, reliable information—the kind that turns your data into your most valuable asset. High-quality, reliable information about your customers, products, vendors and assets is the key ingredient to successfully transforming operations and driving business value. Poor data quality, on the other hand, costs organizations on average $12.9 million per year.

Treating data as a strategic asset eases that pain. Cloud master data management addresses this by collecting data from hundreds of internal and third-party sources and feeding operational systems with real-time, high-quality aggregated data. With an API-first approach, high-quality trusted data can be made available to every business application, digital business process, automation pipeline, analytics analysis, and data science solution without replacing legacy systems, potentially saving money. With adaptable and intelligent processes, worker productivity can increase as there is usually less manual work involved. Decision quality and operational speed increase because higher quality data is fed into analytics systems, resulting in better and faster decisions. It also reduces the need for manual review of recommendations before they are implemented, reduces costs (digital self-service is cheaper than a call center) and increases the speed of M&A integration as systems are easier to connect with reliable data in them .

I have worked closely with many large organizations on modern MDM solutions and have seen how they have improved their efficiency and reduced their IT spend. For example, one of our IT customers saved $12 million over five years by replacing a legacy MDM system with a modern MDM solution. A multinational life sciences client saved over $3.6 million in infrastructure costs. The business impact or benefit of such data is a much greater return on investment across all development, efficiency and compliance functions.

Addressing Data Security and Privacy Regulations

As more organizations move to the cloud, data security needs to be as good as or better than on-premises-based systems — whether public, private or hybrid clouds. Data breaches continue to be a grim reality in today’s digital age. In fact, data breaches hit a record high 2021increasing by 68% year-on-year.

Organizations must also integrate support for growing and increasingly stringent global compliance regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). New privacy laws, the removal of third-party cookies and the new “opt-out of tracking” feature in Apple’s iOS create significant challenges for companies that use digital footprints for marketing and other customer activities.

A modern MDM solution can help organizations manage these risks by creating a universal identity.

The fragmented and siled nature of customer data makes it difficult to gain a complete picture of the customer relationship. There are many examples of potential fraud that sometimes go undetected. For example, a health care company may reimburse claims for a person who has died. Modern MDM technology can detect anomalies in customer data to detect and prevent fraud. Having the “single source of truth” that modern MDM provides helps uncover fraud patterns, while also improving visibility of potential threats through cross-checking and continuous learning.

Modern MDM technology also simplifies privacy compliance with built-in support for GDPR and CCPA with collaborative workflows for consent changes across systems. Compliance and privacy are at the forefront of customer commitment to maintain consumer trust and avoid fines. Inaccurate information could cause a pharmaceutical company to unknowingly continue to deliver drug samples to a doctor’s office, for example, even though the doctor no longer holds a valid state license.

You can build customer loyalty with respect and engagement based on their consent, while ensuring legal compliance and delivering personalized experiences in a way that customers can accept. Modern MDM technology also helps improve security processes by capturing and maintaining privacy and consent preferences in a single customer profile for all engagement channels.

Make high-quality, reliable data the hero of your digital transformation

Companies that view data as a corporate asset are more likely to reap the benefits of data in strategic decision-making, according to the industry expert. Doug Lenny. So how does a company create a culture where data literacy is ingrained in its DNA and the organization embraces data-driven decision making? There are three areas companies can focus on to get started:

• Civilization: Ensuring data policy is understood, promoting data literacy, and encouraging employees to find ways to use data in their decision-making all contribute to a strong data culture.

• Strategy: Having an internal advocate, such as a chief data officer, helps drive data into corporate strategy, ultimately drives company direction, and enables new policies, products and customer engagement models.

• Innovation: Data gives the business a view of what worked, how it worked, and the impact decisions had on the bottom line. A combined approach – including internal and external data sources – should lead to improvements in everything an organization does.

With a connected, accurate, and real-time view, your organization can effectively drive the business processes needed to implement transformational initiatives, such as delivering an omnichannel experience, launching new products and services, or seamlessly complying with privacy preferences data. A good database is vital for enabling transformational business initiatives. And now is the time to invest in data.

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