One of the reasons for Amazon’s stunning success is their vast number of products – 564 million in the US alone according to the latest count. This makes Amazon more than an online shop; it’s a search engine for shopping.

As an MDM manager at a retailer, you probably want to imitate that success. This means, you have to launch new products quickly and reliably. This is only possible by means of product data syndication. The obstacle for a fast product launch is usually not logistics or even really about the physical product; it’s about the processing of that physical product’s master data twin.

Established companies know the number of resources it takes to push a product through development: sketching and designing, numerous trips through R&D, distribution and promotion. Furthermore, as competition for customer attention increases, agile product development and sales processes will become critical.

For online retailers, one of the biggest challenges that directly impact the customer experience is inaccurate product data. If the image doesn’t match the description, reviews aren’t associated correctly, dimensions are inaccurate, or the description doesn’t live up to the actual product then chances are good that the product will be returned. This leads to additional costs for freight and extra handling and maybe even loss of customers. By consolidating and mastering your product data, product returns can be reduced by 25%, creating tremendous opportunities for cost savings and improving customer loyalty.

Being an MDM manager certainly means being in demand and at the center of attention. The reason is as simple as it is awe-inspiring: as an MDM manager, you’re leading the charge for providing high-quality data, developing the master data strategy and overseeing system acquisitions and integrations. You collaborate with a variety of stakeholders – planners, program managers, product developers, marketing professionals, supply chain managers, senior management and executives. If your organization has a chief data officer (CDO), it’s likely your work contributes to the decisions that person is making.

If you’re like most organizations, chances are you are struggling to understand the connections found in your disparate silos of information. We live in a virtual, technologically advanced world, and the reliance on technology by both companies and their customers for conducting day-to-day transactions and interactions only continues to increase. The number of systems holding this critical data is vast and fragmented, each operating independently of one another. The challenge of identifying and reconciling data across these disparate and siloed systems makes creating a complete and accurate view of a company or customer almost impossible. This is because no single system contains this view across all departments or lines of business or is designed to manage the complete lifecycle of the data.

This week I, and Stibo Systems colleagues, attended NRF 2019: Retail’s Big Show in New York, where we listened to amazing sessions and spoke with various retailers – both domestic and international. These are my take-aways from one of the most significant retail events in the world.

Let me start by highlighting the one NRF topic that seemed to bind all the others together: data! Data and data management were hot topics and at the forefront of the business driven conversation. It seems there is now a better understanding of the need for high-quality data and good data management as the foundation for business success.

The return on investment (ROI) of master data management is a topic that keeps captivating people – in particular, those considering investing big in MDM. And with good reason. Because as is the case with all investments, people want to know: What’s the outcome? What will we get from the money we spend? It’s business logic. But nonetheless, the answer isn’t always straightforward as it isn’t necessarily easy to quantify the value of high quality data and smooth data processes.

With this in mind, here are a few helpful steps that can help you determine the ROI of a master data management implementation.

Does your IT architecture partly consist of legacy systems, citizen apps, shadow IT or deprecated systems? Here are some of the pros and cons that you should consider before retiring an IT system.

In my previous post, I discussed the next evolution of CRM, which involves using master data management (MDM) as the foundation to provide a comprehensive understanding of your target audiences. I covered data issues present in many CRMs today, including missing, antiquated and inaccurate data, and how MDM can help overcome them. In this post, I reveal the many ways complete, unified customer data improves business outcomes and delivers value to organizations and customers alike.

“The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” - Peter Drucker

Every day, businesses around the world deploy customer relationship management (CRM) in the hopes of selling faster and smarter, building engaging experiences, delivering personalized messages and more. Gartner estimated CRM software revenue reached $39.5 billion in 2017, overtaking database management systems revenue to become the largest software market globally.