Insights
5 Steps to Develop a Solid Business Case for MDM and PIM
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- Define Your Stakeholders
- Link The Initiative To Your (Digital) Strategy
- Identify Bottleneck(s)
- Rework Bottleneck(s) Into Business Drivers
- Scoring The Business Drivers
1. Define Your Stakeholders
Every successful MDM or PIM initiative begins with identifying and involving the right stakeholders across your organization. MDM and PIM impact various departments and functions, so securing commitment from and defining the added value for key decisionmakers is crucial.
MDM and PIM stakeholders include both business and IT representatives: Supply Chain Management, Category Managers, Procurement, Finance but also Data Management, IT, executive sponsors, and more. Each of these representatives plays a vital role in shaping the requirements and ensuring a successful implementation. Besides these internal stakeholders, customers and suppliers are also important stakeholders for building a business case.
2. Link The Initiative To Your (Digital) Strategy
It’s important to show that Master Data Management or PIM cannot be isolated, but are foundational elements to your company’s strategic decisions. As such, the initiative needs to be connected to your business case and organization’s digital strategy.
Examples of strategic alignment are:
- Digital Transformation: MDM and PIM help your digital initiatives by providing a solid data foundation and improve Digital Commerce.
- Customer Experience: MDM supports 360-degree customer views for personalization, whereas PIM improves the customer journey and experience through improved data quality.
- Operational Excellence: MDM and PIM drive efficiency in processes as well as cost reductions.
- Regulatory Compliance: MDM and PIM facilitate Data Governance, embedding stronger controls into your workflows.
For each connection, it’s important to explain how MDM or PIM supports your strategy in general and specific strategy programs that are running, how success will be measured and what the timeline is.
3. Identify Bottleneck(s)
The third step involves identifying bottlenecks that limit your performance. Bottlenecks can be related to:
- Processes: e.g. sequential processes, delays, inefficiencies (data going back and forth between departments) or lack of automated workflows.
- Data: e.g. duplicates, inconsistencies in units of measure, incomplete data, inconsistent data across systems or lack of data KPI’s or data guidelines.
- Systems: e.g. data scattered across many systems, not having fit-for-purpose systems, using ERP to manage customer profiles or extensive product data, inadequate or manual syncing of systems or lack of data quality controls and tooling/dashboards.
- Organization and governance: e.g. data maintenance scattered across departments, unclarity regarding responsibilities (no RACI), no/limited governance structures, unclear business & data definitions and lack of MDM/PIM support organization/capabilities.
There are some early warning signs for bottlenecks, which include: missed deadlines or growing backlogs, customer needs or complaints, employee frustration/burnout, too high operational costs due to delays and rework, inconsistent output and declining data quality, or compliance issues.
These bottlenecks do not just appear. There are different reasons they can appear, such as: scattered data, manual data entry and processing, reliance on outdated systems or gaps in the system landscape (e.g. no MDM or PIM solution), inefficient workflows, lack of people with the right data-DNA, unclarity in responsibilities or governance, or the immaturity of vendors that need to provide data.
Besides these bottlenecks, upward potential and opportunities should also be defined. How can data support the optimization of customer journeys, enable segmentation and personalization, facilitate growth through up- and cross sell, improve business insights and enable data-drive decision making?
4. Rework Bottleneck(s) Into Business Drivers
Once you have identified the bottlenecks and opportunities, you can start to transform them into business drivers for your MDM or Product Information Management initiative. This reframing helps your stakeholders to view MDM or PIM not just as a technical solution, but a strategic business initiative.
Common business drivers can be:
- Customer related: like omnichannel consistency, segmentation/personalization, reduction of returns, improved customer experience and customer loyality.
- Efficiency related: like reduction of manual and duplicate work, parallel workflows, improved time to market and increased agility.
- Decision making related: including improved insights and reporting, data driven decision making and growth.
- Growth related: like increased conversion rates, improved targeting, increase customer base, faster benefits from mergers.
- Security and compliance related: like GDPR compliance, address data related sustainability topics, improved reporting, risk reduction associated with data breaches and non-compliance.
Each bottleneck should be related to a corresponding business driver, including the impact it has.
5. Scoring The Business Drivers
Once your business drivers are identified, you can assess their importance and impact. This helps you to define the value of each business driver to your stakeholders. The most important things to monitor are financial impact, strategic alignment with your organization’s objectives, implementation timeline, and complexity and resource requirements.
The final step is to share the results with your stakeholders and get their support and commitment while presenting it to executive management.
Do You Want To Translate Your Business Challenges Into A Strong Use Case?
At Squadra, we help organizations turn complex data challenges into concrete opportunities. From identifying bottlenecks to linking MDM initiatives to your strategic goals — our experts are here to support you every step of the way.
Contact us to discuss your MDM ambitions and how we can help you to turn them into measurable results.
