How DaaS Enables Real-time, High-volume Access to Current Master Data

In recent years, the importance of data has grown rapidly, making it a hotly debated topic. Countless articles are being written about the need for data, the importance of good data quality, and the necessary tooling for combining, analyzing and reporting structured and unstructured data in various modern data platforms, among other things. A data platform can be compared to a modern house where you can look in through different windows: a logistics window, a sales & marketing window, and so on. However, such a house needs to be built on a solid, well-thought-out foundation, also called the Master Data foundation.

The Context of MDM-DaaS  

In many organizations where, partly due to the increased importance of data-analytics, new technologies tumble over each other, it turns out to be a huge challenge to get the data foundation in order. On the one hand, this is because the (master) data is often managed across multiple applications and departments, which means that the data is not consistent and of good quality. On the other hand, there is still too much thinking in data silos and not enough thinking in integrated processes.

Fortunately, more and more organizations recognize the importance of a good data foundation and are working or looking to “create a single version of the truth” for their all-important data: their Master Data.

Master Data is the basic data that uniquely identifies a product, customer, supplier, location or other data type, which needs to be managed in one place (“system of record”) from where it is accessed to many other (consuming) systems and/or channels. Master Data is fundamental to driving primary business processes and data-driven decision making.

One aspect that does not always get enough attention is the importance of making Master Data easily accessible for large-scale use. This while many different applications need this Master Data as input, both to support operational processes (ERP, Warehouse Management, etc.) as well as for analytical and Machine Learning driven decision-making processes. In the digital age, instant availability and access (instant) to this business-critical Master Data is therefore essential. This usually does not involve the values of single fields, but real-time access to large amounts of data (at scale).

The Benefits of DaaS for Master Data Disclosure  

The transition to the cloud provides ideal opportunities to provide Data as a Service (DaaS), instant and at scale. With Master Data as a Service (MDM-DaaS), the goal is to make the right, relevant, and most up-to-date Master Data available in the right format and at the time it is needed, for whatever purpose and wherever it is needed.

MDM-DaaS is therefore an always-on service that allows applications to retrieve current Master Data, when needed, for example, for use in the internal application landscape or for disclosure through the various sales and marketing channels in order to optimize the Customer Journey. In many cases it will even be desirable to unlock some of this data, in a secure way, for external use. Think of a Supplier or Customer Portal, the Website where B2B or B2C

customers log in or the disclosure of, for example, product data to data pools or B2B customers.

Some companies use different terminology for MDM-DaaS, such as DataHub. However, the goals and principles are mostly identical.

In the past, MDM solutions were often strongly intertwined with one or more applications in the IT landscape. Often the master data was managed in the ERP system and accessed from there. In the increasingly complex system landscape with best-of-breed tour applications, the number of systems requiring the master data has increased significantly. Add to this the digitization agenda, the growing drive for improving analytics and data-driven decision making, and one understands that the positioning of MDM is substantially different than it was a few years ago. Information was previously often accessed through a growing palette of APIs on various, often partly obsolete, systems. Today, for example, product data is still often accessed from the servers of an ERP, PIM or MDM solution via specific APIs to an eCommerce platform, for example.

An MDM-DaaS solution provides real-time access to the most up-to-date Master Data of products, customers, suppliers, locations, assets, etc., is flexibly extensible, scalable, easy contains always up-to-date data through real-time synchronization. Through configurable APIs, this business-critical data is unlocked to other applications, processes and people who need this data and to external parties such as suppliers, partners and customers, without having a negative performance on the ERP, PIM or MDM solution.

At a time when the number of systems using Master Data in the system landscape continues to grow and large amounts of current and business-critical information must always be accessible for use, MDM-DaaS is becoming an increasingly important component in a state- of-the-art (integration/cloud) architecture.

What About You?  

Perhaps a good time to reassess how Master Data is stored, managed and accessed in your organization and how Master Data can contribute to your Data Monetization strategy by bundling and making packages of data available in a smart way. Whether you want to make money with your data, share it with suppliers, partners or customers, use the data to achieve improved efficiency or control of your processes or improve your company’s propositions, the combination of Master Data Management and DaaS can be an important step forward to further differentiate your company and in the realization of your business strategy.