All Master Data Management (MDM) activities should produce real business benefits. If not, you should stop them as they are only consuming time, money and other resources.
In this post, I’m going to talk about three elements from my technique of Multi-Dimensional MDM that will bring real business benefits to any enterprise that implements them, these are Party, Party Role and Party Relationship.
Click here to watch a video version of this post.
All business in every enterprise is done with another Party. This Party could be an individual or it could be another enterprise.
For example, when an enterprise sells a product to another person or organisation (another Party), then that Party takes on the Party Role of Customer.
Likewise, if an enterprise purchases something from another person or organisation (another Party), then that Party takes on the Party Role of Supplier.
These Party Roles are very important and very powerful because they enable you to hold Customer or Supplier (Party) data once and only once. Let me explain how they achieve this.
Imagine that a telecoms company sells services to a company called ABC and also purchases marketing services from ABC. In nearly all present day enterprises, this would immediately create duplicate information about ABC in (at least) two separate information systems – one being the sales system and one being the purchasing system. From the time this happens, the data in both systems begins to diverge – and this is repeated for hundreds, if not thousands of party records for any enterprise of any reasonable size.
This is where the power of the concept of Party comes in. Instead of creating one record for ABC in the sales system and then another record for ABC in the purchasing system, the Party concept creates a single record for Party in a centralised Party System and links are made to this single record from the sales and purchasing systems – in which the Party is now merely playing the Roles of ‘Customer’ and ‘Supplier’.
This approach totally eliminates duplication of Party data and maintains its integrity. Whenever a change is made to Party data in the Party System, that change is immediately reflected in all other systems that link to the Party System.
Let’s look at another role that a Party can play. Whenever an enterprise employs a person, they immediately take on the Role of Employee. However, instead of creating a record for the person in the HR system, a record is created in the Party System and the HR system links to this central record.
This structure is very powerful and critical in some enterprises. Insurance companies are a good example as here, a person could legitimately play very many roles, such as employee, purchaser, guarantor, beneficiary, witness, litigant, defendant, etc.
Having the concept of Party Roles also enables the enterprise to clearly see all of the commercial relationships that the enterprise has with other Parties and so explore possible new commercial opportunities with these Parties.
Another really powerful structure that goes with Party and Party Role is Party Relationship.
Knowing what the relationship is between Parties offers benefits ranging from new commercial opportunities to those of minimising risk for the enterprise.
On the sales side, knowing about relationships between parties with whom you currently do business gives you a really powerful opportunity of cross-selling or of consolidating your purchasing.
On the other side of the coin, knowing the relationship between parties can also minimise risk for the enterprise. For example, if you’re selling services to businesses and they’re all running behind on their payments (individually this might not be a big risk) but, if you can see that they are all related to each other and they’re all running behind, then you might think that this is not sustainable and pull the plug.
I’ve just gone quickly through these examples but will be covering them in much greater detail in the Master Class on Business-Driven Multi-Dimensional MDM that I’m running at the end of April 2107. This Master Class is designed both for business executives and MDM consultants and practitioners. It’s all about the business benefits of MDM, which enable executives to see what these benefits can be and enable practitioners and consultants to better realise how they can deliver these benefits to the executive.
Click on this link to find out more about this Master Class or to book your session.
It’s $27 to enrol. I guarantee you will get a really good return on your investment in terms of enlightening information and powerful techniques. If you don’t feel you have, then I will, in fact, refund your money in full.
In my next post, I will tell you about two other very powerful elements from Multi-Dimensional MDM that bring real commercial benefits to any enterprise that implements them.
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