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Ext. PublicationMaster the Data, Dodge the Drama | Podcast
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On this Weaver: Beyond the Numbers episode, our host Morgan Page explores master data management with real-world examples, like GE Aviation, to understand how aligning data across departments can lead to significant cost savings and improved customer service.
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Detailed Description of Weaver: Beyond the Numbers, Master the Data, Dodge the Drama
00:00:00
Morgan: Howdy, y’all. Welcome back.
Today, we’re going to be talking about mastering the data and dodging the drama.
00:00:07
We’ve all been there. We’re sitting in a meeting. Two different people pull out reports that are supposed to be over the same information, but the data is different.
And we spend more of our time and effort in that meeting arguing about whose number is right and less time discussing how do we move forward from here.
00:00:29
Morgan: And so, when you think about your organization and enhancing organizational efficiency, master data management is your secret play.
These are not small projects, and I’ll be honest, they’re not easy.
00:00:42
Morgan: But if you want to be able to make that double play instead of that single out, you need to focus on master data management.
00:00:50
Morgan: And so, what is master data management?
When you’re thinking about your enterprise and your organization, where your data lives, it lives spread across hundreds of applications, spreadsheets, SharePoint sites, everywhere.
00:01:06
Morgan: And whenever you’re operating at scale, each organization has its own sources of truth. But those sources of truth don’t always align.
And it’s usually not intentional.
00:01:20
Morgan: Oftentimes, it’s a function of how the different applications process the information.
And so, when we’re talking about data management and master data management, it’s an alignment exercise to pull information from those source data locations to define what is my system of record and then push that data back out to say, here is our actual master data.
00:01:51
Morgan: So, any report, which reports are where we want all people speaking the same language, is based off master data management.
Now if you’ve gone down your BI journey, you can think about master data management as what’s feeding your gold layer or your reporting layer of your BI environment.
00:02:10
Morgan: So, I just want to give you a couple of examples.
00:02:12
GE Aviation actually put this out on their master data management journey.
So, they went through and aligned everybody so they could spend more time focused on going forward rather than arguing with whose number was right.
And more importantly, deciding Sally Sue’s is right and maybe that’s not the right number we needed to be making decisions off of.
00:02:36
Morgan: The impact of that was they saved millions of dollars, direct bottom line contribution as well as time savings, reducing the back and forth on whose number is right and whose isn’t.
00:02:51
Morgan: Another company was able to reduce their customer service number of headcount by consolidating product data because no longer did they have to go and investigate or ask across silos of people, but they were able to effectively pull that information, also resulting in a higher Net Promoter Score because the response when individuals called in was so much quicker and more effective.
00:03:23
Morgan: So, when we’re thinking about master data management, the first thing is what’s our data dilemma?
How often are we sitting in meetings where people are having data discrepancies, data issues across departments?
00:03:37
Morgan: Being able to sit back and go, how does master data management solve this?
So, when you’re thinking about master data, think about your core data sets that everything revolves around.
00:03:48
Morgan: The easy one to reference is your vendor master file and your customer master file.
Is your customer information the same across all of your areas? It’s probably not.
And if you look into that, I bet you’ll find immediate value and opportunity to save.
00:04:07
Morgan: So, for your master data management starter pack, what I would ask your leadership team is where do we most commonly have errors between reports?
We probably have a master data management issue.
00:04:26
Morgan: Where do we commonly have to aggregate information across multiple sources that has a lot of manual input to be able to get to the reporting we need, often a master data management issue.
00:04:41
Morgan: And then my favorite one, after you identify those, just ask, what would this solve for us from a business process issue if we were able to align this information and spend more time focused on forward rather than if the information is correct?
00:04:59
Morgan: Thank you for joining me today. I hope you have a great time on your master data management journey.
As always, feel free to drop me a note if there’s a topic you’d love for me to discuss on the next podcast.
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