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This post is the second installment of our 3-part series, where our founder and CTO Manish Sood share his insights and experience on all things data management. Did you miss part 1? You can catch it here. AMA With Manish Sood, CTO and Founder of Reltio (Part 1)
Master data management (MDM) is critically important in the business world because it helps organizations manage their most valuable asset in today's digital environment — data.
As Manish mentioned in part 1 of this series AMA With Manish Sood, CTO and Founder of Reltio Part 1, enterprises use as many as 300 systems to collect, process, and store data. Without a centralized repository that creates trusted data, the information becomes fragmented, scattered, and unusable. Additionally, incomplete or duplicated records skew analytics and affect the accuracy of data-driven decisions. The inability to manage data efficiently makes getting accurate answers to basic but impactful questions such as "who are my most profitable customers?" almost impossible.
In this installment, Manish discusses how Reltio MDM works hand-in-hand with customer data platforms (CDPs), how the MDM market will evolve in the next five years, and what C-level executives are talking about when it comes to data management.
If you missed it, make sure you listen to the entire AMA with Manish here:
Ask Me Anything With Manish Sood: How MDM Fits Into the Big Picture of Business Operations and Digital Transformation
MDMs are very mature in data integration, data quality, data stewardship, and governance. But CDPs are catching up on those capabilities. Meanwhile, CDPs are best for segmentation, activation, and analytics, but many MDMs are adding those functionalities. As the line blurs, how is Reltio positioned in this space?
Reltio is a multi-domain MDM platform. We can handle any entity — whether it's a B2B model with customer and contact profiles, product detail, location, or a B2C models with person data and households, or other types of information. We can support a wide range of applications in various industries and verticals.
For example, Reltio's flexible capabilities allow users to manage policy information in insurance, patient information in healthcare, and more. Unlike CDPs, Reltio can solve various challenges beyond the scope of marketing, which is the sole focus of most CDPs.
The purpose of a CDPs is to take prospects' information from different sources to activate audiences on various marketing platforms (e.g., social media.) For example, they enable you to apply the data to automation software and surface the right content at the right time to the right audience segment.
Let's say a multi-national retailer uses multiple CDPs across different geographies. If it operates in Japan, it has to use specific applications only available in that country. If it sells in China, they would want to communicate with the "super apps" platforms to implement marketing segmentation and customer activation. Then, it'll need a different marketing stack for the rest of the world.
This retailer has three different CDPs to activate customer information in various markets. At the top of them is a Reltio, which provides a single customer information hub to feed those marketing needs.
MDM platforms provide the foundation for enterprises to consolidate and unify data across multiple touchpoints. They serve as a single source of truth of information for CDPs or marketing automation systems downstream.
This foundation is key to delivering an omnichannel customer experience, which requires access to real-time data. The aggregated unified view available via Reltio makes such low-millisecond type response times possible. The application goes beyond marketing to support fulfillment processes, customer support workflows, and more.
To sum up, CDPs focus on a single use case while Reltio can support different applications across multiple lines of business. An MDM platform shares common master data and creates a single source of truth, so companies can trust the information whether it's from a CDP, CRM, ERP, or any other system.
Many analysts are adding requirements such as augmented data management and progressive stitching to the well-defined trajectory of traditional on-premise MDM platforms. What's your vision for the market in the next three to five years?
The number of systems and data sources used by enterprises will continue to rise rapidly, and so will the need for a single source of truth. As such, leading organizations are building core data sets to drive multiple business outcomes.
This core data set is provided by a platform like Reltio. It sits in the cloud and offers a data plane independent of applications. It's unaffected by the fast pace at which applications are introduced or phased out in an organization. The core data is the continuum that keeps you moving forward, regardless of what business processes you're enabling (e.g., finance, sales, service, e-commerce, mobile apps.)
This always-on, always-available core data set becomes a fluid asset. You can plug it into any and every process and experience now and in the future. A cloud-native MDM platform is a perfect vehicle for delivering these digital experiences since more processes have migrated to the cloud and the edge.
As business activities are no longer confined within the four walls of an enterprise, your data asset and "single source of truth" capabilities must also be available via the cloud and at the edge. This transition will accelerate in the next 5 to 10 years as the data plane becomes independent of the application plane.
Every business process will contribute to the core data set while consuming the information from it. Enterprises must have the capabilities to promote this transition, and Reltio is designed to support our customers through their digital transformation.
You have a lot of conversations with executives. What's top of mind for them when it comes to data management?
Data conversation has risen from the basement level to the C-suite level. Every company is talking about how strategic and critical data is for their business at the executive leadership level.
Why is that happening? Because data management is the single biggest friction point for every enterprise.
This takes us back to how Reltio got started — we aim to solve the challenge of managing and integrating numerous applications and minimizing the friction between these systems.
Organizations need to solve the problem by allowing fluid access to their data across various touchpoints. We talk to chief data officers, CIOs, and business owners on all fronts including the sales and marketing and the customer experience front. They all acknowledge that siloed data is the biggest friction point, and eliminating these silos is their top priority.
Companies need their CRM, ERP, or other applications critical to various business processes. In order to eliminate the silos of these data sources, you have to unify the information and make it available as an asset that every application and business process can tap into. This is the strong signal we're getting from C-suite-level leaders across the enterprise landscape.
Stay Tuned for More Insights
In the next installment of this series, Manish will share advice on navigating data conversations with senior executives, why Reltio launched a free MDM offering, and how Reltio plans to address data governance and data quality in its product roadmap.
Learn More with the Reltio Community
The Reltio Community is a great place to learn more about how to use the Reltio products and connect with Master Data Management peers. Rely on the expertise of Reltio partners, customers, and technical experts.