Master data management or MDM is a way of efficiently managing the master data. This can be achieved by developing a solution to manage master data or by purchasing MDM tools already available in the market.

Need for master data management arises because traditionally different departments in an organisation may be it logistics business or any other business have been working in silos. They have continued to maintain their master and transaction data in isolation. Just assume a scenario that a customer record exists in accounts and purchase department. For, some reason the address gets updated but it is captured incorrectly in the accounts department and all the invoices are going at the wrong address or shipping department has captured it incorrectly and all the shipments are getting delivered at a wrong address.

Use of MDM in Logistics

Master data management or MDM is recourse from this peculiar problem. MDM system allows us to store all the master data at a single place and every other department collects its data from MDM, so in other words, MDM becomes the source of master data for all the departments whosoever wants to use it. Any address change, telephone number change or any change in any attribute of a table needs to be done in MDM and nowhere else. MDM also helps in pushing information in case of change so everybody keeps the latest information which helps in getting rid of data discrepancies in the system across departments/organisations.

The case study of any Logistics organisation is one of the ideal scenarios for an MDM implementation. We have different departments and most of the time at the different location which sometimes necessitates maintaining various master data at the local level or department level. This creates data redundancy and sometimes the organization may be serving the same customer at the different location as altogether a different customer. This creates problems in identifying premium customers, high-value customer and effectively identifying customer churn.

This silo of information also creates problems when organizations start implementing DWH, BI and Analytics systems. The master data from these isolated systems are combined into one single system and that generates the lot of data redundancy which adds up and additional task of data cleansing and data scrubbing.

The MDM system enables a logistics organization to implement a centralized repository of master data which in turn is used by the different operating system at different locations helping them effectively serve customers and maintain operational effectiveness.