In the last post we start discussing master data topic, what role it plays in business processes and why it is too important to manage them correctly. It was proposed «6 C» conception for master data enlightenment and today we consider the first component out of 6 – Complexity.

Every participant in the business process has to have an idea of the data that he works with. It is not unusual that specialists who work with data every day don’t know and don’t understand data life cycle and value. The similar situation with leaders – some of them don’t know where data comes from, where it is used and don’t understand how they can increase data value.

Such problem appears because of many inconsistencies of IT solutions and business processes that create and use data including:

• life cycle management – for product development;
• enterprise resources planning – for operational activities and commercial realization;
• pricing proposal development – for sales and orders management;
• customer relationship management – for customer service;
• omnichannel commerce solutions – for cross sales;
• analytics and reporting – for clarity.

Data drive decisions and business-processes agreement is one of the most difficult and important tasks. That’s why it is too necessary to create the right decision.

Organizations often rely on manual data entry. Although such decisions can be not bad for data management, but they don’t keep pace with the global economy rapid development.

Poor data enchains company management in making effective decisions, planning and other important business processes. Therefore, it has an impact on the business efficiency in common, its amount and profit. Many companies delegate to IT organizations all questions of product information management, data quality, transparency and storage. And this is a right decision, but this process should be systematic. Considering a complexity of product data enlightenment task, it is better to start out by work scope definition. Firstly, it is necessary to define a problem area that needs attention and effective decisions on an urgent basis (for example, sales channels and suppliers). It has to be a collaboration between business and IT-company with detailed discussion and agreement of goals, business processes and IT decisions. Every IT decision must work for business and help to achieve better results and ensure data access. After successful problem solving it is possible to move forward using the same algorithm.

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