eBook

4 Easy Steps to a
360-Degree View of
Customers, Suppliers
and More

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4 Easy Steps to a 360-degree View of Customers, Suppliers and More

Contents
Introduction | Why You Need a 360-Degree View of Your Business 3

Step One | All-in-One Capabilities 5

Step Two | Data Governance and Stewardship 6

Step Three | Support for a Phased Implementation 7

Step Four | A Modern Microservices-Based Architecture 9

Conclusion | Get a 360-degree View of Your Business With

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud™ (IDMC) 10

About Informatica 11

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4 Easy Steps to a 360-degree View of Customers, Suppliers and More

Introduction

Why You Need a 360-Degree View of Your Business

You have a lot to consider when leading One way to overcome these challenges is with a The right MDM solution can also give your
your organization’s digital transformation. In cloud-native, modern master data management team the edge it needs to successfully deliver
addition to delivering faster time to value, you (MDM) solution that connects multiple domains on digital initiatives that support business
need to ensure quality and consistency of data of master data, such as customer, product, imperatives like:
across on-premises and multi-cloud sources. supplier and finance, into a 360-degree view.
• Customer experience
Add in the data silos created by the proliferation To succeed in today’s digital-first world, you
of applications and analytics platforms need visibility into how activities throughout • Digital commerce
across multiple cloud ecosystems and it’s just different functional areas impact the overall
• Supply chain optimization
downright overwhelming. In fact, according to performance of your business. Modern MDM
IDC, data fragmentation and complexity are the can help you stay ahead of the curve by • Finance transformation
biggest barriers to digital transformation.1 providing the big picture of the relationships
within your data and applications. This helps This eBook explores why advanced
You don’t have time to deal with inaccurate and you make faster decisions that are based on organizations are increasingly looking to cloud
inconsistent master data. It slows decision- trusted data. MDM, and four steps to drive your digital
making, creates business process inefficiencies transformation success.
and reduces team productivity. And budget
constraints and talent gaps mean you can’t just
throw more resources at the problem. So how
can you do more with less?

1
IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Informatica, Driving Business Value from Data in the Face of Fragmentation and Complexity, Doc #US 48293521, November 2021

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4 Easy Steps to a 360-degree View of Customers, Suppliers and More

Why Implement MDM in the Cloud? A modern, cloud-native MDM addresses four
critical requirements: What is a Master Data Strategy?
A cloud-native MDM solution enables you
to obtain MDM as a service (SaaS), which 1. All-in-one capabilities A master data strategy defines how an
helps you: organization overcomes specific data
2. Data governance and stewardship
challenges to attain business goals
• Speed time to value through automated MDM 3. Support for a phased implementation through the governance and applied use
infrastructure provisioning 4. A modern microservices-based architecture of master data assets. A master data
strategy sits between the overall business
• Free your IT department from having
strategy and data governance activities. It’s
to manage and maintain complex
about how your organization will maximize
MDM installations
its data to generate the greatest impact.
• Automatically leverage the latest features
and enhancements

• Reduce hardware and maintenance costs

with low-cost infrastructure such as Amazon
Web Services, the Google Cloud Platform or
Microsoft Azure

• Reduce capital and operating expenses

through subscription pricing

• Future-proof your operations with scalable

capabilities that adjust to your needs

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4 Easy Steps to a 360-degree View of Customers, Suppliers and More

Step One

All-in-One Capabilities
A comprehensive SaaS solution will make your data sources and heterogeneous applications at your data and its quality. Business process
team more productive by providing them with any latency, including batch, real time, streaming management capabilities help data stewards
one easy-to-manage tool. This will free up time or serverless. These integration tools should collaborate effectively across the enterprise.
so they can focus on mission-critical initiatives provide high performance and availability for Other features that can enhance productivity
– like deriving business value from MDM. An large volumes of mission-critical data. include customizable workflows, voting/ranking/
all-in-one, integrated solution should include chat features, mass maintenance and workflows
the following capabilities: Data quality. Data formats in different enabled by ML with user recommendations for
data sources will vary widely. Data quality potential actions.
Data catalog. With massive amounts of standardizes your data and ensures that it
data scattered across different departments, is complete and consistent. Where possible, Reference data management. Organizations
applications, and data warehouses both on- the system should automatically check for struggle to get started on MDM projects since
premises and in the cloud, a cloud-based MDM incomplete or invalid entries, automatically they have difficulty agreeing on the definitions
solution must be able to find all your data with resolve conflicts and add missing information and consistent values to choose when entering
a data catalog. A solution that relies on artificial using third-party sources. ML can help data such as dates, countries, gender or industry
intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will augment human stewardship of data quality by codes. These values may appear to be simple
be able to locate and catalog all your master automatically tuning match rules to increase but managing this information across a large
data assets. accuracy and confidence levels. enterprise is deceptively complicated. A built-
in reference data management capability can
Data integration. Once you know what data Business process management. No matter help both your IT and business users improve
you have and where it’s located, you need to how advanced your automated data quality efficiency and streamline data management.
bring it into a single place. Data integration tools, humans will always need to answer the
capabilities should integrate all your disparate most complex data quality questions about

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4 Easy Steps to a 360-degree View of Customers, Suppliers and More

Step Two

Data Governance and Stewardship

In today’s competitive environment, your team Key areas of data governance and stewardship Ownership and accountability. Who are the
must be able to execute and enforce policies that cloud-native MDM should support include: authors, reviewers and approvers for policies,
and procedures regarding activities such as rules and standards? Who is responsible for
data collection, quality, protection, access, Audit and reporting. You need transparency by remediating issues?
use and retention. Without governance and tracking the complete change history with roll-
stewardship, you will increase business risk back, including what was changed, by whom, Privacy and protection. What data is subject
and fall short on achieving full business value. what match and survivorship rules were used, to regulatory compliance (HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA,
This is an area that immature cloud solutions and who approved. It should also document LGDP)? Does the solution enforce appropriate
often overlook. how and why policy decisions were made. protection and security controls (e.g., access,
masking, encryption, and cross
Monitoring and analysis. Monitoring at the border movement)?
level of policy, rule, metric, master data object,
workflow step and individual/organization are Consent management. What consent has
a must. Also essential are exception-based been given? For which channels and for what
notifications with context- aware routing purposes? Processing activities must be based
based on things like role, data domain and on consent and compliance with relevant laws.
triggering event.

Embedded controls. The solution should

provide validation checks at the point of entry,
separation of duties between changers and
approvers of data updates, dynamic data
masking at the time of access and deletion
based on retention date.

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4 Easy Steps to a 360-degree View of Customers, Suppliers and More

Step Three

Support for a Phased Implementation

Organizations rarely implement MDM to Organizations can implement MDM in a phased manner in several ways. Some examples are:
address all domains and use cases at once. In
fact, many implementations fail to deliver value
in the stipulated time because teams try to Domain-based Start with one single domain and add more domains to the same solution.
handle all the data challenges at once, without
prioritizing the most pressing issues. The best Start ingesting data from two sources of master data and add more
Source-based
practice is to follow a phased approach, one sources over time.
that begins with the simpler use cases and
works up to the more complex data challenges Record-based Start with a limited number of records and add more records over time.
which impact every function.
Address the most pressing business challenges first and then expand the
A modern, cloud-native MDM solution should Use case-based
existing solution to address new business challenges.
support this type of phased approach, so you
can move through each iteration seamlessly
Start with basic match-merge capabilities and add contextual matching,
as your requirements change and grow. An Feature-based
relationship, hierarchy management and more over time.
all-in-one MDM solution designed to support
enterprise-scale needs can help you manage Address the data challenges faced by one single function or department
every domain — customer, account, employee, Function-based
first and then expand to solve other departmental needs.
supplier, distributor, product, material, location,
and reference data — in a single solution. It
also manages the interconnections between
domains to help you gain a complete 360-degree
view of the business across the enterprise.

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4 Easy Steps to a 360-degree View of Customers, Suppliers and More

Implementing the right MDM solution can

mean the difference between whether your To ensure MDM success:
company thrives or just treads water in today’s
• Break down the initiative into smaller, achievable steps that provide quick wins.
high-pressure, digital economy.
• Define a measurable outcome that you can articulate for each step.
A flexible, cloud-native MDM solution can grow
with you and helps you create an enterprise- • Build a roadmap of use cases that allow you the flexibility to adjust to changing business
wide view of all data domains. It also allows for needs yet deliver value.
modularity and lets you:
• Have your eyes on the big picture by documenting any 3–5-year goals.
• Start with a domain of your choice and
expand to other data types at your pace

• Scale to address data volumes across

many sources

• Handle various use cases around customer

loyalty, digital commerce, supply chain
resiliency, finance data management
and more

Many cloud MDM solutions in the market

offer only a departmental solution that does
not scale to address enterprise requirements.
While they may help address narrow use cases
today, they can’t scale and will require significant
customizations to address more than one
use case.

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4 Easy Steps to a 360-degree View of Customers, Suppliers and More

Step Four

A Modern Microservices-Based Architecture

Your role as a champion of innovation and data Portability Scalability
strategist set the stage for how your teams will The solution should enable you to port from one The MDM solution should give you the elastic
adapt to emerging technologies to create long- SaaS provider to another. For example, it should scalability you need to add capacity as you need
term value. be easy to move from Amazon Web Services to it. The solution should have scalability, especially
Google Web Services to Microsoft Azure. in terms of:
To provide the agility and flexibility modern
organizations require, the cloud-native Microservices • Data size – It should manage all types
MDM solution must reside on a modern Microservices are plug and play services. of data, both big and small, structured
microservices-based architecture and include: An architecture that supports microservices and unstructured.
enables you to continuously update and
enhance your solution by simply plugging in • Data sources – It should support all your
new microservices, without the need for a major data sources, both cloud and on-premises.
upgrade. This allows faster innovation, increased
• End users – It should support an ever-
business agility and makes it easier to take
growing number of users.
advantage of future cloud services.
Modularity
Your MDM solution should allow you to start
small, with high-value, “low-hanging fruit”
projects that are easy to implement and offer
quick, visible wins. Once you realize value, it
should provide the flexibility you need to grow
quickly and scale. This way, you can use the
same solution to roll out new business
initiatives for your company.

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4 Easy Steps to a 360-degree View of Customers, Suppliers and More

Conclusion

Get a 360-degree View of Your Business With

Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud™
Informatica Multidomain Master Data Informatica Multidomain MDM is part of our IDMC also helps businesses scale their data
Management (MDM) is an all-in-one service open, low-code/no-code Intelligent Data management and innovate with their data
that simplifies and automates the complex Management Cloud™ (IDMC), which helps on virtually any platform, cloud, multi-cloud
real-time management, governance and organizations increase productivity, speed and multi-hybrid. It is driven by CLAIRE®, our
sharing of consistent master data across deployment and accelerate business outcomes. AI engine, which learns a company’s data
multiple domains such as customer, product, IDMC strengthens your data management game landscape to automate manual tasks and
supplier, cost centers, locations and more. in today’s frenetic digital landscape by helping provide recommendations and insights.
you connect the dots on things like:
With Multidomain MDM, your teams can build With IDMC, you can have all the scale,
a 360-degree view across the business to • Growing the business and reducing costs productivity and flexibility necessary to
achieve digital initiatives that support customer by delivering trusted and secure data for collaborate with more data teams across the
experience, digital commerce, supply chain analytics and AI organization while also ensuring responsible
optimization and finance transformation. data management, access and use. Great data
This helps improve key metrics including • Reducing costs and improving business reveals smarter decisions, fast…decisions that
revenue growth, cost optimization and process efficiency by automating and can chart the fate of your business. Drive real
business innovation. orchestrating workflows change and adapt faster with a 360-degree view
of your business to provide better outcomes –
• Creating a single source of business data and
for you and your customers.
relationships to improve customer experience
Ready to level up your data management needs?
• Increasing ROI of technology investments by
modernizing to a multi-cloud/hybrid Learn more or set up a meeting now.
data stack

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About Us
At Informatica (NYSE: INFA), we believe data is the soul of business transformation. That’s why we Worldwide Headquarters
help you transform it from simply binary information to extraordinary innovation with our Informatica 2100 Seaport Blvd,
Intelligent Data Management Cloud™. Powered by AI, it’s the only cloud dedicated to managing data of Redwood City, CA 94063, USA
any type, pattern, complexity, or workload across any location—all on a single platform. Whether you’re Phone: 650.385.5000
driving next-gen analytics, delivering perfectly timed customer experiences, or ensuring governance Fax: 650.385.5500
and privacy, you can always know your data is accurate, your insights are actionable, and your Toll-free in the US: 1.800.653.3871
possibilities are limitless.
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