By: Haresh Joshi, Senior Consultant, LTI

To improve customer-centricity – a business imperative of modern times – organizations are realizing that personalization is key to exceeding customer expectations. Their ability to offer personalized customer service through customized products and relevant communication depends on how well they know their customers.

Today’s digital-savvy generation prefers speed and online transactions. They put as much premium on customized experience, as the product or the service being bought. Offering this personalized customer experience has been difficult for many Insurance organizations – especially the mid-to-large segment.

Duplication of data
Since they have expanded their offerings to cater to customers from diverse lines of businesses, they tend to duplicate data assets such as customers, agencies, locations and products. This duplication occurs because each department and individuals within those departments have a unique way of creating these assets for their own purposes. Even the most powerful CRM solutions fail when there is no centralized view of customers. This necessitates the need for having a 360-degree view of the customers and the answer to that is Customer MDM.

The customer MDM journey
Today, most organizations want to offer customized experience, and Customer MDM has been a crucial part of their digital transformation journey. The 2018 global data management benchmark report predicted that in 2019, 38% of organizations they surveyed are planning to undergo a project related to master data management, which is up from 19% just one year prior. According to the 2018 global data management benchmark report, 83% organizations see data as an integral part of forming a business strategy.

Why lean on MDM
MDM is being used to drive new business opportunities by enabling organizations to identify, consolidate and link the customer data across the enterprise.

At its core, Master Data Management aims to define processes that create a single trusted view called as the Golden Record. The Golden Record acts as a unique identifier, and a single version of the truth, by consolidating the various instances of the duplicate records of that data entity. It forms the complete and accurate master data that can be used across the organization in a consistent way.

Benefitting from MDM
Organizations have realized that using Customer MDM can help to harness and improve CRM functions and deliver significant business benefits:

• Holistic view of a customer (or any data asset) across the organization
• Tailored products based on current and historic engagement of customer
• Personalized, targeted communications and promotions that anticipate customer needs
• Discover upsell/cross-sell opportunities
• Recognize top customers and provide experiences that align to their value