Common Mistakes to Avoid While Managing 360 Views of Your Business Data

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A 360-degree view of your business can combine data from different sources, departments and individuals. It helps you understand the pattern and trends of your industry. The best part is it allows you to make data-backed decisions with more data points. You uncover the areas for improvement for future marketing strategies.

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Why is a 360-degree view important for businesses?

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A 360-degree view for businesses is crucial because it empowers leaders to accelerate business strategies with trusted information (data-backed strategies).  

Well, it’s not a surprise that less than 10% of companies understand how to use a 360-degree view for growth as per globaldataexcellence.  

Simply put, you can understand your industry, improve your company positioning, explore the microeconomics and focus more on the supply side with the help of 360 view of your business.

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An enterprise needs an effective and accurate data asset. Master Data Management (MDM) is an essential part of data strategy for a company to grow and create profit.  

For example, take a look at Copper ( a Google-recommended CRM) that introduced copper reports for its customers. It allows businesses to read their processes like a book. You can get an easy, 360-degree view of your business with Copper's powerful reporting feature.

It helps you gain clarity and confidence in understanding your performance which is vital. Moreover, it also helps you in looking beyond just good and bad and analyses the two following metrics:

Here are a few more reasons to include a 360-degree view of your business:

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Rich Insights:

‍You can streamline processes, and new insights, gain competitive advantages and enhance customer experience with a 360-degree view of your data.

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Flexibility: ‍

360-degree view of business gives you the flexibility to support any data domain. It ensures that your data provides meaningful insight and integrates easily into multiple business processes.  For example, you need a holistic approach to implement a 360-degree campaign. This means doing consistent branding across all your channels (socials) for a smooth customer experience. It increases your opportunities to get in front of the right audience.

See how enclose.com (an eco-friendly packaging and shipping brand) has created a consistent brand message across all its platforms (LinkedIn, Instagram etc.) which enables them to touch upon every point of contact with customers and collect data.

To demonstrate this, the Nvizion solution helped Puma to manage and consolidate all their region-specific and host a solution on MDM product 360. To reduce manual effort Nvizion completed an end-to-end implementation of a new P360 architecture and automated the process of product categorization, structured data management and import processes.

Read the full case study here.

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Today, consumers prefer more personalization and on-time customer service than ever before.

As per Accenture, 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that offer relevant recommendations catered to them. Well, this indicates that businesses need to pay attention to details, analyze their data, improve customer experience and handle 360 views of their business.

The need to integrate data management services and take decisive decisions to run businesses is increasing day by day.  

Now is the time for your organization to understand the true value of master data management and implementation.  

But before that, it’s more important to avoid these 5 common mistakes while managing a 360 view of business data.  

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#1: No Business Stakeholder Involvement

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Implementing MDM or a 360 view of your business without stakeholders is the biggest business mistake organization’s often make. The results of implementing 360 views of business are recognised when business stakeholders are actively involved in the process.  

Master Data Management is used for business operations, saving costs, optimising processes, and delivering precise business analytics. Active collaboration and implementation with business teams can expand the scope and vision of the 360-view journey.  

We cannot overlook the power of internal collaboration. For example, Facebook has a long list of stakeholders but when it comes to priority— users are always their priority.

After taking a 360 view of its business, Facebook agreed with their stakeholders and improved its product and created some features geared at both engaging users and demonstrating its corporate social responsibility (CSR).  

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Facebook added a feature allowing users to collect charity donations on their birthdays and even crisis responses that help users connect and stay updated during natural disasters or crises.  

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#2: Wanting Results from First Phase Implementation

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Many organizations implement master data solutions in their first phase because of many reasons such as quick return on investment or achieving accurate 360-degree views of critical business elements.  

Unfortunately, this approach can lead to failure due to multiple factors such as external dependencies, lack of analytical initiatives, planning and more. This means not being patient with the results can end up in more wastage of time for your business.  

With gradual 360 view implementation, you can analyze the results of the previous phase which helps in avoiding mistakes in future. Remember you can analyze, operate and incorporate strategies as you go along in this journey.

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#3: Not Defining the Purpose

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It is critical to know where the MDM will be used in business for operational or analytical purposes. You need to clarify your business's future goal, you will create ambiguity in business processes as well as with external applications.  

While analytical solutions are focused on how to measure the business, operational solutions focus on how to support the day-to-day operations of the business.  

Unclear purpose can lead to faculty process, unrealistic expectations, and the overall failure of the MDM program. Organizations should first choose which style of MDM they will choose because both styles have their own merits and risks. Many organizations achieve great results with analytical MDM and then move towards operational solutions on a large stage.  

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#4: One Time Solution

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Implementation of Master data management as a one-time process is another potential challenge. Establishing a single source of information requires constant reviews. In data strategy, the main focus should be on improving matching techniques and finding new links for data which can provide interesting insights about customer data and company information.

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Many organizations believe that reviewing data one time is the solution but they forget that every day, we create roughly 2.5 quintillion bytes of data as per stats.

Data strategy should focus on an iterative process of deriving improved matching techniques since data keeps changing now and then. Whether it's master data or reference data, the goal is to analyze and drive business processes for better reporting.

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#5: Wrong Estimation of Existing Capabilities

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When it comes to implementation, not every organization is at the same level of mature decision-making. The way of approaching problems can be different for companies but it should be based on the existing capabilities of your organization.  

These capabilities are related to high-level terms and typically require a combination of organization, people, processes, and technology to achieve. For example, business capabilities could be recruitment, pricing or product design.

There are many cases where organizations have failed to understand their existing capabilities. For example: let’s say your company needs to know how much it would earn at the end of the month after taxing and other payments. Here if you take a 360 view of your business capability, it can be identified as “Monthly Net Revenue Management.” Now this shows you for e.g., which digital tools or systems to use so that you can identify your monthly net revenue and estimate it correctly.

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Data is an essential part of business it requires decision-making, planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Duplicate and inaccurate data can cause many issues, as we discussed above.  

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Data quality issue costs the US economy an estimated $3.1 Trillion each year. By avoiding mistakes in MDM, you can save your budget overruns, delays in projects, and avoid losing confidence in stakeholders and sponsors.  

If you can manage 360 views of your business in the right way, it can create a strong foundation for your data-driven journey.  

Want a 360 view of your product, business and customers? Click here to know how you can get rich, relevant, and contextualised product data for your business.

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