The Importance of MDM
Accurate data is critical for business processes and operations. Billing customers, for example, requires accurate information regarding the product or service, prices, customer names and addresses and personnel authorized to use the product or service. Preparing product quotes requires accurate part numbers and bills of materials. Deter- mining customer profitability requires accurate householding information or organizational hierarchies. Yet despite the obvious importance of having accurate data, our research shows that fewer than one-quarter (22%) of organizations are very confident in the quality of their data.
There are significant challenges when seeking to ensure data accuracy. The volume and variety of data sources continue to increase; it is now typical for organizations to collect and use external as well as internal data, structured and unstructured data and on premises data and cloud-based data. As a result, data lakes have emerged as one preferred way to deal with this variety and volume.