Category: Blog

How MDM Lite will help Improve the Standards of Your Master Data Management

Efficiency is the key to functionality in the long run. Companies and businesses go length and breadth to achieve efficiency in all parts of their operations.

From short-run operations to long-term outputs running a business efficiently and effectively is the main task for the top management. It is the management’s responsibility to avail better and brighter forms of functioning for its employees and clients.

Master data management is one such service that aids the management and operations team to give you an efficient single authoritative view of information from the various streams of inefficient data silos.

What is Master Data?

Master data, in simple terms, means critical data pertaining to the business, customers and vendors. A well-known example of master data is clientele information database.

When a business collects customer names, phone numbers and product history, master data management ensures that the data is used to manage, centralise, organize, categorize, localize, synchronize and enrich master data according to the business rules of the sales, marketing and operational strategies of the company.

It gives a trustworthy view of the company’s data and makes it available for all other business functions. This data is necessary for the functioning of analytical and operational needs.

Some of the instances where data management is required are enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), product lifecycle management (PLM), enterprise performance management (EPM), and others.

Here are 7 Reasons Why Proper Master Data Management is Required

  • Reduces Workload: MDM data management centralises the process of data management instead of the responsibility spanning every department to collect and maintain data that is available at a corporate-wide level.
  • Calculated Decision Making: With a holistic and comprehensive view of the company’s complex data, executives at the topmost level can rely on the latest, detailed sets of data to make trustworthy decisions.
  • Improves Data Quality: Unstructured and decentralised data is a deficit for any company. Master Data Management overcomes unstructured decentralised data to reach the functional leads of the company across departments. In simple words, MDM is the single source of truth that is superior in quality and up-to-date.
  • Defines Data Governance and Compliance Procedures: Master Data Management defines a transparent governance process. This implies that each piece of master data is only gathered once. With this, setting up compliance procedures is ensured by a centralised data approach.
  • Reduces Time-to-Market: Instead of manually setting up master data, connecting it to the primary master data system directly provides the required master data. As a result, the time to market for new approaches, solutions, or functionalities is accelerated instantly and organically.
  • Improves Business Process: Master data systems are user-friendly, and employees can access the latest and superior quality master data whenever needed to support their operations. The quick access to the vast knowledge base results in higher efficiency among the management.
  • Eliminates Manual Processes: Handheld operations are a source of inefficiencies, failures and errors. These operations are also poor at communicating across departments with various variables at work all the once. With MDM, an expansive range of integration is possible.

Master Data Management is the key answer to many master data related solutions and at par with its utility, MDM services also require expensive costs to set up which will take a considerable amount of time to break even in a business. This is where MDM Lite can be a breath of fresh air for businesses.

What is MDM Lite?

Sharing the core values of Master Data Management, MDM Lite is a one-stop solution for all kinds of master data. MDM Lite has web-based operations, enables integration and collaboration across the organisation, fulfils monitoring and security and also has a user-friendly interface with access from anywhere to respective operational users.

Benefits of MDM Lite:

  • Simple and easy to use
  • Overall Economical
  • Maximises the value of SAP Licencing cost
  • Controls and streamlines process
  • Improves quality and compliance of master data
  • Reduces manual dependency
  • Lower processing times
  • Enables integration and collaborate

Why choose Artha Solutions MDM Lite Data Management Accelerator?

Artha possesses a unique Master Data Management (MDM) proposition in collaboration with Amurta’s Data Insights Platform (DIP) (leading data governance and MDM platform).

Artha’s MDM Lite is a lightweight solution that is easy to build and maintain. Artha delivers this solution using Talend data fabric, joined with Amurta’s Data Insights Platform (DIP), to provide a comprehensive solution.

It demands without the need to spend substantial amounts of money in license costs and years in implementations.

Artha’s MDM Lite goes hand-in-hand with Amurta’s DIP platform, which offers rich data quality and data governance tools that ensure that the input source data is of the highest quality.

To conclude, the MDM Lite Data management accelerator when applied to your organisation, updates legacy systems, corrects conflicting sets of data, reduces human dependency and errors, and provides fuzz-free access among members of the organisation, hence reducing duplication.

About Artha Solutions

Artha Solutions is a premier business and technology consulting firm providing insights and expertise in both business strategy and technical implementations. Artha brings forward thinking and innovation to a new level with years of technical and industry expertise and complete transparency. Artha has a proven track record working with SMB (small to medium businesses) to Fortune 500 enterprises turning their business and technology challenges into business value.

 

Make the Most Out of Your Data With a Data Ingestion Framework

Forward-thinking businesses use data-based insights in today’s fast-paced global market to identify and seize major business opportunities, create and market ground-breaking goods and services, and keep a competitive edge. As a result, these businesses are gathering more data overall as well as new sorts of data, like sensor data.

However, businesses need a data ingestion framework that can assist them in getting data to the appropriate systems and applications quickly and efficiently, if they are to swiftly process and deliver relevant, accurate, and up-to-date data for analysis and insight.

You can increase the accessibility of multi-sourced data across your organization, take advantage of new analytics tools like big data analytics platforms, and extract more value and fresh insight from your data assets if you have a flexible, dependable data ingestion framework and a high-performance data replication tool.

What is Data Ingestion Framework?

The process for transferring data from numerous sources to a storage repository or data processing tool is known as a data ingestion framework. Data ingestion can be done in one of two ways: batch or streaming. There are many different models and architectural approaches that can be used to construct a framework. Your data source(s) and how rapidly you require the data for analysis will determine how you ingest data.

1. Batch Data Ingestion

Before the emergence of big data, all data was ingested using a batch data ingestion framework, and this approach is still widely employed today. Batch processing groups data and periodically transfers it in batches into a data platform or application. Even though batch processing typically costs less – since it requires fewer computing resources – it might be slow if you have a lot of data to analyze. It is better to ingest data utilizing a streaming procedure if real-time or almost real-time access to the data is required.

2. Steaming Data Ingestion

As soon as new data is created (or identified by the system), streaming data ingestion immediately transfers it into a data platform. It’s perfect for business intelligence applications that need current information to guarantee the highest accuracy and quickest problem-solving.

In some cases, the distinction between batch processing and streaming is getting hazy. Some software applications that advertise streaming really use batch processing. The procedure is extraordinarily quick since they ingest data at little intervals and work with small data groupings. Sometimes this strategy is referred to as micro-batching.

Data Ingestion Roadmap

Extract and load are normally simple for businesses, but the transformation is often a challenge. As a result, if no data has been ingested for processing, an analytical engine may lie idle. Here are some recommendations for data ingesting best practices to take into account in light of this reality:

Expect Challenges and Make a Plan Accordingly

The unsavory truth about data ingestion is that gathering and cleaning the data is said to consume between 60% and 80% of the time allotted for any analytics project. We picture data scientists running algorithms, analyzing the outcomes, and then modifying their algorithms for the upcoming run – the thrilling aspect of the job.

However, in practice, data scientists actually spend the majority of their time trying to organize the data so they can start their analytical work. This portion of the task expands constantly as big data volume increases.

Many businesses start data analytics initiatives without realizing this, and when the data ingestion process takes longer than expected, they are shocked or unhappy. While the data ingestion attempt fails, other teams have created analytical engines that rely on the existence of clean imported data and are left waiting impassively.

There isn’t a magic solution that will make these problems go away. Prepare for them by anticipating them.

Automate Data Ingestion

Data ingestion could be done manually in the good old days when data was small and only existed in a few dozen tables at most. A programmer was assigned to each local data source to determine how it should be mapped into the global schema after a human developed a global schema. In their preferred scripting languages, individual programmers created mapping and cleaning procedures, then executed them as necessary.

The amount and variety of data available now make manual curation impossible. Wherever possible, you must create technologies that automate the ingestion process.

Use Artificial Intelligence

In order to automatically infer information about data being ingested and largely reduce the need for manual work, a range of technologies has been developed that use machine learning and statistical algorithms.

The following are a few processes that these systems can automate:

  • Inferring the global schema from the local tables mapped to it.
  • Determining which global table a local table should be ingested into.
  • Finding alternative words for data normalization.
  • Using fuzzy matching, finding duplicate records.

Make it Self-Service

Every week, dozens of new data sources will need to be absorbed into a midsize company. Every request must be implemented by a centralized IT group, which eventually results in bottlenecks. Making data intake self-serviceable by giving users (who want to ingest new data sources) access to simple tools for data preparation is the answer.

Govern the Data to Keep it Clean

Once you have taken the work to clean your data, you’d want to keep it clean. This entails establishing data governance with a data steward in charge of each data source’s quality. 

Choosing which data should be ingested into each data source, setting the schema and cleansing procedures, and controlling the handling of soiled data are all included in this duty.

Of course, data governance encompasses more than just data quality, including data security, adherence to legal requirements like GDPR, and master data management. In order to accomplish all of these objectives, the organization’s relationship with data must change culturally. A data steward who can lead the necessary initiatives and take responsibility for the outcomes is also essential.

Advertise Your Cleansed Data

Will other users be able to quickly locate a specific data source once you have cleaned it up? Customers who want point-to-point data integration have no method of discovering data that has already been cleaned for a different customer and might be relevant. Implementing a pub-sub (publish-subscribe) model with a database containing previously cleaned data that can be searched by all of your users is a good idea for your company.

How does your Data Ingestion Framework Relate to your Data Strategy?

A framework in software development serves as a conceptual base for creating applications. In addition to tools, functions, generic structures, and classes that aid in streamlining the application development process, frameworks offer a basis for programming. In this instance, your data ingestion framework makes the process of integrating and gathering data from various data sources and data kinds simpler.

Your data processing needs and the data’s intended use will determine the data ingestion methodology you select. You have the choice of using a data ingestion technology or manually coding a tailored framework to satisfy the unique requirements of your business.

The complexity of the data, whether or not the process can be automated, how quickly it is required for analysis, the associated regulatory and compliance requirements, and the quality parameters are some considerations you must keep in mind. You can proceed to the data ingestion process flow once you’ve chosen your data ingesting approach.

How does your Data Ingestion Framework Relate to your Data Quality?

The stronger your demand for data intake observability, whether here or at any layer or place through which the data will transit, the higher your need for data quality will be. The more insight you need into the caliber of the data being absorbed, in other words.

Errors have a tendency to snowball, so “garbage in” can easily turn into “garbage everywhere.” Small improvements in the quality of this area will add up and save hours or even days of work.

If you can see the data ingestion procedure, you can more accurately:

  • Aggregate the data—gather it all in one place.
      1. Merge—combine like datasets.
      2. Divide—divide, unlike datasets.
      3. Summarize—produce metadata to describe the dataset.
  • Validate the data—verify that the data is high quality (as expected).
      1. (Maybe) Standardize—align schemas.
      2. Cleanse—remove incorrect data.

Data Ingestion Tools

Tools for data ingestion collect and send structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data between sources and destinations. These tools streamline manual, time-consuming intake procedures. A data ingestion pipeline, a sequence of processing stages, is used to move data from one place to another.

Tools for data ingestion have a variety of features and capacities. You must weigh a number of criteria and make an informed decision in order to choose the tool that best suits your requirements:

Format: What kind of data—structured, semi-structured, or unstructured—arrives?

Frequency: Is real-time or batch processing of data to be used?

Size: How much data must an ingestion tool process at once?

Privacy: Is there any private information that needs to be protected or obscured?

Additionally, there are other uses for data ingestion tools. For instance, they are able to daily import millions of records into Salesforce. Alternatively, they can make sure that several programs regularly communicate data. A business intelligence platform can receive marketing data via ingestion tools for additional analysis.

Benefits of Data Ingestion Framework

With the help of a data ingestion framework, companies may manage their data more effectively and acquire a competitive edge. Among these advantages are:

  • Data is easily accessible: Companies can gather data housed across several sites and move it to a uniform environment for quick access and analysis thanks to data ingestion.
  • Less complex data:  A data warehouse can receive multiple forms of data that have been transformed into pre-set formats using advanced data intake pipelines and ETL tools.
  • Teams save both money and time: Engineers may now devote their time to other, more important activities because data ingestion automates some of the operations that they had to perform manually in the past.
  • Better decision making: Real-time data ingestion enables firms to swiftly identify issues and opportunities and make knowledgeable decisions.
  • Teams improve software tools and apps: Data ingestion technology can be used by engineers to make sure that their software tools and apps transport data rapidly and offer users a better experience.

Challenges Encountered in Data Ingestion

Creating and managing data ingestion pipelines may be simpler than in the past, but there are still a number of difficulties to overcome:

  • The data system is increasingly diverse: It is challenging to develop a future-proof data ingestion framework since the data ecosystem is becoming more and more diversified. Teams must deal with a rising variety of data types and sources.
  • Complex legal requirements: Data teams must become knowledgeable about a variety of data privacy and protection rules, including GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2, to make sure they are acting legally.
  • The breadth and scope of cybersecurity threats are expanding: In an effort to collect and steal sensitive data, malicious actors frequently undertake cyberattacks, which data teams must defend against.

About Artha Solutions

Data ingestion is a crucial piece of technology that enables businesses to extract and send data automatically. IT and other business teams may focus on extracting value from data and finding novel insights after developing data intake pipelines. Additionally, in today’s fiercely competitive markets, automated data input could become a critical differentiation.

Artha Solutions can give you the tools you need to succeed as your business aspires to expand and achieve a competitive advantage in real-time decision-making. To assist the data ingestion procedure, your company receives continuous data delivery from our end-to-end platform.

Our platform helps you automate and develop data pipelines rapidly while cutting down on the typical ramp-up period needed to integrate new technologies. Make a call to us right away to begin creating intelligent data pipelines for data ingestion.

 

6 Critical Challenges in Implementing Cloud Migration Solutions

Cloud computing has caught momentum with the rise in cloud providers and solutions over the past ten years. Studies show that companies around the world are gradually integrating the cloud into their infrastructure.

However, you should formulate a strategy for cloud migration solutions before your company takes the step towards transformation, including an understanding of how to get through the difficulties created by cloud migration.

Your business should remain vigilant if it wants a successful cloud migration. The transition to the cloud could also be expensive and risky for you, and your data, if you aren’t prepared to handle the obstacles. On the contrary, you will have a considerable advantage if you are aware of these difficulties and how to overcome them.

Resistance to the Adoption of the Cloud Environment

The main obstacle with standard cloud migration difficulties is generally individuals. Cloud migration solutions bring about a lot of change and disruption, sometimes with significantly new systems, processes, and even leadership. Individuals typically oppose change.

You will suffer carrying out a successful cloud journey if you don’t consider the human factors of migration.

Make sure the leadership is knowledgeable of the cloud migration goals and the business requirements. Ask them to inform the organization of the business case. Prioritize integration and usability when selecting cloud solutions.

Cloud Migration Procedure Costs are Unclear

Cloud migration solutions can eventually cut costs by increasing productivity, minimizing expenses, and optimizing procedures. But doing so can seem onerous and expensive.

It can be expensive to migrate to the cloud, especially if your business doesn’t initially calculate the cost. Due to the data migrations cost, compatibility cases, the need for new talents, the unavailability of a data recovery strategy, and an improper migration process, business executives have to cope with migration expenses which continue to be one of the biggest problems.

Cloud platform infrastructure expenses, migration expenses, financial risks associated with slow adoption, and the necessary post-migration preparation should all consider in the estimated cost of cloud migration.

Possessing No Reliable Cloud Migration Strategy

If you don’t plan, you’ll plan to fail. Without a clear strategy in place, organizations shift to the cloud far too frequently. Even though the cloud will simplify operations and procedures, cloud adoption can be difficult.

Planning and employing creative thinking is necessary when migrating crucial corporate infrastructure and resources to the cloud. Instead, some businesses board the train without giving the journey enough thought.

You’ll be able to navigate the change and prevent project delay in the later phases if you have a well-thought-out approach. Include the cost of processing data, moving any required apps, and downtime expenses.

Managing Hybrid Networking Configurations

The most important thing when working with a hybrid networking configuration is to take networking and security into consideration immediately. Protection is mandatory for a hybrid setup, although it might not be necessary once the migration is complete.

Ask the team that responds to cyber incidents about the guidelines or regulations governing a hoisting migration. Keeping the security team together, providing them with their plans and estimates, and giving them enough time and the power to make decisions about the migration is essential.

The network layout is a further issue that has to be made clear. It is essential if you are moving from on-premises and already have a network setup. That on-premise data will presumably be necessary to sync with the current cloud environment.

Compliance and Data Security Risks

Concerns about data security and regulatory issues are still significant obstacles to cloud migration. Despite secure cloud settings, most businesses are hesitant to hand over their private information to security companies.

To create a secure cloud environment, cloud computing providers have business security systems and cloud platforms built with security in mind. The company’s data passes through a recommended routing protocol path during a secure cloud migration, and the data is always safe inside the firewall.

This procedure makes sure the security of confidential information from others during migration. In addition, it ensures compliance and eliminates vulnerabilities like data theft.

Utilizing 12-Factor Application Architecture and Cloud-Native Design

An architectural design pattern called cloud-native helps developers build scalable, dependable, and easy-to-monitor apps for the cloud. Building disposable, lightweight apps that you can effortlessly scale out is the goal of cloud-native development.

The underlying ideas and core of cloud-native applications are the tried-and-true 12-Factor concepts. They demand adjustments to your app’s architecture, your team’s coding process, and other areas. Before implementing cloud-native methods and patterns, one must initially understand the 12-factor principles.

About Artha Solutions

Artha Solutions is a premier business and technology consulting firm providing insights and expertise in both business strategy and technical implementations. Artha brings forward thinking and innovation to a new level with years of technical and industry expertise and complete transparency. Artha has a proven track record working with SMB (small to medium businesses) to Fortune 500 enterprises turning their business and technology challenges into business value.

 

Drive Innovation in Business Operations With These 5 Digital Solutions

Digital business solutions are particularly effective in boosting corporate productivity since they eliminate numerous roadblocks in communication. By using digital technologies to automate some operations, businesses may operate and produce more effectively while reducing the chance of human error.

Here are 5 Digital business solutions that can improve the company’s operations.

Project Management

Companies need help keeping track of their projects and goals, especially those that require collaboration between various teams and departments or remote workers. The email could appear adequate at first, but it’s simple for team members to unknowingly miss an update if they aren’t part of the most recent communication.

Working on several projects at once sometimes obstructs the inbox and makes it complex to keep track of anything. ERP project management tools are far more productive at providing a comprehensive and transparent view of the development of each project. With just an internet connection, they could be accessible from anywhere and get real-time updates.

Workplace Communication

Another aspect of Digital business solutions is workplace communication. It gets more challenging to monitor employee conversations as the organization expands. The teams can communicate, share files, and work together effectively if businesses use a platform like Slack. The ability of the team to save, edit, manage, and share documents extensively are made feasible by collaboration suites.

Slack also integrates with other apps to promote a more effective workflow. By setting up a Slack channel, employees can engage in off-topic conversation as they would in a traditional office environment. For distant organizations, this enhances corporate culture and employee engagement.

Slack is accessible on desktop and mobile devices, enabling your team to interact from anywhere.

Personalized Marketing

Email marketing is currently one of the most well-known Digital business solutions and is often used in digital marketing techniques. Building, sending, and evaluating the success of email campaigns is simplistic when using digital tools to drive marketing.

With reference, behavioral, interaction, and demographic data through a Customer 360 platform, you can capture a wider, more in depth perspective of the customer to create categorizations of customers to understand the audience.

To ensure every customer has a unique experience, companies can utilize categorization to deliver personalized email offers to new and returning customers.

Moreover, understanding your customers and audience allows you to engage with them on a deeper level on social media platforms. Every social media platform where the target audience is active in connection to the business website requires the organization to be engaging. With insights into the customer psyche, organizations can easily post content online, interact with users, respond to their inquiries, and take the appropriate steps to show their engagement with the platforms.

Resource Management

A small company may not have a complete human resources team when it initially starts working. In this circumstance, HR management software may be helpful. With it, businesses may do anything from broadcast company news to acquire bank details for direct payment to allocate work shifts to employees. New business owners may overlook several minor aspects that could leave their business vulnerable to legal action and other issues.

Other services that some HR management programs offer include accounting, performance management, recruiting, and applicant monitoring. Several businesses even provide employees the option of utilizing self-service to manage changes and adjustments.

Accounting Programs

Small business owners occasionally disregard accounting since it might be challenging. Not paying enough attention, however, might lead to an IRS audit or failing to include the monthly payroll expense in cash flow analysis.

With digital accounting software solutions, you can do nearly all the tasks, including keeping track of revenue and expenses, paying off debts, generating invoices, creating expense reports, and monitoring debts.

Conclusion

As part of a digital transformation, replacing outmoded tools and infrastructure with modern technology is necessary. By transitioning to cloud-based options, businesses rely less on their own IT equipment and employees and more on supplier data centers and managed services, which decreases the cost of operating your business.

About Artha Solutions

Artha Solutions is a premier business and technology consulting firm providing insights and expertise in both business strategy and technical implementations. Artha brings forward thinking and innovation to a new level with years of technical and industry expertise and complete transparency. Artha has a proven track record working with SMB (small to medium businesses) to Fortune 500 enterprises turning their business and technology challenges into business value.

 

6 Master Data Management Strategy Tips Essential for Business Success

Master data management Strategy (MDM) describes the rules for collecting, gathering, combining, de-duplicating, regulating, and managing data collectively throughout a corporation. It provides a single source of master data that can be used and handled by many diverse organizations by promising control and dependability.

The Importance of the Master Data Management Strategy

Organizations today require significant cost savings, quicker product releases, and more effective regulatory requirements, and all of these aspects depend on having a solid Master Data Management Strategy. Otherwise, inaccurate cross-organizational data might result in faulty decision-making and growth retardation. However, it is not an easy process to create a Master Data Management strategy and implement it across an organization. And ensuring reliable data quality is one of the most serious concerns for businesses.

Here are the six measures the business must develop for Master Data Management Strategy

1. Determine the Objectives and Success Standards, and Create a Business Case

Develop precise objectives. It applies to all modern technological enterprises. Success has to have a specific explanation to reduce misconceptions.

Consider this scenario – a company implements a Master Data Management Strategy to precisely evaluate brand profitability but the implementation results in, say, minimizing errors. Although minimized errors serve as a benefit, the fact that cannot be ignored is that the primary goal was not met. It’s crucial for businesses to stay specific to the goals and provide targets that measure the MDM project’s success.

The three main types of Master Data Management Strategy are Operational performance, enhanced business intelligence, and compliance with regulations.

Operational effectiveness consists of

  • Improved business procedures
  • Business procedures that are more effective which is recovery leading to rapid completion

Developments in analytical and business intelligence usually involve

  • Transparency across the company, product, customer, and channel
  • More stable and reliable business intelligence
  • Better productivity in analysis

Benefits of regulatory compliance involve

  • Minimal data connections
  • Better regularity, long-lasting records, and greater accuracy

2. Democratize The Access To Data

Data democratization makes digital information more accessible to the non-technical, average users of an organization. When this happens, there would be no need for the IT team to involve whenever there’s a need to make changes or updates to the data.

The goal is to allow non-specialists to be able to gather and analyze data without any help – improving the efficiency and productivity of the organization.

Your teams can rely on an acute knowledge of markets, customers, and ecosystems. Therefore, it is important that data circulates widely within your teams. The more it circulates, the more it is enriched, and the more value it generates.

3. Implementing Master Data Business Rules

The organization must be able to add criteria or actions that change data effectively as an element of the master data management solution.

Business rules must be transferable between different use cases, such as when performing approval processes or importing data. They ought to be centralized, allowing for the creation of a single set of rules that can be used throughout. Without waiting for back-end development, business rules should be put into practice instantly in the user interface.

Business rules have the advantage of allowing one to develop, implement, and monitor enterprise-wide data governance practices. It can help build workflows for decision and approval procedures, define rules that maintain data integrity, and describe the data lifecycle for each pertinent object type using the policies that have been chosen.

The data strategy should significantly rely on business rules to introduce data quality and governance approaches quickly and precisely while lowering risk.

4. Determine The Business Leaders

A Master Data Management Strategy will improve communication between the business and IT groups. The best approach to combining IT and business is to find and use business executives who are leaders. You cannot consider MDM an “IT problem” if it is to be successful.

On the other hand, a business champion will have to work with a partner that can give IT assistance. This partner should be adequate to assist the project technically while also acknowledging that technology cannot fix all of the issues.

5. Create a Forum for Guidance and Advice

One should be ready for a constant education campaign, as with most other new programs, to help individuals grasp why accurate data is essential and how to assist in a successful project. Initially, they must identify the associated complexities and the problems to solve via gatherings like brown-bag lunch meetings to discuss the topic, public webinars, or independent training sessions from industry experts or specialists.

6. Learn About the Products and Procedures

As the Master Data Management Strategy gains traction, careful planning and research will pay off. Therefore, it is essential to employ a wide range of research platforms, including webinars, industry experts, seminars, discussion forums, and connections from other businesses in the same or related industries, to gather the information that will improve your strategy. Although the circumstances won’t probably be the same, such encounters can teach productive approaches.

These 6 Master Data Management strategies are to determine the scope of an MDM project and evaluate the way to start a project that is essential for business success.

About Artha Solutions

Artha Solutions is a premier business and technology consulting firm providing insights and expertise in both business strategy and technical implementations. Artha brings forward thinking and innovation to a new level with years of technical and industry expertise and complete transparency. Artha has a proven track record working with SMB (small to medium businesses) to Fortune 500 enterprises turning their business and technology challenges into business value.

 

Big Data For Small Businesses: How They Give Companies An Edge

While oil was the most valuable commodity available in the 20th century, data has snatched the crown for the 21st century. Businesses receive greater insights regarding their markets by integrating the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and other progressive technologies across all operations to improve productivity and workflows.

Less than two decades ago, this would have seemed impossibly futuristic, but rapid innovation has brought us to a highly critical juncture for small businesses.

Today, small business owners stand at the precipice of great opportunities that were only a faraway dream in the past. With Big Data by their side, leveraging prospects and information becomes an opportunity to create winning strategies. Whether they use in-house data warehouses or have access to business analytics software, there are infinite possibilities for success.

In this blog, we are going to take a look at the reasons why adopting big data modalities will ultimately help small businesses gain a competitive edge over their competitors. 

Improved Workflows

In the past, one of the biggest pitfalls for a small business would be the lack of scale and cohesiveness to conduct production activities like their larger counterparts.

Moreover, managing employees across floors and shifts was complex, especially with impending deadlines and delivery timelines.

Today, Big Data has made streamlined workflows simple, with accessible details of every shift worker. From the hours they clock to their availability and work done, monitoring the output can help reduce time consumption, overstaffing, or understaffing.

A Boost in Operational Efficiency

Any business owner with a small production line wishes to expand the production capacity. And it can be done with the help of Big Data and Machine Learning. The technology combined with sensors posted across production and assembly lines can capture data regarding the production process such as approved and rejected outputs, downtime, and wastages.

By taking stock of the data accumulated, a manager can adjust the input and output within shift times to adhere to orders received, thus maximizing the capacity when needed while making provisions for known downtimes, and reducing wastages to manage output quality.

Real-Time Infographics

Every company collects a staggering amount of data each day whether it is regarding their customer leads or production specs. No organization can go a day without gathering such data sets.

However, these rarely get used productively due to the sheer volume and lack of support to convert data into actionable insights. With human labor and generic tools to collect data, assimilate, and create information, logs can be extremely taxing.

However, Big Data platforms and service providers have in-built analytics as their functionality that can help a business use all the gathered data which would otherwise be siloed. By combing through quintillions of terabytes collected from operations and competitors, Big Data analysts can help find all the factors that affect your business and provide insights as comprehensive visualizations to help the management make major decisions more effectively.

Increased Employee Retention

Employee turnover is a huge challenge that several companies are facing for the last couple of years. What is known as the Great Attrition is now becoming a huge stressor for businesses that invest millions into employing the right talent. 

The same has also affected small businesses who hire critical roles and train these candidates only to find out it was a bad hire.

What is deemed a bad hire? A candidate who does not fit into the role has a lower output than what was determined or is simply not adept enough despite training. Big Data can help a company comb through and analyze tens of thousands of job applications to connect you with only the most accurate match to the role, thus reducing your attrition rates.

Trend Analysis and Forecasting

One of the biggest letdowns for small businesses is not being able to hop on to trend bandwagons early on. For any business, knowing what’s coming next is perhaps one of the biggest markers of decision-making.

Big data can help small companies catch trends and ride the wave to build momentum in the market. This not only makes a business receive greater visibility but being able to anticipate changes also helps business owners create remarkable thought leadership in the market.

Research Optimization with AI Tech

Research in the past took ages due to endless testing and development practices. However, the process today is highly streamlined due to Artificial Intelligence that helps entrepreneurs conduct multiple calculations simultaneously to arrive at a working variable.

As another example, a small pharma company looking for the right formulation would have struggled in the past due to a lack of extensive infrastructural provision. Today, however, it can get the job done quickly with the use of big data and AI, avoiding lengthy trials.

Wrapping Up

The role of Big Data analytics in any industry vertical can provide substantial scope for business expansion and enhancement. Small businesses can leverage Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to find big opportunities without any of the conventional barriers or limitations to trade.

Today, you will find start-ups and solopreneurs diving deep into Big Data in order to double down on every aspect that contributes to their long-term success. This was only exclusive to bigger sharks in the economy’s proverbial ocean.

About Artha Solutions

Artha Solutions is a premier business and technology consulting firm providing insights and expertise in both business strategy and technical implementations. Artha brings forward thinking and innovation to a new level with years of technical and industry expertise and complete transparency. Artha has a proven track record working with SMB (small to medium businesses) to Fortune 500 enterprises turning their business and technology challenges into business value.

 

The Evolution of Digital Transformation Services in Banking

Shifting from traditional banking services to the digital space is only one aspect of digital transformation services.

The way in which banks and other financial entities engage with, appraise and reward customers has to change significantly. Understanding digital customer behavior, preferences, likes, opinions, explicit & implicit demands, and goals are the first step in implementing an effective digital transformation strategy.

As a result, banks need to shift from a product-centric to a customer-centric perspective.

Evaluating financial consumers in the digital world provides insight into today’s digital consumer interests. Consumers are increasing their standards when financial firms appear to be marching in cahoots. And if their needs do not meet, they are prepared to switch banks.

The Omni-Channel approach is the most efficient digital transformation modelto perceive and transform the entity from traditional banking to digital banking.

Omnichannel includes more than just offering different ways of transactional options. It is a multichannel technique in customer relations that positions the customer at the core of the integration while maintaining a powerful connection between all the channels.

Perspective on the Banking Industry

In the current environment, offering customers a unique and valuable experience has taken precedence over solely offering financial services.

Even without asking the consumer directly, the banking industry must comprehend the underlying demands of the customer in the same manner that airlines or merchants realize the likes, dislikes, and choices of customers.

New technology and devices are providing multiple consumers with contact points every day. Banks must recognize how they use the information paths left behind every time they interact with devices or screens to improve their bottom line. Transaction completion has historically been the priority of most bank operations, including time and money, and is now a significant fundamental aspect of their overall business.

We think banks can benefit from how merchants perceive the customer journey of digital transformation services via an Omni-channel perspective while ensuring that quick, reliable, and accurate transaction processing is still essential. Banks should now reassess how they treat their consumers, perhaps from the perspective of those industries that place a high value on the customer experience.

Importance of Omnichannel

Presently, different channels operate independently, but it’s time to break down these barriers and upgrade the banking experience by implementing an omnichannel approach.

This strategy focuses on a single brand name that brings almost every consumer a customer-centric experience – based on their interests and activities – exactly like an individual bank would for each customer. The execution is so perfect that it becomes inseparably entrenched in the customer’s lifestyle.

Four Main Advancements in Banking Services

To offer customers cutting-edge financial services, digital expedite the creation of a decentralized digital world. Tech firms, retailers, telecom companies, businesses from other industries, and conventional banks can collaboratively benefit from services provided by digital transformation.

The following trends will define how banking services are available in the future.

Engagement Banking

Engagement banking is incorporating services into people’s lives and enterprises.

The expansion of the range of touchpoints that users interact with has been made possible by the internet. Previously, branches and ATMs were the only physical mediums via which banks and customers could communicate.

However, these communication points have substantially expanded thanks to the services of digital transformation and mobile banking. Access to necessary financial services through numerous, well-known non-bank services should be available whenever and wherever they choose.

Platform Banking

Platform Banking delivers plug-and-play banking capabilities.

Front-end services are the area of expertise for newcomers to the financial services industry. To fulfill the diverse needs of their customers and give a superior customer experience, they are concentrating their management resources on offering user-friendly services. This is due to the fact that new entrants give flexibility and affordability top priority when choosing their banking services.

Back-end service providers are creating banking functions on highly scalable cloud architecture to fulfill these needs. They provide these solutions to non-banks via APIs. Convergence in the pursuit of scalability is likely to occur since the flexibility and affordability of these platforms’’ banking services determine how competitive they are.

Online Banking

Online banking provides effective services based on technology.

There’s a huge potential in robotic process automation (RPA) – which enables the automation of routine tasks – and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies – with even more advanced computational power – to significantly change existing labor-intensive systems and processes in the financial sector.

According to a major U.S. financial firm, AI and other technologies will replace many banking professions due to the services of digital transformation. The top US investment bank has also cut the number of human traders working at its headquarters. Instead, Computer programs perform the majority of trading tasks.

Big banks in other countries have expressed ambitions to deploy artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies to reduce staffing levels in the next ten years.

Social Banking

Social Banking is establishing new services without using mediators.

Digital technology eliminates boundaries between people and creates spaces for them to interact directly, even being geographically distant. Additionally, it modifies economic growth by experiencing peer-to-peer exchanges without the use of mediators. Digital transformation services are gaining attention as a new form of economic activity that can directly connect various service providers and users via a platform.

Businesses must collaborate with reliable partners to co-create and take advantage of the business prospects brought on by services of digital transformation and capitalize on the emerging trends in banking services.

About Artha Solutions

Artha Solutions is a premier business and technology consulting firm providing insights and expertise in both business strategy and technical implementations. Artha brings forward thinking and innovation to a new level with years of technical and industry expertise and complete transparency. Artha has a proven track record working with SMB (small to medium businesses) to Fortune 500 enterprises turning their business and technology challenges into business value.

 

Want Enterprise Efficiency? Look Out For Digital Transformation Trends!

Today, the Internet of Things and Cloud technology govern business operations across industry verticals, no matter which sector they belong to. With the rapidly changing demands of customer 2.0, focusing on operational excellence also requires you to establish a healthy workflow. While the old ways are starting to show how they cannot keep up with the evolving state of global business, it is now time to fully invest in an immersive digital transformation strategy that can help your enterprise stay relevant and efficient.

If you’re looking for ways to stand a league apart from your competitors, the best way is to look up the digital transformation trends of 2022 and catch up with what seems to be missing from your strategy. This blog will help you cover all the bases, so let’s get started!

Federating Digital Teams and Platforms by Democratizing Innovations

In the last decade, digital transformation initiatives have been doubling down on Cloud tech, big data, and DevOps. Businesses are largely trying to centralize the three functionalities with modalities like centers of excellence. Companies are now required to incorporate these capabilities for process acceleration and scaling various transformation endeavors, bringing them a step nearer to their value streams as well as buyer product groups.

How can this be achieved? An organization can adopt team topologies that can assist in structuring groups into stream-aligned, platform, or enablement teams. A successful expansion of digital innovation requires these teams’ to set up technological architectures that can mirror the quality of federation such as micro-front ends, data mesh, and cloud landing zones.

Pursuing Organizational Agility

With companies vying to improve their deliveries to multiple parties involved (a.k.a the customer, developer, and employee experience respectively) whilst democratizing innovation, adopting Agile and DevOps principles are imperative.

On the journey to becoming more customer-centric and maintaining a direct line of sight of the consumer base, business leaders and managers can attain higher visibility. This requires the company’s teams to reconsider their team topologies and hierarchical structures to shift towards mature product teams and value streams. This change can help organizations use the best aspects of DevOps, Agile, and product-centric reflection to help bring about a digital transformation beyond technological territories.

Establishing a Digital Fintech Core

Today, the basics of digital transformations revolve beyond the operational aspect of an organization. If you wish to provide digital products and services in accordance with the company’s product and consumer customer experience (CX) strategy, every business, irrespective of the industry vertical requires a digital fintech core to help underpin its operations.

This digital fintech core should be able to:

  • Manage heaps of customer data effectively
  • Handle customer authorization and authentication
  • Provide exceptional omnichannel client operations
  • Embark on a data, cloud-native, and APIs-first strategy in the context of product building and development.
  • Providing an excellent developer experience as well as a portal to bring more efficiency to workflows and help teams extend on existing services, products, and data sets.

Companies who can successfully establish this core can experience benefits like:

  • Providing a seamlessly connected digital customer journey
  • Deliver multi-channel secured services to clients
  • Help accelerate the go-to marketplace and roll out compelling products for their consumer base by allowing digital native startups to work with existing incumbents.
  • Make way for dynamic innovations across the organizational environment by letting partners and clients alike use their APIs to create their own platforms and integrations, thus helping in rapid scaling.

Establishing Cloud as the Digital Principle of Transformation

Organizations are no longer debating the function and role of the cloud ecosystem in their operational strategies. Today, several market leaders have actively expressed their opinions through data-backed thought leadership concerning the pivotal role that the cloud. This also goes as far as to talk about how focusing on the could aspect can underpin the digital foundation that every company will require to extend its capability to offer products, services, and experiences digitally. At the same time, these modalities need to show they are continually scaling without putting the security or reliability factors on the back burner.

The Growth of Multi-Cloud Adoption

Businesses are going to be more open to adopting multiple-cloud providers since it is already a prominent practice in the industry Albeit there is a key aspect that separates a successful multi-cloud adoption from a poorly implemented one: It depends on the way companies manage and use these cloud providers for multiple purposes.

An example of a successful venture would be implementing a multi-cloud control plane that can help democratize the consumption of these providers. Such a platform should be able to facilitate cloud providers to manage and govern their usage while facilitating the internal development and product units to utilize the correct platform for better workflows.

Wrapping Up

Understanding these trends in 2022 will not only help your business make the most of the remaining financial year but also gear up for the year to come. The year 2023 will have digital transformation growth and trends that succeed the present ones, helping leaders anticipate these changes and be future-ready rather than follow suit. By taking up the help of industry experts to establish your digital transformation, you can usher in the era of enterprise efficiency across the board.

About Artha Solutions

Artha Solutions is a premier business and technology consulting firm providing insights and expertise in both business strategy and technical implementations. Artha brings forward thinking and innovation to a new level with years of technical and industry expertise and complete transparency. Artha has a proven track record working with SMB (small to medium businesses) to Fortune 500 enterprises turning their business and technology challenges into business value.

 

What is Enterprise Data Management, and How Does it Help?

Whether it is a start-up or a well-established business giant, they all need to handle and manage a large amount of data. Mishandling of data can create chaos and disturb the smooth functioning of various departments, leading to poor outcomes. To avoid such mishaps, companies from different sectors rely on Enterprise data management.

According to a report, the market for global enterprise data management is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.0% from 2022 to 2030. It is because of the increased requirement for data management in enterprises that this market is witnessing fast growth.

Enterprise Data Management

Enterprise data management is a system obtained by an organisation to store, retrieve and access information and data for internal as well as external uses.

Data means any piece of information generated digitally.
The data can be sales volumes, tweets, Instagram videos, posts, pictures, etc. It can be found anywhere around us. Data is the main ingredient in data management, no organisation can run without data.

Enterprise data management or EDM also includes the capacity to transfer data among business partners, branches, or within any department of an organisation. In other words, it simply means how you control your data, who can access it and how you can store it.

Examples of EDM

  • Keeping and maintaining a record of the IDs who logged into the company’s website to track cyberattacks.
  • Keeping a record of the transactions, customer orders, and billing to track the history of the customers.

Components Of EDM

  • Data governance: It is the process that ensures that the data is managed as per the standard norms and policies.
  • Data integration: Data integration means storing the diversely located data in one accessible place.
  • Data security: Data security means providing authenticity of the data, the data can be viewed and accessed only by those who are authorised to view it. This component also restricts the external individual to view the secured data.
  • Master data management: Master data management refers to the ability to ensure that the data must be circulated and shared across the organisation in an updated, accurate, and error-free way.

Many companies across the globe are looking for enterprise data management strategies. There are tons of information available that an organisation has to manage. Companies that opted for enterprise data management have benefitted in multiple ways.

How Enterprise Data Management is helping organisations?

  • EDM ensures cost reduction through improvement in operational efficiencies. The cost of storage, backup, and restoration can be reduced substantially due to EDM
  • Decision-making can be enhanced as the quality of data is maintained in EDM and the management can use this data to make future projections.
  • Easy access to information without any hassle makes it a user-friendly system. Data can be easily accessed anywhere across the globe.
  • As the information is available at the right time and right place so the management can take future decisions easily.
  • One of the beneficial features of EDM is the Accurate storage of data that quickly analyses the data and identifies anomalies and mistakes in storing the data. This helps in avoiding data mishandling and keeping the information sorted.
  • Large data can be stored and retrieved easily.
  • Faster response to compliance and fraud can be identified as early warning signals that can be shared by EDM to organisations.
  • The data can be much more secure than it was in manual record keeping. The chances of losing or forgetting data are reduced.

Conclusion

EDM reduces the threat of losing confidential data and ensures security. It has made the data management process much easier removing the extra need of hiring people to manage records offline. But, enterprise data management also needs regular improvements, and updates to remain efficient. This requires a technically sound person to handle and store the data in the digital system.

Although, with its numerous benefits like keeping the data secure, accurate, and high-quality with fewer expenses, EDM is now becoming the first choice for enterprises for data management.

Hence, EDM can be considered as a backbone of the business as it is helping to track the business records from starting to till the end and governs the business on the path to success.

About Artha Solutions

Artha Solutions is a premier business and technology consulting firm providing insights and expertise in both business strategy and technical implementations. Artha brings forward thinking and innovation to a new level with years of technical and industry expertise and complete transparency. Artha has a proven track record working with SMB (small to medium businesses) to Fortune 500 enterprises turning their business and technology challenges into business value.

 

Customer 360: The Master Data Management Solutions SMEs need

The concept of ‘customer 360,’ or having a single view of all your customer data, is gaining traction in trade publications, analyst circles, and even mainstream media. But what exactly is a customer 360?

Even though the notion of “customer 360” is much narrower than Master Data Management Solutions, it has acquired support among IT professionals, business leaders, and the media.

It’s simple to see why. As consumer data accumulates in ever-increasing amounts, it frequently gets fragmented, duplicated, inconsistent, incomplete, ungoverned, and out-of-date as it travels throughout the business.

What is Customer 360?

Customer 360 is a master data management model that aggregates all the data about the customer to form a master customer record.

Customer 360 gives you a single, trustworthy view of a customer’s name, address, phone number, gender, and interactions with a company. Purchase history, billing, service difficulties, social presence, and channel preferences can all be included in the view. This information can be used to guide engagement strategies, customer journey steps, messages, personalised offers, and deliveries.

Organizations can generate value, gain a sustainable competitive edge, and optimize new customer acquisition prospects by using a Customer 360 view, whether in-store or online.

Which channels are involved with Customer 360?

Customers can use the following channels:

  • In-person, at a company-owned, physical site
  • Order via phone through a sales affiliate or partner.
  • Online, via a company website or a mobile application.

It’s critical to know who your customers are and how they interact with your company, regardless of which communication channels they use. McDonald’s, for example, should be aware that the same customer is communicating with them whether through a mobile app, the McDonald’s website, a phone call, or the cloud – even across various retail locations.

This example exemplifies why it’s important to carefully assess which data should be included in a customer 360 view.

Whatever data is involved must give the enterprise this visibility so that customers have the same experience regardless of how they interact with the company. In this situation, McDonald’s must swiftly combine data from numerous transactional sources in order to identify the elements that influence customer relationships and choose which channels they may use to improve customer service.

How Customer 360 benefits your business?

Having a comprehensive, 360-degree view of your customers and interactions with them has economic, “defensive” advantages such as greater profits via better cross-selling and up-selling chances. They also enable a better consumer experience for more tailored marketing, resulting in improved conversion rates and income. A 360-degree customer view also lets you assess customer profitability across different products and services, allowing you to effectively categorize your customers based on relevant data and trends.

In addition to reducing the risk of issuing unfavourable credit terms and regulatory non-compliance, especially with new customer privacy regulations requiring organizations to secure personal data and provide it to customers upon request, creating a customer 360 helps with general risk management, which is critical for financial service firms.

Common Customer Data Problems solved with a 360 Customer View

Multi-channel communication only works when the underlying customer data and how it is managed are consistent. It’s challenging to maintain consistency when data about the same customer is scattered over multiple IT systems, each of which may contain data for every customer communication channel. Regardless of how many sources are included, true customer 360s provide consistency.

Customer data quality is another common challenge that customer 360 views can assist alleviate. The same customer’s name (or address, phone number, or other information) is frequently recorded differently in multiple systems or even inside the same system.

Customer 360s are designed to solve this problem by allowing users to determine which person or business comprises a customer entity and include their attributes in order to have more informed interactions with them. Because there is no consistency in how customer records are handled, leveraging third-party external sources like Dun & Bradstreet or social media data becomes difficult without it.

Why do I need a Customer 360 view?

A Customer 360 view is something that can be termed the cost of maintaining, satisfying, and increasing your customer base. It provides a set of universal benefits while also assisting in the resolution of challenges unique to businesses like manufacturing, finance, and retail. To optimize the customer experience, integrate Master Data Management Solutions with structured and unstructured data to achieve a 360-degree customer view regardless of your industry or vertical.

You may discover which of your customers are failing and attempt to enhance your gross margins by evaluating your profit margins by industry, account, and even individual customers. Understanding this allows you to better segment clients in order to reduce risk and increase profits.

A customer 360 view allows you to improve retention rates by enhancing your grasp of who your customers are. This information is crucial for raising marketing conversation rates by contacting the right customer with the right message at the right time and increasing revenue generation through relevant cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

Increased adaptability to business and economic environments is another common benefit. Customer 360 views enable firms to respond to events like the COVID-19 pandemic by decreasing expenses while using the most meaningful customer connection channels by immediately providing them with all essential information about their customers.

In conclusion, effective Master Data Management solutions allow businesses to maintain a 360-degree view of customers and their journeys with the product. Leveraging a customer’s data to anticipate their needs and develop strategic communication plans is essential for long-term development.

About Artha Solutions:

Artha Solutions is a premier business and technology consulting firm providing insights and expertise in both business strategy and technical implementations. Artha brings forward thinking and innovation to a new level with years of technical and industry expertise and complete transparency. Artha has a proven track record working with SMB (small to medium businesses) to Fortune 500 enterprises turning their business and technology challenges into business value.