Successful Master Data management builds on ensuring optimal quality in the capture of a customer profile, and ensuring the profile remains up-to-date over time. “Know Your Customer” processes are typically the foundation of a business relationship and for comprehending its scope. Master Data management over longer periods — specifically relevant to a given business sector (e.g. customer profiles, spheres of activity, or customer accounts) — already presents a challenge to many companies.

Also important, the business connections a company has formed with a given customer should be integrated with the master data together with links to that customer's contacts. Offers, contracts, and commercial data complete the master data.

Successful business relations depend on cultivating the best possible understanding between business partners. For SPG, this starts with acquiring sales prospects and is where the customer interface is pre-set. In this step, the status of the customer, industry, fields of interest, contact method/s, and next steps are recorded, making it possible to tailor all subsequent consultations using these specific details.

The aim of successful consulting is to make an offer or – in the next step – come to an agreement. Generally, consulting connections are confined to those areas for which a.) the interested party is responsible, or b.) the target addressed by the consultant has been defined.

To optimise business for the greatest mutual benefit, the full range of services a company offers should be first presented to an interested party, along with a view to individual prioritisation of the enquiring party. Second, the full profile of the consulting party should also be presented. This must be done as simply, efficiently, and understandably as possible. Internally, all data gathered about the customer must be systematically stored so that all the other departments involved in servicing the customer can easily access them. Deals can be cut and contracts concluded on this basis, and these must also be made available in their current status to a customer at any time.

In addition to contracts and areas of activity, a focus should be on the people involved in the account and attentive management of the customer relationship. The business relationship should also be evaluated internally for its commercial merit, using the most current account information combined with historical data and market/business objectives.

The goal is to deduce the potential for future shared business success, based on clear data structures combined with commercial data and knowledge about the customer relationship. Well-integrated and functional master data, commercial data, and contracts provide the foundation for this deductive exercise. The entire value chain of a company — from distribution to manufacture, from service provision right up to delivery — must be represented in these data resources.

Specific-Group can support you with know-how and IT expertise in opening up, developing, and connecting repositories of master data – establishing the groundwork for your future successes.