Trusting the data you use has never been more important in the life sciences industry

As supply chains undergo ever greater pressure to perform faster and more efficiently, business leaders need to become more data-driven in their decision making to identify areas for cost efficiency improvement, new business opportunity and transparent compliance management. However, the most business critical of data, including product, supplier and customer data, is impeding the data-driven objective. This data is lacking in quality, coherence and availability due largely to fragmented and inconsistent data management processes.

You just cannot be data-driven if you don’t trust the data you use.

Lessons learned and digital wins provide confidence for retail success this year

Over 20,000 leaders from retailers and brands convened this year for NRF’s Big Show. But for the first time in 110 years, it was completely virtual. Despite the challenges, NRF came through just as retail did in 2020 by innovating and pivoting to create an excellent experience. There were more than 130 sessions by 330 speakers from over 3,500 participating companies.

Creating value for CPG brands in 2021 starts with optimizing the value of data

The CPG space experiences significant change every year, but for manufacturers of consumer packaged goods, 2020 was one for the record books. At this time last year, industry experts already predicted big changes were coming. Then came the global pandemic, causing the market to shift at an even faster pace. For brands that had taken steps to anticipate and prep for evolving trends and opportunities, the journey was tough but navigable. For others, there were difficult, unexpected challenges.

According to Gartner¹, "Seven out of 10 boards of directors responded to the COVID-19 crisis by accelerating digital business initiatives." Commentary from recently released 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management (MDM) Solutions¹ supports this fact, concluding that "The MDM market continues to evolve and thrive as organizations seek to benefit from the business agility afforded by mastering their most critical data, particularly in times of change." You might be interested in reading the full report, of course. More on that later in this blog, or click here if you can't wait.

As manufacturers look back at 2020, they will reflect on the challenges, pivots, wins and new learnings. While many companies accelerated well designed solutions and employed them with success, others created stopgaps that were put in place rapidly to expand into new channels, launch new products and gain digital shelf distribution in new retail customers.

A primary growth vector on the mind of many CIOs today are mergers and acquisitions. And many of these CIOs are in charge of managing a host of internal systems that share data. Establishing a single source of truth that can unite these systems in near real-time, so that operations can run seamlessly across old and new business units alike, is a challenge all of these CIOs face.

Master data management (MDM) enables telecom providers and CSPs to gain control of their data and leverage it for new business opportunities.

Telecom operators, telecom equipment manufacturers and digital communications service providers (CSPs) are looking into a large untapped business potential with a 5G, edge-connected world allowing to address new types of subscribers in new ways. The telecom industry, challenged by competition and legislation, has a unique opportunity to leverage new technologies, such as AI, and develop new business models, renew their offerings and become more efficient.

Four proactive ways of enhancing product information management instead of returns management – or how to drop from 20% to 0.5% return rate

Returns have been a pervasive problem for online retailers since online shopping began, and it’s only going to become more challenging with the growth in online sales. Right now, we can foresee a perfect storm building with the approaching holiday season’s shopping spike amid the COVID-19 crisis and the encouragement to minimize in-person activities. As a result, January 2021 may be the largest month in absolute volume for returns ever seen by retailers, and January 2nd may be the height of that returns storm.

Financial services institutions, such as banks and insurance companies, rely on MDM-enabled transparency of their customer master data and product master data to capitalise on a number of industry trends, including:

Master data management (MDM) plays a critical role in ensuring data transparency. MDM therefore enables you to leverage the customer and product master data – that you already have – to address and drive revenue from these current trends in the financial services industry.

Do you feel like your databases are more like data vaults? The data vault contains all the information on customers, prospects, products, operations, and finances, only no one knows how to unlock it and discover its secrets.