It’s common knowledge that a Master Data Management (MDM) solution for distribution helps organizations create and maintain a single, trusted view of critical business data. An MDM consolidates data from multiple systems and eliminates duplicate data and data inconsistencies. Using an MDM ensures the organization is working with the same data.
Why Generic MDM Solutions Struggle With Distribution Business Needs
One of the challenges for Asset Management firms is that most MDM vendor solutions cannot meet the organization’s requirements without a significant, costly, and time-consuming development effort to modify the MDM solution to meet all of the firm’s distribution business needs. In addition, this type of MDM development effort re-focuses the organization’s resources from doing the jobs they were hired to do to instead spending many months, if not years, working with the MDM vendor to provide the organization’s requirements and since that effort delves into every aspect of an organization’s various data flows and systems, the effort can indeed prove to be almost overwhelming in the time and effort needed to successfully complete it.
Unfortunately, even after all the time and effort by the organization’s resources, there may still be gaps in areas such as channel/territory management, and other key functionality for the distribution side of the organization, such as:
- The MDM systems may not be designed for transactional or analytical sales reporting. Many MDMs do not typically store transaction-level data unless heavily customized, and therefore are not well-suited for rapid and detailed transaction-level sales reporting;
- The MDM systems typically are not optimized for time-based sales metrics needed for trend analysis;
- Many MDM systems do not natively support sales team structures or splits, which depend on transactional data;
- The MDM systems cannot typically perform multi-currency reporting since they do not maintain or apply exchange-rate tables required for currency conversions; and
- MDM systems do not natively support features such as segmentation, lead scoring, cross-sell identification, or similar analytics, because these require behavioral and transactional data that sit outside the scope of a traditional MDM platform.
Therefore, if it is possible to plug in a solution that obviates the need to assure these capabilities exist in the overall MDM solution arrived at, so much the better.
A Purpose-Built Master Data Management Solution for Distribution
Fortunately, there is a distribution data master data management solution for asset management firms that meets all of the above needs and fills gaps that most MDM providers can’t easily address. The MARS distribution data management platform consolidates data from a multitude of sources, eliminates duplicate data and inconsistencies, and provides a “Golden Copy” of the firm, branch/office, rep, product, sales, asset, and other distribution-related data to provide a solid foundation for the organization’s CRM, analytics, and reporting.
Advanced Channel and Territory Management
MARS includes powerful channel and territory management capabilities, enabling firms to view their business at a granular level while supporting exceptions, overrides, and flexible hierarchies; critical for complex distribution models.
Flexible Deployment: Standalone or Complementary
MARS distribution data management platform can act alone to handle all of an organization’s distribution data management and reporting needs, including integrating with the firm’s chosen CRM – or MARS can complement the organization’s desired MDM solution to eliminate the need to “build out” the vendor’s MDM solution to meet the requirements of the distribution side of the business, thus saving time and money to have a truly enterprise-wide MDM solution.
Distribution Data Coverage, Alerts, and System Integration
The MARS distribution data management platform supports the entire spectrum of retail and institutional businesses and all product types, including mutual funds, ETFs, UCITs, UMAs, SICAVs, CITS, Private Funds, interval funds, DCIO/retirement, and Managed Account Model Portfolios and provides automatic alerts when certain business conditions are met, such as a Rep’s first sale, a Rep’s sale over a certain dollar threshold, changes in a Rep’s purchasing patterns, and even provides notifications for accounts that are a high risk of redeeming assets. In addition, MARS is designed to easily and securely distribute data to an organization’s internal systems, such as a data warehouse, a CRM, or even an enterprise MDM solution.
Evaluating the True Cost of Generic Master Data Management
Considerations when purchasing and implementing a generic MDM solution include evaluating the hidden costs of customizing a generic MDM vendor solution to meet the organization’s distribution business needs, determining whether the MDM vendor has the industry expertise to satisfy all of the distribution master data management needs or will significant customizations be needed, and the organization’s internal costs associated with the time and resource effort it will take over months, or possibly years, to work with an MDM vendor to meet the distribution side of the business’ needs fully, in addition to the time, effort, and cost to work with the MDM vendor to further enhance its solution as the organization’s distribution needs change.
When considering adding an MDM solution, or enhancing a current MDM solution, consider the cost-savings and time-savings by adding the MARS distribution data management platform which is tailored to meet the asset management industry’s needs, and can save your organization money, time, and resource effort versus trying to “build out” over the course of months or even years the additional features in an MDM vendor solution to meet your distribution business needs.
With the MARS distribution data management platform the organization’s staff can continue to focus on its core business while relying on our industry expertise and the MARS solution to meet the distribution business’ master data management needs.
