Blog
Your Organization Is Unique. Your MDM Should Be, Too.
Francesca D'Angelo, Director, Global Information Management Offering, IQVIA
Sowjanya Bukkapatnam Tirumala, Director Product and Strategy, Global Master Data Management, IQVIA
May 24, 2024

Different life sciences companies vary greatly in what kinds of data they use and how they use it, from pharmaceutical and MedTech companies to hospitals, clinics, and other care providers. Which means every organization needs its master data management (MDM) strategy tailored to its unique needs, and adaptable as those needs evolve.

The goal of most MDM solutions is to create a centralized data source to ensure everybody in the organization is using the same data set, and that the data is all cleaned, governed, mastered and tagged the same way. The benefits of having a centralized, “golden” set of data include:

  • Greater consistency and accuracy across the organization
  • Faster, more accurate analytics for improved decision-making
  • Increased efficiency and reduced costs for all data-related tasks
  • Better ROI as data assets are able to impact a larger portion of the overall organization

Scale, complexity drive MDM strategy

Developing your MDM strategy has little to do with the size of your organization or your industry segment, as data is recognized as a golden asset for any organization. What matters most is how your company operates and what it needs from the data it uses. For some companies, the goal is a single reference dataset for a very specific use, so the strategy needs to focus on ensuring that one set is clean, accurate and accessible. Other companies might also use one unified reference dataset, but share it across multiple departments (marketing, sales, etc.). Hence their MDM solution must ensure that everyone is accessing the same golden data source, so all activity from all teams can be easily correlated. And others require that multiple reference datasets be bridged for use by multiple parties, requiring a robust MDM able to handle higher levels of complexity.

One of the core features of MDM is the ability to align data usage across different divisions or business units, ensuring you get the most ROI out of your data by empowering more people to use it consistently. Relying on program-specific use cases limits the potential benefits of your data, so even in organizations where only one use case is currently needed, a good MDM strategy will ease future growth.

While an enterprise-wide approach may be considered the preferred vision for most, a hybrid or domain-specific strategy may be a better fit for some. For example, many of our clients build region oriented MDMs, while others build a global MDM that they adapt for each of their domain areas.

Start by accurately assessing your current data use

The most successful MDM strategies have one thing in common: they are designed to satisfy the business needs of the widest possible range of stakeholders (and thereby generate the greatest ROI as well). Accordingly, it’s important to start with a comprehensive assessment of how data is used across the entire organization. This can be done internally or with the help of an outside consultant, just so long as it is done thoroughly and doesn’t limit itself to the traditional view that data is solely in IT’s domain. The IT department is still an important stakeholder — in fact, they are often the first to grasp the business value (scale, efficiency, etc.) of centralizing and standardizing data — but every team needs to consider data’s role across all its functions and how it can benefit from MDM. An assessment helps map all these various business needs across all the impacted teams.

With an assessment in hand, you can then strategically choose the key areas where better data management can have an impact on your business right now. Focus on the use cases with the most substantial benefits and where there is room to grow and expand into other teams.

As you plan for how your MDM will impact the business, take a proactive approach to ensure wide adoption. Deploying a new MDM solution is essentially about effective change management. When asking people to change the way they work, if they don't see the benefit — if change is imposed from the top down and the daily users struggle to see the value — you can have the best solution but it can still fail.

Get ready for tomorrow’s data challenges

While a good MDM solution can be a positive change agent, that doesn’t mean it should change the way you run your business. MDM should create efficiencies and savings within your business structure, not require you to restructure your business — which is why we recommend running your MDM the way you run the business, not the other way around.

An MDM solution is not like other systems that get implemented and every 2-3 years, everything is overhauled. The MDM you build now can impact your business far down the road. This is particularly true as AI, generative AI and ML technologies are driving change at a highly accelerated pace. The solution you implement now must be able to integrate the trends of the future, even when they come at breakneck speed.

Now is the time to create a resilient strategy that meets real business needs today and is also flexible enough to accommodate change and growth tomorrow.

Learn more about IQVIA Master Data Management capabilities.

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