The modern economy is a conglomerate of all the prior economies to todays. An evolved version, if you will. However, there remain remnants of these older economies if you know where to spot them. Customer service, for instance, and more specifically the customer experience is still, today, one of the most vital aspects of running and operating a business. In other words, customer relationships always have, and always will be, a top priority for legitimate business owners. In today’s economy, it’s so vital, in fact, that a single negative customer experience can lead to that customer moving to a competitor. As such, creating a reputation for a highly rated customer experience is a significant advantage in the modern economy.

Using Master Data Management to Close Gaps in Customer Experience Gartner defines master data management (MDM) as “a technology-enabled discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets. Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes the core entities of the enterprise including customers, prospects, citizens, suppliers, sites, hierarchies and chart of accounts.” Basically, it means linking all data sources into a single master file that provides a common point of reference.

Company #1: EmblemHealth EmblemHealth had a problem. This large regional HMO and health insurance company, dedicated to providing excellent health coverage and administrative services to 3.4 million people, had less than excellent customer communications. They had previously used Microsoft® Word to generate communications to members, care providers and facilities, which resulted in templates scattered across nearly 3,000 desktops in 16 workgroups at seven facilities spread across three states.