In today’s data-driven business environment, organizations rely heavily on analytics to make strategic decisions. However, the effectiveness of analytics reporting depends on the quality, consistency, and reliability of data. This is where Master Data Management (MDM) plays a crucial role. By establishing a single, authoritative source of truth for critical data domains, MDM ensures that analytics reporting is built on a foundation of high-quality, trustworthy information.

The Role of MDM in Accurate Data Insights

1. Ensuring Data Consistency and Quality

One of the biggest challenges organizations face is inconsistent and poor-quality data. Disparate systems often contain duplicate, outdated, or conflicting records, leading to inaccurate analytics. MDM addresses this by creating a golden record—a unified, clean version of each critical data entity. Through robust data governance and validation processes, MDM ensures that data used for reporting is accurate, consistent, and complete, fostering trust among the user community.

2. Eliminating Data Silos and Enabling Systems Consolidation

Enterprises often struggle with fragmented data stored across multiple systems. This creates inefficiencies, as teams must reconcile conflicting records manually. MDM plays a pivotal role in systems consolidation by eliminating data silos and harmonizing information across the organization. By integrating data from various sources into a single, authoritative repository, MDM ensures that analytics tools and business intelligence platforms access consistent, up-to-date information.

3. Acting as a Bridge Between Enterprise Systems

MDM does not operate in isolation—it seamlessly integrates with enterprise systems through APIs and connectors. By syndicating critical data across platforms, MDM acts as a bridge between disparate applications, ensuring a smooth flow of reliable information. This integration enhances operational efficiency and empowers businesses to leverage advanced analytics and AI-driven insights more effectively.

4. Enhancing Data-Driven Decision-Making

With a reliable MDM framework in place, organizations can confidently use analytics to drive strategic decisions. High-quality data leads to more accurate reporting, allowing businesses to identify trends, optimize processes, and uncover new opportunities. By maintaining clean and governed master data, companies can fully realize the potential of data-driven decision-making.

Why Organizations Should Implement MDM

Organizations that invest in MDM gain a competitive edge by ensuring that their analytics and reporting efforts are based on trustworthy data. Key benefits include:

• Improved operational efficiency through reduced manual data reconciliation
• Higher confidence in analytics due to consistent and accurate data
• Streamlined data integration across enterprise systems
• Better compliance and governance with regulated data policies

By implementing MDM, businesses create a strong data foundation that fuels accurate analytics, fosters collaboration, and drives informed decision-making. In an era where data is a strategic asset, MDM is not just an option—it’s a necessity for organizations aiming to maximize their analytics potential.

Reference Data Management (RDM) plays a vital role in ensuring that standardized data—such as country codes, product classifications, industry codes, and currency symbols—remains uniform across all systems and applications. Without effective RDM, businesses risk inconsistencies that can lead to reporting errors, compliance issues, and operational inefficiencies. By centralizing the management of reference data, companies can enhance data quality, improve decision-making, and ensure seamless interoperability between different departments and software systems.

Beyond maintaining consistency, RDM is essential for regulatory compliance and risk management. Many industries, such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing, depend on accurate reference data to meet regulatory requirements and adhere to global standards. Incorrect or outdated reference data can result in compliance violations, financial penalties, or operational disruptions. A well-structured RDM strategy not only helps businesses stay compliant but also enables greater agility by ensuring data integrity across evolving business landscapes. As organizations continue to embrace digital transformation, investing in robust Reference Data Management practices is no longer optional—it’s a necessity for maintaining competitive advantage and operational excellence.

Informatica World takes place May 8-11 at the Venetian Resort Las Vegas and we can’t wait to meet you there! Perficient is a proud sponsor of Informatica’s largest event, which brings together customers and partners from across the globe.

Perficient is a global digital consultancy, an Informatica Platinum Enterprise Partner, and the 2022 Cloud Modernization Channel Partner of the Year. We’ve delivered strategy and implementation for on-premises, cloud, and hybrid solutions. Our investment and commitment to our Informatica partnership is extensive, with hundreds of dedicated consultants and more than 80 partner certifications.

Perficient’s Informatica experts will be at the show, will you? Visit us at booth #B12 to meet with subject matter experts and thought leaders and learn how we’ve leveraged our extensive expertise in data integration, data governance, and master data management to deliver transformational initiatives for our customers.

If you haven’t yet made the decision to attend Informatica World, we invite you to join us and 2,000+ Informatica enthusiasts in person in Las Vegas. Don’t miss this opportunity to collaborate, learn, and be inspired! The agenda this year will not disappoint. PowerCenter to Cloud Modernization Summit is a can’t miss session for customers wanting to hear from other customers that have made the leap and haven’t looked back. Learn best practices on how to modernize workloads from PowerCenter to cloud.

Make sure to connect with us at Informatica World 2023. Our experts will be at booth #B12 discussing how we can help clients maximize your investment in Informatica tools.

Oracle’s September new features list for EDM (Enterprise Data Management) contains quite a few exciting items. One particular new feature that Oracle EPM customers should be aware of is EDM’s ability to support FreeForm Planning applications. Starting this month, EDM now contains an new application type specifically for FreeForm Planning applications!

The application registration process for FreeForm applications is very similar to that of regular Planning applications. The wizard directs the user through identifying the Cube(s), Application Settings, and Dimensions. Continuing reading below as we walk through an example!

First, the names of each cube that EDM will support needs to be defined.

Next, the user needs to configure the application settings.

After application settings, the dimensions which will be managed within EDM need to be added.

Example of adding an Account dimension.

Click Next once all dimensions have been added.

Finally, the user is presented with a summary page of the configuration.

Lastly, customers who previously used the Planning app type with EDM for FreeForm applications, can easily be convert those to the new FreeForm app type if needed.

Does this sound familiar: you’re running multiple point-of-care systems, each with redundant data points collected. But what happens when there are small variations in how data is captured and processed across these systems? As a healthcare provider client of ours discovered, inconsistent data can reduce revenue realization. It caused claims to be improperly matched and processed… then denied – a stressful, frustrating, and business-impacting experience.

We partnered with the provider to consolidate their siloed data. Our Agile practitioners recognized the organization’s challenge as a prime use case for Informatica, an automated solution that would compare, streamline, and harmonize patient data in order to establish a single, reliable source of truth and boost claims processing efficiencies.

READ MORE: We’re A Cloud and On-Premises Certified Informatica Partner  Master Data Management: Modern Use Cases for Healthcare

Increasing Revenue and Improving Cycle Processing With a Single Source of Truth

To deliver a single source of truth, our team of industry and technical experts partnered with the provider to achieve the following:

• Created a shared vision and enabled teams for the new solution’s rollout.
• Built an automated solution on Informatica’s Data Quality and Master Data Management Hub to ingest, cleanse, compare, and consolidate data between various internal and external sources, proactively identifying mismatches for quick resolution.
• Established a Center for Enablement (C4E) to oversee information governance and resolve process gaps across multiple workstreams.

Data quality improvements achieved with this solution significantly reduced the cost and complexity associated with integrating newly acquired hospitals, increased the frequency of successfully billed patient claims, and limited confusion and frustration associated with providers’ attempts to understand and reverse denied claims.

And the results are impressive. Want to learn more? Check out the complete success story here.

DISCOVER EVEN MORE SOLUTIONS: Master Data Management: Modern Use Cases for Healthcare

Healthcare MDM Solutions

With Perficient’s expertise in life sciences, healthcare, Informatica, and Agile leadership, we equipped this multi-state integrated health network with a modern, sustainable solution that vastly accelerated the revenue realization cycle.

Have questions? We help the healthcare organizations navigate healthcare data, business processes and technology, and solution integration and implementation. Contact us today, and let’s discuss your specific needs and goals.

We’ve all been there…our organization has decided to implement a new technology and we’ve been tapped to ensure it’s success. After the feelings of anxious excitement subside, the first question that typically pops into our head “where do I start?” Official (and many times expensive) training is typically a person’s first thought, along with reading available documentation online (if the vendor provides it online). While these options are extremely beneficial, sometimes it’s still a challenge for users to filter their education down to the basics in order to reap the benefits of the solution from day 1.

Luckily, for Enterprise Data Management (EDM) customers Oracle has recently released several checklists to help users of all roles to do just that! Whether the person is an Admin, a data owner, or even an Auditor, these checklists provide a path to success for all EDM user types.

Clicking on the hyperlinks opens each individual checklist. The checklists have detailed step-by-step explanations of tasks for users. Within the checklists are additional links which redirect users to documentation, videos, etc. An example of the “Administer Enterprise Data Management Cloud” checklist is presented below.

The checklists even take it to the next step by providing information on where to find more about EDM, such as online user communities and Oracle user groups.

These checklists are very informative. So much so that they have something to offer for every user, regardless of level of expertise. We highly recommended that experienced customers take advantage of them as well!

The October update for Oracle EDM (Enterprise Data Management) contains over 15 new features. Many of which are intended to enhance the experience for the non-technical user. Continue reading below as we highlight the three most significant that all EDM customers, or prospective customers, should know.

Subscriptions Actions Improved

Previously, subscriptions were not able to apply property updates in certain circumstances. For example, when a node’s parent did not match between a source and target viewpoint(s). This resulted in users needing to submit separate requests to update the various viewpoints for property updates. Beginning with October’s update, subscriptions will now apply property updates for the following situations:

• Updates to Node level properties made with another structural action such as an Insert or Move which was not included in the Action filter
• Updates to Node level properties made to a shared node in a hierarchy location not included in the Top Node filter but has another location which is included
• Updates to Node level properties made in a list viewpoint or under a source parent which is different than the target parent

Extract Incremental Modifications

The ability to export only modifications to data has long been a trademark of a mature master data management application. This ability not only helps users in terms of data analysis, but also provides flexibility in integrations with downstream systems. Oracle EDM will now provide this capability by allowing for the comparison between two time periods within an extract. The time periods can be specified on the General tab of the Extract definition (see the following image).

Additionally, users can select the actions to be included in the Extract. The actions available to be included in the extract are shown below.

Blockout Capabilities

It’s not uncommon for organizations to prevent updates to dimensions, hierarchies, reference lists, etc. during certain time periods. Oracle EDM now provides the ability to enforce this type of requirement systematically. When the Blockout option is enabled, requests are prevented from being Completed. However, requests can still occur and move through the various stages (i.e. create, submit, enrich, approve) – they are just not applied until the Blockout is lifted.

Configuration of the Blockout is applied by specifying a start & end date and time (please see following image).

Are you interested in learning more about Perficient’s expertise in Oracle EPM offerings, including EDM? Contact us today!

Data plays an essential role in today’s digital economy and keeping up with modern data management processes is key to staying competitive. In fact, enterprises with advanced data practices are more productive, innovate faster, are able to enter new markets quickly, and are more likely to be directly monetizing their data compared to their less-mature peers. But achieving that level of competency often requires the assistance of a data management service provider.

Partnering with a data management service provider can help your organization:

• Establish a strategy and operating model for data
• Build an enterprise data foundation
• Mature and scale data governance

In the Now Tech: Data Management Service Providers, Q4 2021 report, Forrester defines data management service providers as:

“Service firms that provide talent, technology, and best practices through strategy and deployment partnerships in order to improve an enterprise’s use of data management to drive insights and business results.”

Forrester Now Tech: Data Management Service Providers, Q4 2021 Report

Identifying the right service provider to partner with can help you realize the benefits of data and increase your data competency.

In the report, Forrester segmented vendors based on market presence and functionality. Market presence was determined by data management service revenue and vendors were placed into one of three categories: large established players, midsize players, and small players. Functionality was based on varying capabilities and broken down into four segments: platform providers, data and analytics services, specialized service providers, and system integrators.

Each vendor was asked a number of detailed questions about their services, including geographic presence, industry expertise, and data management experience and expertise. Based on the responses, Forrester supplies information about these service providers to help you determine the best vendor for your data management needs.

Perficient’s Primary Functionality Lies in Specialized Services

Forrester listed Perficient in its midsize category ($100M to $1B in annual category revenue) as a specialized service provider. According to the report, “Specialized service providers concentrate on data and governance foundations. These firms have extensive data engineering, data management, data security, and data governance expertise for data-driven initiatives prioritized by CIOs, chief data officers, and enterprise architects. Engagements focus on data strategy, data architecture, data operations (DataOps), and data governance, helping enterprises transition into insight-driven businesses.”

Perficient’s listing in this Now Tech includes our geographic presence (100% North America); industry focus areas (healthcare and life sciences, financial services, and retail); and sample customers (Novant Health, StorageMart, and United Wholesale Mortgage).

Perficient’s Approach to Data Management

One of the greatest attributes of data is that it becomes more valuable the more you use it. But seeing that value is difficult if you’re not managing your data properly.

As a specialized service provider, we’re helping leading companies create actionable business insights based on accurate, scalable, and comprehensive data.  We bring the thought leadership, technology expertise, and processes to help our customer become data-driven organizations capable of leveraging data for competitive advantage. We do this through:

• Taking the time to understand your business
• Collecting, organizing and managing data from all over your organization
• Delivering insights via intelligent applications
• Deploying data and insights to any user via any interface

Learn More about Perficient

We’re ready to help you realize the benefits of data no matter where you are on your journey. Our experience, our technology partnerships, and most importantly our people are what make us a great partner. Visit us on Perficient.com and learn more about how we can help you master the realities of the data-driven world. And listen to the Intelligent Data Podcast where we interview thought leaders on a variety of topics around using data and technology to reshape your business.

You can read the entire Forrester Now Tech: Data Management Service Providers, Q4 2021 report via the Forrester website where it’s available to Forrester subscribers and for purchase.

Your organization may face data challenges as you work through ongoing consolidation and a flood of data from new sources.

Master data is the cement that bonds your data foundation. 

Healthcare leaders are prioritizing an enterprise view and catalogs that contain true master data for patients, providers, or members. But they also want to master reference data (e.g., diagnosis, lab, medication codes, and others) that are equally important to providing consistent information and meaning across the organization.

Master data management (MDM) and reference data management (RDM) can unlock significant value for payers and providers.

Streamline Claims Payments ​With Reliable, Centralized Data​

An integrated healthcare provider struggled with claims that were being denied due to mismatched provider data across disparate repositories. The organization needed an automated way to align all data systems as one single source of truth.​

Our agile leadership and delivery teams built a master data management (MDM) solution that ingests, cleans, compares, and consolidates data between various internal and external sources, proactively identifying mismatches for quick resolution.

The MDM solution reduced claims denials by 80%, accelerating the payment lifecycle and quickly providing value. Importantly, internal teams can now trust and leverage the data for greater business insights.

​Maximize Business Throughput With MDM

​One of the largest payers in the northeast U.S. needed to maximize its sales team’s throughput and improve members’ renewal experience by de-duplicating member records and creating a single version of truth.​

We consolidated member data by implementing an MDM hub with Informatica and developed a data governance RAC. Trust settings publish to Salesforce.​

With data quality stewardship in place and a 360-degree view of member data, sales teams can now access associated contracts under each member, optimizing the renewal process and streamlining member service.​

EXPLORE: Perficient+Informatica: A Cloud and On-Premises Certified Partner

Master Well-Governed Data to Support Clinical, Operational, Financial Teams

New York State’s largest healthcare provider needed to provide accurate system-wide reporting across a variety of clinical and financial measures. This required a singular view of the clinical, operational, and financial data which is held in a complex network of disparate and inconsistent systems.

We helped this client create an enterprise data warehouse program and platform to provide a trusted, singular view of the data, supporting various teams across the health system. This engagement included creating the strategic vision and roadmap for the program and platform, implementing a comprehensive enterprise data warehouse, MDM and RDM system, and helping the payer grow capabilities to manage, run, and extend the platform and program moving forward. The MDM and RDM applications eliminate duplicate patient/provider records and gain control of the maze of code sets and other healthcare reference data that are critical for reporting and data governance.

The solution creates a trusted, single version of the truth to provide accurate data for various corporate initiatives covering nearly 10 million patients and spanning 65 million encounters.

SEE ALSO: [Podcast] The Art of Data Storytelling for Data Management

An End-to-End Partner

Healthcare organizations need to make informed decisions that will drive the efficiency of providing care. We blend healthcare, data, and platform expertise to help you build stronger teams, establish optimal processes, and deliver better care experiences and outcomes.

Have questions? Contact us today, and let’s discuss your specific needs and goals.

Oracle’s Enterprise Data Management (EDM) cloud solution has recently received a wide array of enhancements. These enhancements span many different aspects of the offering and really address some crucial areas such as end-user usability, migration, and system information. The following sections highlight several of the key updates.

Agile Abilities Expanded

Application Templates allow customers to store an individual application’s artifacts (e.g. views, properties, data chain objects, etc.) in a json file. Service Administrators can then import the file into a separate EDM environment where the application does not exist.  It should be noted that the templates contain artifacts only and do not include any data, requests, or transaction history.

This feature greatly enhances EDM’s ability to correlate with staggered deployments of target systems. For example, if an organization chooses to deploy a planning/budgeting application before a consolidation application, an application template file can be utilized to migrate only the planning/budgeting to production. A separate template file can be produced later to migrate the consolidation application.

User Experience Streamlined

Views are the mechanism for end user interaction with data in EDM. By default, all Views are visible to the end users. This can be confusing for users to navigate within deployments where many Views exist. However, EDM now provides the ability to filter which users/groups have visibility to each View in the system.

An additional update that improves the end user experience is the ability to enrich requests during after initial submission. It is common within many organizations that an approver or other users may need to correct a detail on a request, or add additional information prior to the request being committed to the data set. EDM permits users with the appropriate security to apply modifications to a request, rather than requiring everything to be provided at the time the request is originated.

Since its initial offering to the public, EDM has offered a great deal of auditing capabilities. In the recent update by Oracle, we see additional information being provided to users concerning requests. The Request Activity dashboard now provides the Request Type (e.g. Interactive, Subscription generated, Import) and the request Owner. Also, the Status and Stage columns have been combined.

Record Count Analytics

A new report is available starting with the 21.07 release. The new Record Count report provides administrators with the analysis of node counts across applications, dimensions and node types. The report then displays the unique instance count of nodes in order to provide a complete picture of the total record count. Everything is summarized to provide total counts (at the bottom of the report) which equate to the counts available on the “About” screen (accessible by clicking on username in the upper right corner of EDM).

Below is an example of the new report.

Contact us today to learn more about EDM’s latest update and why it’s a critical tool in the EPM landscape!

What is Master Data Management?

According to Gartner, master data management (MDM) is 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 describe the enterprise’s core entities, including customers, prospects, citizens, suppliers, sites, hierarchies, and chart of accounts.

But, Why?

All executives at large and small organizations are considering how their organizations will use data. But, considering 70% of digital data initiatives fail, it’s important to ask why. For me, a single answer is true:

The Data Initiative lost sight of Business Strategy.

Given the size of the opportunity, how should I think about data strategy?

According to Forrester, data-fueled experiences, AI, and customer data platforms (CDPs) are a 37 Billion dollar opportunity. That opportunity has led organizations both large and small to examine their data strategy. The best such examinations typically have one goal: turning the data into revenue, customer satisfaction, and lifetime customer value. Further, research is showing that data is valuable not in and of itself, but because of the actions taken as a result of that data.  To do so, organizations must adopt both a rigorous Master Data Management approach and a clear understanding of when to break MDM’s rules. 

To break the rules, we need to apply lessons from Machine Learning (ML). Sometimes data “truth” is not easy to know, and ML teams may have special data needs that do not fit neatly into MDM. In Machine-Learning driven Marketing, storing semi-true data is critical to solving broader challenges and painting the most precise picture about the prospect or customer. Most importantly, large organizations often have multiple useful “true” overlapping data repositories relevant to different parts of the organization.

Customer Data Platforms are one such “semi-true” repositories. They store traditional master customer “golden” records. As importantly, CDPs also contain prospect and unknown digital visitor records, contextual inferences from business rules and models, preferences, aggregate segments, and sentiments.

What place does a Customer Data Platform have in my organization?

Since understanding customer and prospect intent continues to become critical to driving value, Customer Data Platforms serve the critical role of bridging marketing, sales, data science, operations, and finance into a dataset that drives insight, context, integration, and personalization at the right time and place for prospects and customers. As such, strategic implementation of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is table stakes for leading organizations.

To sum:

• Solve problems over injecting methodologies
• Customer Data Platforms solve business and technical problems and are a key value add to MDM for organizations both large and small.
• Use MDM for internal, operational data that has easy-to-determine “master” records.
• Do not let MDM get in the way of turning data into value.

Have a marketing data need that is getting too far “into the weeds”? At Perficient, we have the strategic and execution team to meet any of your organizational data needs.

Commerce is constantly evolving, and after the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis, B2B manufacturers are looking for ways to differentiate from the competition and reach customers with a unique competitive advantage.

Manufacturers have started to look within their own organizations to determine what opportunities are available to enhance the customer experience and successfully drive business, and many businesses have found that digitizing product information plays a significant role in their success. Even more, organized and consistent product information management helps organizations formulate a go-to-market strategy that not only appeals to buyers but is good for business in the long run.

Pairing Digital Systems and Product Information

Over 65% of organizations feel that beating a competitor to market after launching a new product is first priority. But to keep up with the competition, businesses have learned that their manufacturing processes need to become more global and digitized, meaning investing in new or more technologies like product information management (PIM), master data management (MDM), and customer experience (CX) software to manage product information.

In addition to the increased use of these technologies, more organizations are incorporating automation and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to support, tailor, and present product information as it becomes more intricate and complex to different channels and marketplaces while keeping it consistent and accurate. Over 90% of organizations use AI and automation to tailor this information to these channels and more businesses are branching out by utilizing content such as augmented reality (AR) or videos to sell products. Sixty-eight percent of organizations placed using product videos in their top three most successful content for driving sales. These technologies and solutions can support and provide accurate product information, better inform users about your products and services, and produce new buyers to your organization.

Manufacturers Must Continue to Evolve

Keeping up with your buyer’s need for easy and quick access to information should be one of your main goals as a manufacturer. But to do it the right way, it’s important to continuously modify product information to meet evolving customer expectations, as their needs will continue to change. Forty-three percent of organizations state that customers are dissatisfied by products that don’t meet expectations and often lose repeat customers for that reason.

Not only is listening to your customers’ needs crucial to expanding the possibilities for your go-to-market strategy, but it’s effective in quickly putting the right product or service into your buyers’ hands as opposed to the wrong product. Creating trust between your organization and your buyers as you both evolve is the differentiating factor to continuous success.

Take Advantage and Improve Your Organization

Building strong relationships with your customers and investing in the right technology can be a successful approach for your commerce strategy and better scale your organization for success. For more information on streamlining your B2B manufacturing report, download inRiver’s Driving Digital Commerce in Manufacturing report and tune into their on-demand webinar, New Baselines for B2B Manufacturing. Check out our PIM practice and contact our experts today for more information.

COVID-19 has undoubtedly affected financial services trends in 2020 and will continue to do so into 2021. Since the pandemic began, financial services organizations have been responding to the crisis with continuity plans to address everything from bankruptcies to people losing their jobs and ability to pay their bills on time. Now more than ever customers need to be supported with trust, transparency and data-based decision making.

In season 1 episode 1 of the Intelligent Data Podcast, host Arvind Murali and his guest Scott Albahary, Perficient’s Chief Strategist of Financial Services, discuss financial services trends, how data is influencing change in the industry, and what you need to think about as recovery from the pandemic begins.

Listening Guide

Financial Services Trends and Data

• Data and AI-based disruptions [2:14]
• Customer intelligence and the “Universal Banker” [4:03]
• Master data management and data governance adoption [6:10]
• How is big data being used? [11:12]
• How industry leaders are structuring their digital ecosystem [15:10]
• Robo-advisors and wealth management [17:40]
• Cybersecurity and data protection [22:59]
• Post-COVID advice for personalization and digital interactions [23:50]

Get This Episode Where You Listen

And don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review!
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Connect with the Host and Guest

Arvind Murali, Perficient Principal and Chief Strategist

LinkedIn | Perficient

Scott Albahary, Perficient Chief Strategist, Financial Services

LinkedIn | Perficient

Learn More About Our FinServ Solutions

If you are interested in learning more about Perficient’s financial services capabilities or would like to contact us, click here.