Riversand's MDM Implementation brings coherence to Customer Data Management
A US-based multinational healthcare company and a leading medical product manufacturer spread across six continents and 35+ countries. Before our assignment, the client was obligated to deploy rigorous manual intervention to manage customer data, customer onboarding, and the credit validation process. This was due to the absence of a modernized data master implementation plan that resulted in strenuous day-to-day customer management operations. In addition, there was a lack of a rigid data framework for implementing agility with the increasing data intake. This caused significant person-hours, time, and financial resources to the company. Additionally, the lack of governance around the customer data resulted in inaccurate account receivables, leading to escalated daily supply outstanding. This intended that the customer data was managed through multiple silos that scattered the data across multiple networks.
The organization was determined to tackle the challenges by searching for agility and operational resilience through robust and potent IT solutions. Therefore, the organization approached Birlasoft to help them achieve a digital transformation driven by systematic implementation of customer data management solutions. Birlasoft assisted the client in deploying Riversand MDM, featuring advanced master data and customer domain management services . Post the deployment, the client could simplify customer onboarding and maintenance processes by seamlessly integrating CRM (Salesforce), CDM (Riversand), and ERP(JDE) across multiple geographic regions. This transformation also boosted significant risk assessment and reduced costs for repackaging and reshipping by upfront address validation for prospective clients.
The Challenge
1. Customer Data Management - The need for transparency and governance
Due to the manually driven customer data management systems, the client faced complexity in data governance. This resulted in an inconsistency in data collection, usability, and security - such factors contributed to the creation of multiple teams that worked in silos. The lack of overarching governance across multiple teams made data management even more challenging. In addition, the data distribution across various silos created inaccurate data integrity, leading to missing A/R that escalated daily supply outstanding. Simultaneously, the client relied on a manual workflow process for onboarding new customers.
2. High duration for customer onboarding
Manual workflows employed outdated customer onboarding techniques, making the process last about three weeks. The higher duration for onboarding was due to several reasons, such as high user churn, low feature adoption and poor conversion from emails, and a redundant support system. The delayed onboarding process resulted in late activation. These blockers ultimately resulted in bottlenecks that piled up business requests for longer durations. The need was to create a simplified customer onboarding process to mitigate the churn and enhance the potential activation process.
3. Lack of automation in Credit Risk Management
The client was dependent on manual verification for a credit check on each customer, which created further delays in customer onboarding. The client was tackling the challenges of having improper customer information, a non-definitive customer credit score framework, a manual credit workflow, and a manual correspondence system. The lack of historical data for crucial credit risk assessment used significant person-hours to cross-check customer information before customer onboarding manually. The delays caused by the lack of automation created a downstream impact on critical business operations.
The Solution
1. Integrating CDM with D&B Enterprise Risk Management to automate onboarding and credit check approval
Our first step toward addressing the challenge was modernizing the client's customer onboarding process. We created a systematic onboarding and maintenance workflow for the customers. We achieved this by factoring four key essential components - clearly defining the onboarding goals and tying them with a timeline, mapping out the onboarding process by making a basic customer journey, creating specific data input points to get valuable data collection, and mapping the workflow for efficient data management and usage.
Furthermore, we integrated the Address validation service into the data provided by the customer: this ensured accuracy and built confidence in deploying necessary assistance to the customers at the marked locations. We deployed the D&B Enterprise Risk Assessment manager for automated credit check approval to reduce the tension between risk and opportunity. This helped the client gain significant stakeholder confidence to expand business opportunities across multiple product lines.
2. Integrating MDM with D&B Direct interface to eliminate data errors and duplicities
Understanding the significance of structuring data for greater accessibility, we integrated D&B Direct Interface to enable the client to match customer records with D&B Database to create unique identification through DUNS numbers. We also deployed match set codes in the CRM to prevent any data duplication during customer creation. To create operational agility, we centralized the MDM repository of the customer data. We added 200+ business rules to enhance data governance and ensure data quality was secure and reliable without any inconsistencies. These changes ensured the client received all the data from a single truthful source.
The Impact
By implementing Riversand Master Data Management, we enabled our client to make swift customer onboarding and maintenance processes along with well-defined hierarchies and relationships for the US and Canada regions. The client can now effortlessly manage customer information as the data is integrated seamlessly across CRM (Salesforce), Customer Hub (Riversand), and ERP (JDE) systems. We ensured that the client no longer had to rely on various teams to collect and verify data. The Riversand customer hub became the trustworthy source of information across the enterprise for the US and Canada region.
Additonally, the client derived the following key benefits through modernized customer data management:
- Streamlined customer onboarding process with data validation checks.
- Customized third-party data integration, such as D&B to significantly expedite the onboarding process.
- Improved risk intelligence through the integration of the D&B Risk Assessment Service.
- Creation of smart customer data with up-to-date credit check information.
- Reduced Reshipping and Repackaging costs by implementing the Upfront address validation service.
Following our engagement, the client was able to cut through the tangle of data complexities, leveraging our data-driven modernization approach. Today, the client receives a single source of truth for all customer-related information through one platform to avoid data disarrays. The data disruption has now turned into data-driven intelligence that is helping the organization focus more on customer innovation, risk mitigation, and satisfied business stakeholders.
