Implementation of MDM Solution leading to 80% reduction in operational costs around data management

Client

US-based retail chain of home improvement stores and is listed among Fortune 500 companies.

Services offered

IBM Master Data Management implementation, data cleansing, data de-duplication, data standardization, enterprise data governance and integration with third party data sources.

Domain

Retail

Application environment

IBM Information Server, IBM Quality Stage, Data Stage and IBM DB2

Project name

IBM MDM Implementation

Location

USA

Client background

Client is a US-based chain of retail home improvement and appliance stores. Founded in 1946 in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, the chain now serves more than 14 million customers a week in its 1,710 stores in the United States and 20 in Canada.

Business challenges

• Multiple instances of business data silos in operational applications
• Near to 0% visibility of customer information, lack of BI and market prediction
• Inefficient Customer Relationship Management due to lack of accurate customer data
• Cost overhead in business information maintenance and enhancement

HCLT solution

• IBM Information Server recommended as preferred MDM solution for customer and vendor data
• Extensive data cleansing through DataStage and QualityStage layer. Data de-duplication through deterministic and probabilistic matching. Integration with third party data source like D&B and Acxiom
• Creation of house-holding for individuals and hierarchy for organizations
• Centralized and workflow-based data standardization using IBM QualityStage
• Enterprise data governance through iterative mode – Data custodian and business rules and stewardship
• XML-based services exposed for real-time or near real-time Integration

Project challenges

• Data profiling on high volume of operational as well as customer data
• Dealing with 250 million customer records housed in multiple (20+) source systems
• Non standard data present in legacy system
• Re-designing business rules to ensure consistency and accuracy of data across systems

Benefits in business operations

• 80% reduction in operational cost around data management
• Improved customer visibility