Given the changing organizational dynamics and ever-evolving business processes, any organization needs to streamline the way functions happen at the enterprise level.
When huge volumes of data records are involved, the exact mapping of records and subsequent utilization becomes a challenge at all levels of business.
The existence of data in multiple systems and forms poses serious challenges to the way data is retrieved and processed to the desired business requirement.
In such a scenario, data management is critical at the operational level to streamline data and also ensure the clear visibility of the same to respective stakeholders who consume this at the end of the business funnel.
Effective data management can happen through cleansing, categorization, and validation of records.
To address the prevailing enterprise data challenges, many organizations have embarked on their journey to set up SSOT as a single point of contact for multiple data sets. This kind of establishment is ideally the need of the hour to set things right in the first place by pointing to a single source, from where all data emerges and merges back.
SSOT is not any other separate entity, tool, or system, in fact, a state of being for a streamlined, structured, and defined data path with a single reference point.
It’s the challenges that speak the significance of any solution. Let’s take a quick look at the most common current-day data challenges that strongly advocate for SSOT.
Most Common Data Challenges of The Present
Imagine you are a billion-dollar company – that is $62 million per year lost due to poor data quality.
The need for a single source in enterprise data management is driven by multiple factors, which are in fact the core challenges associated with the unorganized data process. These include:
- Multiple systems created out of various merger and acquisition activities
- Lack of integration of these systems with the existing process
- Lack of documentation and streamlined procedures
- High reliance on manual methods for the remediation process
- Long lead times, inconsistent quality, duplication, poor service delivery and lack of end-to-end visibility & controls
- Low Net Promote Score (NPS) Scores: Poor customer perception and experience across the value chain for both external and internal customers
- Lead Time Delays: Order-to-Cash delays are more than the industry average
SSOT is a one-stop solution to all the challenges mentioned above as part of the core business process.
SSOT at a Glance: A Quick Overview
Maintained as the Golden Customer Record’ in the Master Data Management (MDM) structure, SSOT part of the VMWare Unified Data (VUD) program aims to offer a holistic view of customer and party data via a ‘Single Customer View’.
The single customer view provides highly streamlined visibility of records at three core levels: Data Layer, Application Layer and Business Layer, by means of:
- Cleansed, standardized and validated party records
- Most accurate, complete, and comprehensive representation of the party
The streamlined records, standardized and validated, bring ease and ensure smooth data transition across the three layers, contributing to the seamless business process.
As the core functions at the Application Layer, including Lead-to-Quote, Order-to-Cash and Record-to-Report, become seamless in operation, the impact is naturally seen in the core business outcomes and the end business value.
SSOT Answer: The Business Value Delivered
The resultant business impact of SSOT can be realized in the enhanced reporting analytics, primarily across key business functions, including sales and marketing, billing and customer service.
I. Sales and marketing: Subscription-based product offering helps easily determine the customer and perform subsequent mapping to the desired product based on UUID, cross-reference information and unique address part of the quote system. Powered by data validation, the method helps in easy customer account creation and avoids confusion over customer identification, naturally saving time and effort involved.
2. Billing: Further impact can be seen in the billing process in the form of improved order-to-cash lead time, financial controls and billing accuracy, along with a noticeable percentage reduction of up to 25% in overall efforts resulting from the whole process re-design.
3. Customer service: This is the end of the funnel and the area that speaks of the overall business value and performance delivered through the improved process. The enhanced reporting analytics help in informed decision-making while presenting new pricing models, directly adding to the customer experience factor. Given the streamlined process, there will be smaller chances of service iterations, which is a step ahead in ensuring customer satisfaction. All these help win the customer over through easy and effective servicing and naturally have a sound impact on the NPS.
VMware SSOT: A Walk Through Implementation and Stats!
VMWare’s journey with the SSOT began with loading a whopping 12.7 million transactional data, customer and partner records from multiple systems like SFDC, bookings, erstwhile MDM system, partner systems, SAAS order data and D2C channel data, among others.
After all successful merging and matching, the team could bring down the total records to 20% of the total number loaded initially, which remained the SSOT records.
On the business side of the implementation, these efforts resulted in an overall improvement in lead conversion by 38% with around 50% of order booking without manual intervention.
That’s where the true potential of SSOT lies in ensuring robust. data management that can not only lead to improved operational efficiency but also save costs and ensure overall business performance.
The Conclusion
SSOT is a new revolution in the data world, where effective, exact utilization is on top of everything as the data stands scattered, unorganized, duplicated and often across boundaries. So, thinking about ways to handle data effectively and make subsequent data-driven decisions? It’s time you look for that Single Source of Truth and make the best of your data treasure for overall business growth.
