It is easy to get caught up in the source and target paradigm when implementing master data management. The logical model looms large to identify where master data resides for linkage and makes the project — well — logical.

If this is the first step in your customer MDM endeavor and creating a master data definition based on identifying relevant data elements, STOP!

The first step is to articulate the story that customer MDM will support. This is the customer MDM blueprint.  

For example, if the driving business strategy is to create a winning customer experience, customer MDM puts the customer definition at the center of what the customer experience looks like. The customer experience is the story. You need to understand and have data points for elements such as preferences, sentiment, lifestyle, and friends/relationships. These elements may be available within your CRM system, in social networks, with partners, and third-party data providers. The elements may be discrete or derived from analytics. If you only look for name, address, phone, and email, there is nothing about this definition that helps determine how you place that contact into context of engagement.

Ultimately, isn’t that what the business is asking for when they want the promised 360-degree view of the customer? Demands for complete, relevant, and timely are not grounded in the databases, data dictionaries, and integration/transformation processes of your warehouses and applications; they are grounded in the story. 

So, don’t start with the data. Start with the story you want to tell.