Who Should Manage Master Data?

In this blog post, we will understand “Who should manage Companies Master Data”. Before we discuss who should manage it, let us understand first what Master data are.

What are Master data?

Companies Master data are the database where every piece of information about a business entity is stored. Each company has its own separate Master data. In CRM’s Context, Accounts are Master data.

These master data are basically treated as treasures, and as these data are treasures for organizations, many organizations only allow their senior team members to create, update and manage them.

But why is it so that senior management hesitates to give control of master data to juniors

Why does senior management doesn’t allow juniors to manage it?

Senior Management believes that If they start allowing their junior team members to handle master data, the junior teams will fill up the system (CRM) with unwanted, unnecessary, and duplicate data.

And because of this belief, senior management keeps the control of managing it in their hands. Now let’s look at the downside of this idea/belief.

What happens when only senior people have this privilege? 

As only senior people have the authority to create, update and manage master data, the junior team members had to rely very much on their seniors for everything. 

E.g. Whenever the business will receive a new inquiry/deal, the junior person will have to depend on the senior team to create the Master data of that deal. Without them, they wouldn’t be able to do any actions. Even when the client will request a quotation, the team will have to rely on the senior person to create the master data first.

So basically in the absence or unavailability of the senior person, the junior person will feel handicapped as they have no control over data.

And this could cause a delay in actions and the customer may dissatisfy or you may lose a business opportunity.

So what’s the solution, how can we reduce this dependence while still managing the quality of data?

Before I answer that, let’s try to understand how this idea of allowing only a senior person to manage master data evolved/developed.

How does this thought develop in management’s mind?

The idea of giving the responsibility for handling master data started back in the 1980s when the process of creating master data was a bit complex, and as the process was complex, the senior person was only given the responsibility of managing it.

But now, technology has come very far. The process for creating master data has become very simple. And in fact, now, CRM comes along with dedicated features to prevent data duplication.

Read this blog to understand how you can prevent data duplication in CRM.

Now let’s continue where we left the previous section,  “how can we reduce this dependence while still managing the quality of data”.

The solution (Who should manage Master data)

I believe that to reduce the dependency of your junior team on your senior members, you should start allowing your junior team to create, update and manage the master data.

And then, you should have one CRM Admin in place, who should be responsible for regularly checking/cleaning/maintaining your system’s data quality.

The idea is very simple, give juniors control over master data and train the CRM admin to maintain the quality of Data.    

For CRM admin, cleaning the unwanted and duplicate data on a weekly basis would be a task of only 20-30 Minutes. And that too can be reduced with a proper system in place.

And having given the responsibility to juniors, senior members would be able to focus more on other important aspects of the business.