14%
“of employees state that surfacing actionable information is done extremely well.”
– IDC
A primary objective for investing in Master Data Management is to surface actionable information extremely well.
What percentage of employees, do you believe, agree this is actually true with respect to their work?
Only 14% of employees state that surfacing actionable information in the flow of their work is done extremely well, and less than a third (30%) say it’s done very or extremely well (IDC).
Solving this enormous actionable insight gap requires us to:
- Thoroughly understand the needs of our users and their goals, with or without AI.
- Help users establish a trusted information architecture with actionable insights.
- Use AI as a copilot to augment their workflows and perform tasks more efficiently.
1. Understand Users’ Current Needs and Use Cases for AI
Take a step back from our MDM space and look at the bigger picture of how AI is utilized in organizations today.
Alair, a global leader in computational science and AI, recently surveyed over 2,000 professionals across the globe to understand their impressions of, use cases, and strategies for AI technologies.
Here are the top five current use cases and applications of AI:
- (39%) Quality Assurance
- (37%) Improving Customer Experience and Predicting Behavior
- (33%) Predictive Maintenance
- (30%) Identifying Inefficiencies in Supply Chains
- (29%) Product Design
Credit: Altair 2023 Frictionless AI Global Survey Report
What you will notice is that aside from quality assurance, most of the current AI use cases cater more to the business or end-user. However, every one of these use cases requires your organization to have high-quality, governed master data to ensure the effectiveness of AI applications.
Whether it is an AI solution or a human worker, surfacing actionable information is a requirement. Since only 14% of that is done extremely well, then it’s likely only 14% of your data can be confidently trained and leveraged by your AI applications.
A modern and agile MDM strategy is the cornerstone of your AI ambitions.
2. Establishing a Trusted Information Architecture with MDM, Not AI
MDM’s impact on your organization’s AI ambitions should not be understated. Creating this single source of truth has been a guiding principle for every organization hoping to stay competitive in its digital transformation.
This is easier said than done.
In the same Altair study, 84% of respondents agree there are obstacles to deploying AI.
While MDM cannot solve every people-centric challenge to deploying AI, it has a massive and immediate impact on overcoming most technology obstacles. This includes improving trust in models, ensuring communication between technology tools, modernizing legacy infrastructure, and removing data silos.
Credit: Altair 2023 Frictionless AI Global Survey Report
Modern MDM solutions like Semarchy xDM can help you overcome many of the challenges in the chart above as quickly as a quarter.
A low-code and intuitive UI will not require you to stand idle trying to recruit, train, or upskill data and AI talent or fear the lack of user adoption and wasted investment. It gives you more control, flexibility, and speed to leverage any innovation without disrupting your business operations or compromising your key data assets.
Even though allowing AI full control of your data management and governance strategy is not recommended, we believe AI will better impact your MDM stakeholders as a copilot.
3. How Can AI Be Leveraged as a Copilot to Augment MDM Stakeholders?
Strategic application of AI/ML capabilities to MDM stakeholders that are firmly grounded in better serving their use cases may reduce risk while accelerating deployment. The simplest way to achieve this objective is to use AI as a copilot, assisting the primary MDM stakeholder personas to perform their work more efficiently.
We typically serve three primary MDM stakeholder groups from our hundreds of successfully deployed MDM projects. These are the business users, data stewards, and designers. Some personas, like business users, have used our native AI/ML capabilities in their data apps since 2014.
We believe serving the largest group, the business users, with “simpler” AI brings immediate value, accelerates adoption, and introduces fewer risks/disruptions to core data systems and processes.
This approach is advantageous, as existing tools are well developed and based mainly on external data, limiting risk exposure to your organization. As your group gains more experience and trust in the AI/ML tools being used, it can reap the benefits now while leveraging the lessons learned from successful implementations as time goes on.
With the volume of new and emerging AI/ML capabilities growing every day, we are strategically thinking and researching how to evolve our platform to support their needs.
– Business Users: The Largest Group
Business users help enrich existing data with additional information to be more actionable for the organization.
Since 2014, business users have used xDM’s native AI/ML capabilities such as:
- AI Content Generation (ChatGPT) to easily generate product descriptions with OpenAI’s completion prompts using our native REST API enricher
- AI Translations with Google Translate to create product descriptions in over 80+ languages automatically, a massive efficiency boost for our global and multilingual clients.
- AI Image Recognition and Moderation with AWS Rekognition to accelerate the curation, moderation, and governance of critical visual assets across your organization’s products, services, and more.
However, an AI copilot can still significantly benefit business users in their data management operations.
AI copilot benefits to business users: Reduce time/effort required to enrich, standardize, generate, suggest, translate, classify, and rectify enterprise master data.
Primary AI copilot capabilities include: Natural Language Interactions, Automated Error Correction, Intelligently Assisted Workflows and Automation.
– Data Stewards: The Power Users
Data stewards are typically power users, and tactically focused on defining data governance initiatives and policies to ensure business users have easy access to consistent, accurate and high-quality data.
AI copilot benefits to data stewards: Automate and enhance metadata organization, asset tagging and descriptions, data glossary association, and autonomous match/merge.
Primary AI copilot capabilities include: Assisted duplicates management, self-learning match/merge, entity relationships and PII detection.
– App Designers: The Last Frontier
Semarchy xDM is a no-code app generation platform. Our app designers (sometimes called solution designers or architects) design the rules and UI for the data stewards and business users in their multi-domain data management apps.
AI copilot benefits to App Designers: Improve efficiency for deploying data products/apps with intelligent semantic type mapping, asset/UI generation, and assist with coding if required.
Primary AI copilot capabilities include: Natural language rule generation, match rules recommendations and automated integration mappings.
Semarchy Helps You Surface Actionable Insights and Accelerate Your AI Ambitions
Navigating this new AI environment is challenging. There is monumental pressure to adopt the latest solutions and make seemingly drastic changes to remain competitive.
It is okay to take a step back and understand that AI will not magically solve most of your data challenges. Similarly, deploying a half-baked MDM solution will not magically allow your employees to surface actionable information effectively from 14% of the time to 100% of the time.
Remember that over 80% of your data and analytics challenges are related to people, processes, and culture, not technology. Understanding your people’s needs with a little bit of compassion is extremely effective and best of all, free.
Credit: NewVantage Partners | Data and Analytics Leadership Annual Executive Survey 2023
Knowing all this, whom would you entrust to help your users actually surface actionable insights and accelerate your AI ambitions?
- A partner who focuses on understanding your user’s problems
- A customer-first partner with a proven track record
- A partner who can pilot your MDM with your data in two to three weeks
Your data deserves trust, leadership, and complete obsession with your success.
Do not just take our word for it. Semarchy is a leader and the most recommended MDM vendor by your peers with the highest customer service rating in the last 12 months.
In our next blog, we are shifting gears and discussing why Semarchy’s open, constructive architecture is a leading approach to AI in MDM.
Did you miss the first blog in the series? Learn how Semarchy has championed AI for over a decade in MDM.
-TH