Customer success stories
Empowering organisations using uncompromised master data management solutions.
Businesses change, it is part of growth and part of sustainability. However, many businesses find change challenging and often data is at the heart of this challenge. After partnering and guiding our clients through massive business transformations—either to update business processes to use the latest software and technology, to stay relevant, to respond to market shifts, or because of merging and growing—our advice to make the change you need, not the change that is easiest or convenient.
Our consultants have years of experience driving digital transformation initiatives across a variety of industries and sectors. Our ethos is to be your trusted data partner: helping to realise your company’s business data transformation with close collaboration from the start to understand your focus and priorities, as well as your employee’s and customer’s needs. It is this partnering approach that delivers added value early on and success at first pass. People are at the heart of our consultancy model, with listening and understanding being key. We are committed to finding the path that takes your company where it needs to be—delivering success sooner, smoother, and by creating opportunity for added benefits throughout.
Because of our Data Platforms’ extensive functionalities and wide remit of application, we have the flexibility to deliver what you need for where you want to go. With our partnership and experience we can ensure the right software, technology, people, and plans are place at the outset to realise your vision.
There are 4 types of business data transformation: Migration, Integration, Hybrid, and Added Values. Often, an organisation’s requirements are complex and fall one or more of these categories. It is increasingly common that a hybrid data landscape transformation approach is most appropriate. The right digital transformation solution depends on your data landscape, business model, strategy, priority and company goals: there is no one size fits all. But getting the approach right and understanding your needs and challenges is not only a prerequisite but a constant we are proud to achieve with all our clients.
Moving data away from an unfit environment to an environment that serves your business goals.
Often data is held on unfit for purpose databases, databases that integrate poorly with new technology platforms, databases that need information shared, and fundamental parts of business processes. Moving from a legacy business data environment to new world model with new technology can be daunting initially.
It is here where our ‘data partner’ role is key; we collaborate, listen and understand through every stage. From preliminary data landscape scoping phases, through to business object and process focussed discovery phases, through to delivery using our Data Platform, we ensure the right decision is taken, informed by the correct vision, to move exactly what you want, how you want, when you need it.
In the preliminary phases of consulting for data migration many of our clients discover urgent data issues that have held back transformation projects in the past. It is here where the Sentinel Data Platform excels as a complete solution. As data is moved, quality can be improved. Data can be cleansed, records matched, data can be masked or scrambled for GDPR compliant UAT testing.
Our data platform offers 100s of transformations and rules for transforming data formats and types. All these add value as data is migrated and ensure your future proof target systems receive exactly what they need, in the right form to support your business. Increasingly cyber security audits highlight systems that are no longer secure and must be decommissioned. For these insecure systems, we can migrate and improve data quality as it moves to a new environment.
An effective combination of our Data Management Platform and our consulting expertise
It is not uncommon for data to be held across multiple disparate and fragmented systems. Poorly integrated business data can affect the day to day working of a business or organisation profoundly, impacting efficiency and progress.
In industries such as housing, manufacturing, or automotive, repairs and maintenance might operate via engineer tablet and update in real time but not feedback to a customer record within a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM). This disjunct between repairs and maintenance and a CRM system can lead to costly miscommunications and frustrated customers – not only do these issues cost and lead to poor workforce morale: they erode consumer trust and faith in your product and services; ultimately damaging reputation. The same problem can also impact reporting, stopping strategic decision makers from accessing for information they need to make the right decision.
A high maintenance cost area might be considered as an area of improvement: are the above costs due to a subcontractor, an engineer, a group of customers, or an asset set with known or unknown issues? With poorly integrated data you may not be able to know what the root cause is of high costs.
With an integrated, unified, most accurate version of the truth spanning maintenance, CRM databases, and asset single view records, you will have insight of the root cause of cost. This allows you to manage and plan your efforts effectively and mitigate to make your business more efficient. Insight and knowledge are key to making the right strategic decisions for your business, don’t let poor integration obfuscate the truth.
This approach combines Integration and Migration. It is the more common method for achieving the change and initiatives businesses and organisations require.
Frequently, integration requires some migration work ‘around the edges’ and a degree of migration is often a precursor or a necessary step in moving towards unified data across multiple integrated systems (or implementing a new system).
For example, in a large transformation project 9/10 systems may need to be integrated via an MDM Platform to provide a unified data set providing a single most trusted, most accurate, version of the truth. However, the remaining system may not be fit for purpose (this could be cost, cyber security, lack of development, or its functionalities no longer meet the way the business no works and needs to progress from). In this case 1/10 systems would be migrated and integrated, whereas the remaining 9 would be integrated with data remaining in these secure and fit for purpose environments.
Similarly, your business may need to move to a complete platform solution such as Microsoft Dynamics365 or aim to move to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Data could be moved to this platform but due to the fragmented data landscape cut over is complex and carries business critical risk. In this scenario integration can ‘sync-up’ your systems as preparation for cut over.
Secure, user-friendly, Cloud based and designed to meet evolving needs
This is where the additional functionalities and flexibility of our MDM Platform excels.
Like the scenarios detailed in a hybrid approach to business data transformation some systems may require additional transformation to the data itself for integration and/or migration to be effective.
For example, there may be duplicate records needing cleansing, information might be stored inconsistently and unfit for purpose in the new data landscape you are moving to – in this case our Platform can provide powerful cleansing and matching functions to improve the quality of data in advance of integration or migration.
For User Acceptance Testing (UAT), data might be appropriate for the transformation you require, but not suitable for UAT due to General Data Protection Requirements (GDPR) requirements (a common compliance issue when using offshore UAT services).
The Sentinel Data Platform can mask, scramble, or create synthetic records to support a robust UAT phase. After successful testing live data can be populate the systems upon cut over that have appropriate access and permissions for this sensitive or personal-sensitive data.
Fast and flexible masking of large amounts of personal and sensitive data for UAT
Empowering organisations using uncompromised master data management solutions.
Book your free data assessment today, and find out how much of an impact Sentinel's Master Data Management tools can have on your business.
Take the hassle out of data management. Call us on +44(0)800 612 2116 or email us [email protected].