Challenges: Addressing strategic data management gaps
The client sought to improve their data management capabilities, with Stibo Systems' STEP platform forming a key part of the solution. They faced challenges common to complex organisations, including fragmented data sources, varying data quality, and the need for stronger governance.
Managing organisational hierarchies across more than a million customer records introduced additional risks, particularly around duplication, data merging and the accurate linking of entities. Variations in documentation, such as inconsistent naming conventions, made it harder to maintain a single, reliable view of organisations and their relationships. There was a need to strengthen this view to support key activities such as compliance and risk management across legal entity structures.
Solution: From design to delivery
A central goal was to create a single, accurate source of truth by integrating streaming data feeds into the Stibo Systems’ STEP platform and building complete golden records. Amplifi was chosen for our expertise and strong track record in delivering robust MDM solutions with measurable value. As part of the engagement, we addressed key issues around data consolidation, enrichment, and governance.
Amplifi aligned client requirements with a CMDM design in Stibo Systems STEP. The initial phase focused on consolidating data and generating golden records for a subset of sources as part of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Our primary role was to capture requirements and translate them into clear designs and builds, ensuring a structured and effective implementation that functioned within real-world business process.
Alongside the creation of golden records and the integration of external data, a key aspect was the implementation of a data quality workflow. This workflow enables the client to identify and address data quality issues or gaps early, ensuring records meet established standards before entering the match and merge process.
For example, effective matching relies on essential fields, e.g. name, address, and postcode, being populated. Incomplete records can’t be reliably matched, so we introduced an initial data quality check to flag missing information early. This ensures that only complete and accurate records contribute to golden record generation, improving overall data integrity and reliability.
Integrating external data also provided clearer visibility into organisational relationships, highlighting when an entity is a subsidiary or child organisation of another. This insight gives the client clarity where organisations are related to prevent duplication of effort, and commonality in engagements, acting as an enabler to provide enhanced data for downstream analysis. This provided a more detailed and structured view of both individual organisational units and their position within the wider hierarchy.
Results: Enabling visibility, accuracy and governance
The project began with over 1.1 million fragmented, potentially duplicated records spread across five source systems. By implementing Stibo Systems STEP as a centralised CMDM platform, Amplifi helped consolidate this data into 900,000 trusted golden records. Due to limited validation at source, 175,000 of the original one million records were additionally found to fail the client’s defined data validation rules, entering the data quality workflow for attention.
This then gave the client clarity of their data quality, allowing the client to review and remediate issues, i.e. erroneous or incomplete records, at the source before full ingestion into Stibo Systems’ STEP.
To sustain these improvements, the client established workflows and began onboarding data stewards to oversee remediation and ongoing data management. Amplifi’s expertise has driven both process and quality improvements, providing the organisation with its first clear view of customer golden records.
Leveraging Amplifi’s experience in data rules and match tuning, the team expedited implementation by automating key processes. Business rules were implemented to streamline data validation and reduce manual effort. Fuzzy logic and JavaScript were used to accurately verify country codes, overcoming the limitations of standard Excel lookups.
By maintaining a flexible team on the Amplifi side, we were able to bring in specialists across different areas of the project, ensuring a more responsive and tailored approach to the organisation’s evolving requirements.
Chris Collings, SVP Operations at Amplifi commented “This project was streamlined from the offset, with clear deliverables that challenged and stretched the team to deliver against tight timelines. Excellent pre-work and preparation from the client made sure we could hit the ground running, resulting in seamless delivery and very positive feedback from them.”
Need to bring clarity to your data landscape? Speak to our experts to discover how Amplifi can help you unlock the full potential of your customer data, get in touch here. Or, read our guide Levelling up with Master Data Management and discover what steps you need to take before tackling a full-blown MDM implementation, and how Amplifi are positioned to help!
