Wholesale distributors have long been masters of product inventory management, but now they must also take charge of another type of inventory. In the future, success for distributors will greatly depend on being able to manage the incredible volume of critical information they have about their suppliers, customers, products and other business entities.

The challenge is that this data often exists across multiple business systems with varying degrees of accuracy, consistency and availability. To manage it, distributors need an effective data-integrity strategy with the ability to manage a central repository of reliable, up-to-date master data consolidated across all applications, and supported by data quality and governance.

Without this, distributors could face chaos instead of commerce. When high-integrity data is properly harnessed, it can be the lifeblood of the organization . But when it’s siloed across multiple systems, it becomes overwhelming and can slow progress and decision-making.

Digital commerce has rapidly become the norm, and the preferred way to complete B2B purchases. The ease and convenience of e-commerce have manufacturers and retailers bypassing the distribution channel and doing business directly with consumers. Today’s B2B customer expects the companies it buys from to understand its individual preferences and needs.

To meet the changing needs of the market, savvy distributors are cleaning, organizing and centralizing their master files of dates, names, addresses, customer IDs, item numbers, product specifications and other attributes, to provide a comprehensive view of master data that can be deployed across departments and processes. A multi-domain master data management (MDM) approach equips organizations with opportunities for cross-domain intelligence, to more easily identify trends or gaps.

The past few years have tested distributors like never before. In response, they are attempting to build more resilient operations by implementing business process management capabilities that not only help them mitigate risks, but also allow them to move products around the globe more sustainably.

Multi-domain MDM can help organizations adapt to unanticipated changes in supply and demand more quickly in three critical ways:

Improving supplier collaboration. The supplier data domain helps distributors manage data related to the suppliers themselves, which improves supplier scorecards, performance monitoring and product availability. Through improved collaboration, distributors are better positioned to support suppliers that don’t have their own large marketing teams. Distributors can quickly pivot to help a supplier that needs to sell excess product or help another create a bespoke, go-to-market strategy for a new product.

Adding insights with location data. In real estate, as the expression goes, three things matter: location, location, location. Location is also fundamental in supply chain management. Keeping track of data by location is crucial for distributors to continue meeting customer demand. What customers want more than anything is visibility into when they’ll get their orders. Location data can also help suppliers to navigate supply chain challenges and respond quickly to product recalls.

Taking a proactive approach with asset data. Distributors can also benefit from an asset data domain to manage information around physical assets, such as equipment and delivery trucks, as well as intangible ones like building leases. Asset data makes it easier to stay on top of time-based renewals and maintenance requirements, and ensure that safety standards are met and operations run smoothly. Only distributors with an effective logistics network, including transportation and warehousing, can ensure uninterrupted product availability.

Employing multi-domain MDM to drive success. Following are some industries in which it helps to ensure distributor success:

• Food and beverage. Stay compliant with food safety standards by maintaining accurate records for multiple processes, including hazard analyses and recall management policies. 
• Consumer goods. Employ trusted data for personalized offers, brand messaging and omnichannel experiences. With a unified view of customer data, distributors are confident that data will be up to date across all touchpoints.
• Building materials. Tackle the thousands, and even millions, of product SKUs for building parts, materials and equipment with a single trusted view of data. As distributors adopt new digital tools and systems, they can integrate data from different sources, preventing data silos.
• Beauty and fashion. Experience the beauty of being able to seamlessly create and enrich product content and digital assets, leveraging meaningful insights from data analytics and business intelligence to make informed decisions around customer preferences and digital strategies.  
• Medical and pharmaceutical. Ensure that life-saving products are delivered when, where, and how your customers need them. When it comes to health-related product data, there’s even more at stake. Maintaining this information reduces errors and enhances patient safety.
• Office supplies and furniture. Make partner collaboration, catalog creation, configurable products, and data syndication a breeze. Distributors can reply upon a solid data foundation that supports targeted marketing campaigns and tailored recommendations.

These examples demonstrate that multi-domain MDM helps wholesale distributors organize around customers, anticipate their needs in the future, and manage against external forces and pressures.

Harnessing the power of data will make supply chains more efficient and agile. While some distributors will inevitably struggle to keep up due to manual processes and outdated back-office systems, others will leap ahead of the competition by adopting multi-domain MDM as part of their overall data integrity strategy. By combining product, customer, asset  and location-specific information, organizations can deploy contextual data as a secret weapon for success.

Pat McCarthy is chief revenue officer at Precisely.