Cheers,
Lynn

I chuckled at your “cheap labor” comment, many employees managing and processing records via excel or access will never get the job done, and will only ensure “NO” standards being followed resulting in “NO” data quality.
With PIM data, the fact that both suppliers and manufacturers sell the same product increases the risk of duplication of records (product & vendor) resulting in increased inventory, different purchasing cost, etc. This is the ROI we identify at the onset of entering into a new customer MDM project.

I cannot refer to MDO, but I can say that if there is not a data structure built into a web based data manage tool with processing rules, the data quality battle will not be won. Our tools & process are designed with the understanding of the product data exclusively. Because of our schema structure, agile processes and BI built in, we are able to process the millions of records with the data quality required and provide our customers the ROI to successful support the business case.

Jackie is on vacation – I’ll make sure she hears about your comment and suggest that she respond to it when she gets back. Thanks!

We also are involved in the MDO tool and have had great results using this with SAP where the 40 character short description is so important for users in the field. SAP has Manufacturer part number functionality and we have used this but also found other ways to have one common item across multiple plants.
For PIM data governance, we use MDO in the following ways.
1. Supplier Self Service – Suppliers can log on and update their information, which when approved via workflow, can update SAP automatically.
2. Via 3rd party connections e.g. GS1. Here suppliers update the GS1 database and this is synchronised with MDO
3. Direct updates in MDO, then via workflow approval and subsequent automatic updates into SAP.
The good thing with MDO is we can utlise a “description generator” so that only allowed values can be input into the description. This gives real time governance with human intervention only required for data quality check and approvals. It can also manage supercession chains and update BOM’s which removes much of the admin and complexity from data management in ERP.
Would love to find out how others have put together the ROI and business case to avoid having the same problem year after year…

In order to provide effective MDM supporting the spend analysis to our customers that is cost effective and truly meaningful, the data (new & legacy) needs to be verified, structured to a classification system, referenced (managing duplicates & obsoletes), provide the BI analytics to manage inventory and create a new master org / local views or update master org / local views of existing records in the legacy system. For instances a common scenario is I have two of the same item in the purchasing / inventory system, one set up as a supplier part and the second as a manufacturer of the part, both items are inventoried. Once the data is identified as duplicated, the “business” side of the processes needs to start, combining inventory in the store or crib, review for outstanding orders, the contract needs to be updated, etc.

Great posting, clearly explains the challenges of MDM and the need to define an MDM process within any large organization. Having a clear MDM strategy and approach to governance and understanding of the process to procure and sell goods makes our job easier when providing a software tool like MDO – MasterDataOnline.

Would like your opinion on our overview video which tries to summarize the same key points you have mentioned which we can achieve using a software tool.

One other aspect which is profoundly useful is the hierarchical categorization of products for easier access. Typically we create sales, marketing, manufacturing hierarchies and the like so that users from these departments have an efficient way to locate the products which they are creating or modifying. This is of tremendous help and significantly contributes to the governance.

You probably addressed this when you mentioned PIM solutions allow easier searching (locating) of products.

Thank you.
-Prashant

Informatics Outsourcing – Data Enrichment