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For more information the manufacturing sector - automotive, aerospace, electronics and industrial companies-managing product and customer information is a huge challenge.
Poor information and disconnected processes are a hidden crisis in the industry today. The cost of this inconsistency in terms of operational efficiency, customer dissatisfaction or lost opportunity is enormous. Whether it is product numbers, item relationships, service codes, warranty information or customer identifiers, what should be a unique entry might have multiple values and locations. These issues manifest themselves in numerous challenges being faced by organizations today:
- Real-time access to product and parts information and availability
- Sales tools like configurators and product guides lacking the latest information
- Access to unstructured information in context - technical manuals, service bulletins, ring tones, images, data sheets, computer-assisted design (CAD) drawings and instructional videos
- Reuse of assemblies and components to lower design and procurement costs
- Ability to link product data with supplier and customer data for more-meaningful business insights
- Streamline processes for new-product introduction, warranty and returns
- Lack of a 360 degree customer view for improved and differentiated service
Today, organizations are looking to grow profit, gain market share, contain costs and differentiate their products. This is achieved by getting the right information to the right people with the right processes at the right time and in the right context. It is about creating business value by integrating, analyzing and optimizing all types and sources of information throughout the life cycle. More than 60 percent of CEOs and line of business (LOB) executives say quality information is their top priority for improving business processes, employee productivity and customer satisfaction.
What is Master Data Management?
Master Data Management (MDM) is a comprehensive strategy to determine and build a single, accurate and authoritative source of truth of your company's information assets and deliver this on demand as a service. Master data is core data needed to uniquely define objects like parties (customers, vendors, suppliers, trading partners or employees), places (locations or geographies) and things (products, services or accounts). It does not change as frequently as transactional data and is referenced by business processes and other applications. Today, this data is located in multiple applications and is often out of synchronization, without a true "golden" source. Why maintain the same data in multiple applications when it is cheaper and more efficient to manage it once and feed the various consuming systems? When organizations use master data at the enterprise level, it eliminates the need for separate, departmentally maintained "versions of truth." Today in most organizations, two different departments have the freedom to give specific products or customers their own names. For example, in one system (original equipment catalog) in a company, a product might be called "Mini Van Alternator -Sports Model" and in another system (service parts catalog) it might be called "105 amp Alternator -Mini Van" and they can't be compared. The systems are not smart enough to find out that it is the same product. Over time, engineers might be designing two different products and purchasing sourcing for two different products from the same supplier. What is required is a system that helps flag these issues, draws the right conclusion, cleans the master data, and gets a complete, consistent and clean view of the master data.
MDM is a combination of tools, processes, technologies and governance. It enables organizations to integrate, manage and publish master information on products, customers and other core business entities with industry-specific accelerators to jump-start projects. MDM is not an out-of-the-box product as many think, but a combination of capabilities to solve your business problems. You should think strategically about MDM, but act locally on important data entities, such as customer or product information where you have the biggest problems.
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