In order to harness maximum power from emerging technologies, organizations must aim for the highest level of data quality. For procurement teams, a Supplier MDM strategy is now a must-have.
Supplier Master Data refers to all essential information about your suppliers that are part of your strategic supply chain portfolio. At first glance, these details (e.g. contacts, addresses, bank details etc.) may seem very basic and easy to manage, however there is an underlying complexity many businesses often neglect to pay attention to – the maintenance of attributes across various systems and applications.
A well known example is the record of a supplier that is also a customer at the same time – this company’s data is recorded and updated in various systems across all departments that have a touchpoint, and details or ‘attributes’ will be captured in a CRM, ERP, SRM and so on.
If there is no clear ownership and accountability for these data sets, things can quickly go wrong when there is a lack of care or attention. Application leaders supporting procurement who focus on data must align process ownership with data ownership in order to ensure highest and lasting quality standards.
To facilitate maintenance of supplier data quality going forward, and to avoid issues and pitfalls caused by bad data downstream, supplier data management governance processes need to be put in place.
- Some key benefits of improving your Supplier Master Data management:
- Efficient supplier onboarding process
- Capturing and ingesting data in a clean and structured way prevents time-consuming manual fixes for downstream usage (analytics, searches, reporting etc.)
- Use your time more effectively for value adding tasks, such as scouting the right suppliers for your sourcing needs
- Search, filter and locate relevant suppliers and their information easily
- Reliable supplier performance monitoring based on trustworthy data
- Supply chain monitoring using data of highest quality and integrity
- Proactive category management
For example, where Supplier Master Data is applied with diligence, the consolidation of various files in different formats from different data sources and checking spreadsheets for duplicate values, now becomes a thing of the past.
Supplier Master Data Management facilitates provision of data readily available for slicing and dicing to your needs; a data foundation you can trust and rely on. Supplier and/or contract performance can be reviewed at any time, monthly reporting on savings or category management metrics now becomes a task to look forward to! No more manual consolidation and hoping for the best – more time to analyze data with confidence and derive insights.
Indeed, according to Spendmatters, “Companies making insight-led business decisions from intelligent data are predicted to take $1.8 trillion annually from competitors who lack data-driven capabilities.”
Want to know how to take your first steps with Supplier MDM? Check out our new whitepaper for details, here.
