Liliendahl on Data Quality

In the Master Data Management (MDM) realm we have some common notions, being

• 360 degree Customer Master Data Management, meaning how different views on customers in a company’s various business units and sales channels can be handled as a shared single view.
• 360 degree Vendor (or Supplier) Master Data Management, meaning how different views on vendors/suppliers in a company’s various business units and supply chains can be handled as a shared single view.
• 360 degree Product Master Data Management, meaning how different views on products in a company’s various business units, sales channels and supply chains can be handled as a shared single view.

Multi-Domain Master Data Management (MDM) is the discipline that brings all these views together. Here it is not enough that the same brand of technology is used for all three domains. Handling the intersections is the important part.

The intersection of Vendor/supplier and Customer is known as the Party Master Data domain. My recommendation is to have a common party (or business partner) structure for identification, names, addresses and contact data. This should be supported by data quality capabilities strongly build on external reference data (third party data). Besides this common structure, there should be specific structures for customer, vendor/supplier and other party roles.

The Vendor/supplier and Product Master Data intersection is related to buying products, namely how to on-board data about the vendor/supplier as a party, in the vendor role (financial stuff), the supplier role (logistic stuff) and then on-boarding his product information. My recommendation for on-boarding product information from suppliers being manufacturers is to make this a Win-Win solution for both parties as described in the post How a PLM-2-PIM Solution Becomes a WIN-WIN Solution.

The Customer and Product Master Data intersection is about supporting how you sell products. The term omnichannel is popular for that these days. Again, Product Information Management (PIM) plays a crucial role here and my recommendations for that is expressed in the post Adding Business Ecosystems to Omnichannel.