Multi-Domain MDM

PIM Supplier Portals: Are They Good or Bad?

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl13 Comments

A recent discussion on the LinkedIn Multi-Domain MDM group is about vendor / supplier portals as a part of Product Information Management implementations.

A supplier portal (or vendor portal if you like) is usually an extension to a Product Information Management (PIM) solution. The idea is that the suppliers of products, and thus providers of product information, to you as a downstream participant (distributor or retailer) in a supply chain, can upload their product information into your PIM solution and thus relieving you of doing that. This process usually replace the work of receiving spreadsheets from suppliers in the many situations where data pools are not relevant.

In my opinion and experience, this is a flawed concept, because it is hostile to the supplier. The supplier will have hundreds of downstream receivers of products and thus product information. If all of them introduced their own supplier portal, they will have to learn and maintain hundreds of them. Only if you are bigger than your supplier is and is a substantial part of their business, they will go with you.

Broken data supply chainAnother concept, which is the opposite, is also emerging. This is manufacturers and upstream distributors establishing PIM customer portals, where suppliers can fetch product information. This concept is in my eyes flawed exactly the opposite way.

And then let us imagine that every provider of product information had their PIM customer portal and every receiver had their PIM supplier portal. Then no data would flow at all.

What is your opinion and experience?

The Intersections of 360 Degree MDM

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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-Side MDM

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.

Multi-Domain MDM 360 and an Intelligent Data Lake

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This week I had the pleasure of being at the Informatica MDM 360 event in Paris. The “360” predicate is all over in the Informatica communication. There are the MDM 360 events around the world.  The Product 360 solution – the new wrap of the old Heiler PIM solution, as I understand it. The Supplier 360 solution. Some Customer 360 stuff including the Cloud Customer 360 for Salesforce edition.

GW MDMAll these solutions constitutes one of the leading Multi-Domain MDM offerings on the market – if not the leading. We will be wiser on that question when Gartner (the analyst firm) makes their first Multi-Domain MDM Magic Quadrant later this year as reported in the post Gravitational Waves in the MDM World.

Until now, Informatica has been very well positioned for Customer MDM, but not among the leaders for Product MDM in the ranking according to Gartner. Other analysts, as Information Difference, have Informatica in the top right corner of the (Multi-Domain) MDM landscape as seen here.

MDM and big data is another focus area for Informatica and Informatica has certainly been one of the first MDM vendors who have embraced big data – and that not just with wording in marketing. Today we cannot say big data without saying data lake. Informatica names their offering the Intelligent Data Lake.

For me, it will be interesting to see how Informatica can take full Multi-Domain MDM leadership with combining a good Product MDM solution with an Intelligent Data Lake.

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What is Best Practice: Customer- and Vendor- or Unified Party Master Data Management?

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

Right now there is a good discussion going on in the Multi-Domain MDM Group on LinkedIn. A member asks:

“I’d like to hear back from anyone who has implemented party master data in either a single, unified schema or separate, individual schemas (Vendor, Customer, etc.).

What were the pros and cons of your approach? Would you do it the same way if you had it to do again?”

Multi-Side MDMThis is a classic consideration at the heart of multi-domain MDM. As I see it, and what I advise my clients to do, 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.

This subject was also recently examined here on the blog in the post Multi-Side MDM.

What is your opinion and experience with this question? Please have your say either here on the blog or in the LinkedIn Multi-Domain MDM Group.

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Multi-Side MDM

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl3 Comments

As reported in the post Gravitational Waves in the MDM World there is a tendency in the MDM (Master Data Management) market and in MDM programmes around to encompass both the party domain and the product domain.

The party domain is still often treated as two separate domains, being the vendor (or supplier) domain and the customer domain. However, there are good reasons for seeing the intersection of vendor master data and customer master data as party master data. These reasons are most obvious when we look at the B2B (business-to-business) part of our master data, because:

  • You will always find that many real world entities have a vendor role as well as a customer role to you
  • The basic master data has the same structure (identification, names, addresses and contact data
  • You need the same third party validation and enrichment capabilities for customer roles and vendor roles.

These reasons also applies to other party roles as examined in the post 360° Business Partner View.

When we look at the product domain we also have a huge need to connect the buy side and the sell side of our business – and the make side for that matter where we have in-house production.

Multi-Side MDM

Multi-Domain MDM has a side effect, so to speak, about bringing the sell-side together with the buy- and make-side. PIM (Product Information Management), which we often see as the ancestor to product MDM, has the same challenge. Here we also need to bring the sell-side and and the buy-side together – on three frontiers:

  • Bringing the internal buy-side and sell-side together not at least when looking at product hierarchies
  • Bringing our buy-side in synchronization with our upstream vendors/suppliers sell-side when it comes to product data
  • Bringing our sell-side in synchronization with our downstream customers buy-side when it comes to product data

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Copy and Paste versus Inheritance within MDM

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl2 Comments

A common seen user requirement for Master Data Management (MDM) solutions is an ability to copy the content of the attributes of an existing entity when creating a new entity. For example when creating a new product you may find it nice to copy all the field values from an existing similar product to the new product and then just change what is different for the new product. Just like using copy and paste in excel or other so called productivity tools.

We all know the dangers of copy and paste and there are plenty of horror stories out there of the harsh consequences like when copying and pasting in a job application and forgetting to change the name of the targeted employer. You know: “I have always dreamed about working for IBM” when applying at Oracle.

The exact same bad things may happen when doing copy and paste when working with master data. You may forget to change exactly that one important piece of information because you miss guidance on the copied data within your system of entry.

Yes NoUsing an inheritance approach is a better way. This approach is for product master data based on having a mature hierarchy management in place. When creating a new product you place your product in the hierarchy where it will inherit the attributes common for products on the same branch of the hierarchy and leave it for you to fill in the exact attributes that is specific for the new product. If a new product requires a new branch in the hierarchy, you are forced to think about the common attributes for this branch through.

For party (customer, supplier and other business partner) master data you may inherit from the outside world taking advantage of fetching what is already digitalized, which includes names, addresses and other contact data, and leaving for you to fill in the party master data that is specific to your way of doing business.

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The Evolution of MDM

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

Master Data Management (MDM) is a bit more than 10 years old as told in the post from last year called Happy 10 Years Birthday MDM Solutions. MDM has developed from the two disciplines called Customer Data Integration (CDI) and Product Information Management (PIM). For example, the MDM Institute was originally called the The Customer Data Integration Institute and still have this website:http://www.tcdii.com/.

Today Multi-Domain MDM is about managing customer, or rather party, master data together with product master data and other master data domains as visualized in the post A Master Data Mind Map.

You may argue that PIM (Product Information Management) is not the same as Product MDM. This question was examined in the post PIM, Product MDM and Multi-Domain MDM. In my eyes the benefits of keeping PIM as part of Multi-Domain MDM are bigger than the benefits of separating PIM and MDM. It is about expanding MDM across the sell-side and the buy-side of the business eventually by enabling wide use of customer self-service and supplier self-service.

MDM

The external self-service theme will in my eyes be at the centre of where MDM is going in the future. In going down that path there will be consequences for how we see data governance as discussed in the post Data Governance in the Self-Service Age. Another aspect of how MDM is going to be seen from the outside and in is the increased use of third party reference data and the link between big data and MDM as touched in the post Adding 180 Degrees to MDM.

Besides Multi-Domain MDM and the links between MDM and big data a much mentioned future trend in MDM is doing MDM in the cloud. The latter is in my eyes a natural consequence of the external self-service themes and increased use of third party reference data.

If you happen to be around Copenhagen in the late January I can offer you the full story at a late afternoon event taking place in the trendy meatpacking district and arranged by the local IT frontrunner company ChangeGroup. The event is called Master Data Management: Before, now and in the future.

Big Data Quality, Santa Style

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl2 Comments

Previous years close to Christmas posts on this blog has been about Multi-Domain MDM, Santa Style and Data Governance, Santa Style.

julemandenSo this year it may be the time to have a closer look at big data quality, Santa style, meaning how we can imagine Santa Claus is joining the raise of big data while observing that exploiting data, big or small, is only going to add real value if you believe in data quality. Ho ho ho.

At the Santa Claus organization they have figured out, that there is a close connection between excellence in working with big data and excellence in multi-domain Master Data Management (MDM) and data governance.

Here are some of the findings in the big data paper that the Chief Data Elf just signed off:

  • The feasibility of the new algorithms for naughty or nice marking using social media listening combined with our historical records is heavily dependent on unique, accurate and timely boys and girls master data. The party data governance elf gathering will be accountable for any nasty and noisy issues.
  • Implementation of the automated present buying service based on fuzzy matching between our supplier self-service based multi-lingual product catalogue and the wish list data lake must be done in a phased schedule. The product data governance elf committee are responsible for avoiding any false positives (wrong present incidents) and decreasing the number of false negatives (someone not getting what could be purchaed within the budget).
  • Last year we had and an 12.25 % overspend on reindeers due to incorrect and missing chimney positions. This year the reliance on crowdsourced positions will be better balanced with utilizing open government property data where possible. The location data governance elves will consult with the elves living on the roof at each head of state in order make them release more and better quality of any such data (the Gangnam Project).

The Future of Master Data Management

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl3 Comments

Back in 2011 Gartner, the analyst firm, predicted that these three things would shape the Master Data Management (MDM) market:

  • Multi-Domain MDM
  • MDM in the Cloud
  • MDM and Social Networks

The third point was in 2012, after the raise of big data, rephrased to MDM and Big Data as reported in the post called The Big MDM Trend.

In my experience all these three themes are still valid with slowly but steadily uptake.

open-doorBut, have any new trends showed up in the past years?

In a 2015 post called “Master Data Management Merger Tardis and The Future of MDM” Ramon Chen of Reltio puts forward some new possibilities to be discussed, among those Machine Learning & Cognitive computing. I agree with Ramon on this theme, though these have been topics around in general for decades without really breaking through. But we need more of this in MDM for sure.

My own favourite MDM trend is a shift from focussing on internally captured master data to collaboration with external business partners as explained in the post MDM 3.0 Musings.

In that quest, I am looking forward to my next speaking session, which will be in Helsinki, Finland on the 8th December. There is an interview on that with yours truly available on the Talentum Master Data Management 2015 site.

MDM and SCM: Inside and outside the corporate walls

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl2 Comments

QuadrantIn my journey through the Master Data Management (MDM) landscape, I am currently working from a Supply Chain Management (SCM) perspective. SCM is very exciting as it connects the buy-side and the sell-side of a company. In that connection we will be able to understand some basic features of multi-domain MDM as touched in a recent post about the MDM ancestors called Customer Data Integration (CDI) and Product Information Management (PIM). The post is called CDI, PIM, MDM and Beyond.

MDM and SCM 1.0: Inside the corporate walls

Traditional Supply Chain Management deals with what goes on from when a product is received from a supplier, or vendor if you like, to it ends up at the customer.

In the distribution and retail world, the product physically usually stays the same, but from a data management perspective we struggle with having buying views and selling views on the data.

In the manufacturing world, we sees the products we are going to sell transforming from raw materials over semi-finished products to finished goods. One challenge here is when companies grow through acquisitions, then a given real world product might be seen as a raw material in one plant but a finished good in another plant.

Regardless of the position of our company in the ecosystem, we also have to deal with the buy side of products as machinery, spare parts, supplies and other goods, which stays in the company.

MDM and SCM 2.0: Outside the corporate walls

SCM 2.0 is often used to describe handling the extended supply chain that is a reality for many businesses today due to business process outsourcing and other ways of collaboration within ecosystems of manufacturers, distributors, retailers, end users and service providers.

From a master data management perspective the ways of handling supplier/vendor master data and customer master data here melts into handling business-partner master data or simply party master data.

For product master data there are huge opportunities in sharing most of these master data within the ecosystems. Usually you will do that in the cloud.

In such environments, we have to rethink our approach to data / information governance. This challenge was, with set out in cloud computing, examined by Andrew White of Gartner (the analyst firm) in a blog post called “Thoughts on The Gathering Storm: Information Governance in the Cloud”.