10 Reasons for the implementation of a product master data management system

Today, customers not only expect high quality products, but also a complete and accurate delivery of the corresponding product master data. Incompleteness of, or errors and inconsistencies in your data will also lead to higher cost and delays for your customers. Thus your customers will also benefit from a product master data management system that you implement, as complete master data allows them to process your delivery in a fast and efficient way.

Your company's internal processes up to the delivery to your customer can only be carried out smoothly and at minimal cost when your company owns correct master data for all product stages. With a product master data management system you can for example prevent delays at customs or manual interventions in the storage handling.

Shortened innovation cycles, accelerated supply chains, high customer demands, competitive stress... The demands on product management are high and time is short. Time-to-market for new products has to be reduced continuously, of course at sustained quality - at least. A product master data management system manages the internal processes and automatically escalates whenever something goes wrong, thus significantly reducing the time needed for bringing together everything needed for the launch of a new product.

Master data needs maintenance and has to be kept consistent across miscellaneous IT-applications like ERP, CRM, LVS, Webshop and so on. If this maintenance is done automatically through a master data management system, you avoid errors and versions that are out-of-date. If you need to exchange master data with business partners via automated interfaces, the product master data management system facilitates the data transport, for example through interfaces to the GDSN or 1WorldSync's datapool.

Master data creation or maintenance processes are strongly dependant on dates, like for instance the product launch data. It is thus vital for a company to know which employees currently are working on which data, whether all processes are running according to schedule or if and where bottlenecks arise. With a product master data management system you always have the overview and are able to quickly implement countermeasures, if anything threatens to become time-critical.

Goals for good data quality, no matter whether self-imposed or required from customers, have to be monitored and verified in real life. With a product master data management system you quickly identify weaknesses in your company's data quality. Whoever cares about data quality management proactively, wins. With the exact knowledge of your data quality you can for instance confidently negotiate with your customers whenever the issue arises.

Product master data shoud already be entered in a central systems starting with the first idea. Configurable data checks give you the control over the required data quality. The product master data management system can check the data quality already during data input, and give direct feedback to the user. "Quality gates" supervise automatic interfaces and functions. This ensures that incorrect data cannot contaminate other systems or processes or be sent to customers.

With a product master data solution you create a »Single Point of Truth« for master data in your company. This central point contains all managed product master data, including media asset data, for the alignment of all systems and processes. This instance provides a good entry point for a company-wide master data management that is used independently from other systems.

Competitive pressure forces many companies to constantly review and reduce the costs that arise in the context of master data management and supply to customers. The implementation of a product master data management system reduces, among others, expenses for manpower, quality issues and retroactive corrections of faulty data that obstructs the smooth functioning of the supply chain.

Master data maintenance is often an unloved duty. Especially if the tools used are insufficient, the processes intransparent, the tasks unclear and the data checks incomprehensive or missing. If you improve this by implementing a master data management system, then you also improve the motivation of the employees, the quality of the work and the processes. Already the error free production of a product fact sheet at the push of a button can significantly increase employee motivation.