Techlogix - business process management

The Promise of Master Data Management
As a technology and a process discipline, MDM makes three fundamental promises:

• Consistency: the ability to utilize the same view of information to all relevant line of business applications (and hence, to their users)
• Accuracy: the implementation of technology and processes to ensure a high degree of accuracy in key data
• Completeness: the ability to generate complete views around core master data as it is reflected across various systems (for example, a complete view of all interactions and attributes of a particular customer)

In many ways, MDM delivers what business users have expected all along: consistent, complete and accurate data. However, MDM does this within the complex heterogeneous application environments within every large enterprise. What is truly exciting about MDM is that it enables this capability of complete, consistent and accurate data “before the fact” (i.e. before the relevant data is used by an application) rather than “after the fact” (as in data warehouses).

MDM Done Right: The Techlogix MDX Methodology

Implementing Master Data Management solutions is a challenge that many enterprises both recognize and yet lack a roadmap for. Unlike traditional IT solutions which have fairly well defined processes and best practices, MDM is both new and its potential scope very vast.

The Techlogix MDX methodology guides the successful delivery of MDM solutions for the enterprise across its entire lifecycle through a series of stages each of which deliver independent business value and yet build upon preceding work to ensure a continuous arc of solution delivery.

The MDX Methodology has been developed by Techlogix over the past 2 years and implemented at customers in Financial Services, Manufacturing and Oil and Gas. We have also successfully used the MDX methodology across multiple MDM platforms including SAP and IBM.

Case Study

MDM Done Right: A Global Leader in Hi-tech Manufacturing
solves the Product Information Management Puzzle

The Challenge:
Our client is a $2B revenue business unit of a Fortune 50 company with product offerings for home, commercial and government security. The company has about 35,000 SKUs in its product lines of which only 20% had detailed product information available through various online and print catalogs. Attributes and information for the other products was spread out across multiple non-integrated legacy systems as well as in unstructured content such as data sheets etc. The company’s web presence was also not meeting customer and especially reseller needs since it was extremely difficult to obtain information about products let alone perform product comparisons, attribute based search and other advanced functions.

The Techlogix MDX Methodology Delivers
Techlogix was invited as a strategic consultant to address these issues. After studying the requirements from key stakeholders in Marketing, Product Management, Sales and IT and mapping them to various market leading product catalog solutions, Techlogix recommended a PIM solution based on SAP MDM. The key functionality enabled by the new product data platform would include:

• Web-based extranet for customers
• Integrated Product Catalog Management solution with internal editing and publication of data through to the web extranet
• Products Categorization (Taxonomy)
• Data Consolidation and Import
• Catalog Publishing Configuration and Printing

The project implementation was scheduled over two phases. During the first phase, Techlogix utilized a six-person onsite team comprising of a Project Manager, a Functional Analyst, SAP MDM Architect, Data Import Analyst and two Project Engineers as well a 6-person offshore development team. A detailed exercise of defining the product taxonomy was undertaken by interacting with 24 business users from six product groups to come up with a unified product categorization. This was followed by importing data from the various legacy sources into the new product hierarchy managed by SAP MDM. This phase was accomplished in 16 weeks of which the first eight were spent in the taxonomy definition and next eight in import and data consolidation of 30,000 SKUs.

In the second phase, the Techlogix team upgraded SAP MDM from Version 4.0 to 5.5 to take advantage of Multi-lingual support and workflows. Desktop publishing capability was developed, and SAP MDM and the customer’s ERP (Oracle Applications) were integrated to enable straight through product data entry. Finally search capabilities were enhanced to enable users to search via product attributes. The improved application resulted in substantial user productivity gains.

Tangible Results
• Customers are able to perform rapid, accurate, efficient searches across the entire product catalog
• Single, central and easy to maintain repository of product data
• Products can easily be re-categorized without affecting web and paper publishing layouts
• Cross-sells can be enabled on the web for customers. The customers can easily compare related products
• Tight, integrated workflow is supported to ensure validity and consistency of product data

MDM Solution Offerings

Model	Duration	Description
MDM Overview	1 day	A one day overview on implementing a Master Data solution. The areas covered include selection of master data elements, scoping and phasing an MDM implementation, project lifecycles (Analysis, Design and Build stages), implementation methodology and appropriate case studies. Who Should Attend: Data Management team leaders, IT Leaders with responsibility for Master Data, Business owners of Master Data
Scoping and Value Discovery (SVD)	5-10 days	A detailed workshop which scopes out an implementation roadmap and details the first phase. The areas covered in the workshop include: • Scope boxing: selection of a master data element and its scope • Definition of the business case around the selected element • Preliminary Taxonomy identification • Identification of source and target systems and integration endpoints • High-level identification of governance processes for master data maintenance • Design of solution architecture for implementing governance processes and making them accessible to a geographically distributed user base • Selection of applicable Data KPIs from the MDX portfolio • Presentation of proposed approach: scope, phase-wise division, business case, deliverables, timeline, cost Who Should Attend: • Data Management team leadership • Resources from the IT organization with good knowledge of the application, data and integrations landscape • Business and Functional users who can participate in taxonomy and data governance process design
Solution Phase 1	12-24 weeks	The first phase of an MDM Solution is critical: it must deliver realizable business value within a limited cost and time budget. A Techlogix MDM team follows up the SVD Workshop will a fixed price implementation designed to take an MDM solution into production usage. This allows the enterprise to deliver demonstrable business value which can then be extended into a full solution implementation which either extends the reach of the same master data element or else extends out to other elements.
MDM Solution Implementation	As Scoped	Engage Techlogix to execute a full MDM project end-to-end. This allows a Techlogix MDM team, thoroughly trained and experienced in the MDX Methodology, to deliver breakthrough enterprise value. Our MDM teams can work both onsite and using global delivery leveraging our offshore development centers. The MDX Methodology allows us to deliver projects in a fixed-time model We can also arrange to include training for in-house staff as part of the project delivery.