Master data management
Master data management is an absolute key area to the success of eProcurement and inventory optimization initiatives. Traditionally, Buyers have relied on Suppliers to provide product information. There is also a casual attitude about the inventory data that it is after all a simple medium of identification of parts and assets.
In fact, inventory data management is much more complex than it appears at first glance. It is therefore important to realize the challenges of managing the inventory data and put in place a robust and long term operational strategy to face it. First, let us understand why it is important to manage Master data?
- Master data is the life-blood of any successful eProcurement transaction
- It is a key element in the decision of planning and budgeting
- It is the fuel for accurate spend reporting (Eg: Material aggregation by commodity groups)
- Good Master data helps to achieve regulatory compliance
- It assures increased uptime and reduction in stock-out situations
- All of the above leads to faster executions, quickened ROI and increased customer satisfaction
Data Cleansing
A well planned data cleansing exercise should address the below needs:
- Item identification
- Classification coding
- Usage of parametric data (attributes)
- Application of standards
- Enrichment
Grihasoft helps its customers to achieve the above.
Item identification
A combination of part number and an accompanied brief description is often necessary to unambiguously identify a product. Therefore a data cleansing exercise must focus on providing accurate part numbers and ensuring completeness of product description. The short descriptions must be "normalized" (removal of excessive abbreviations) and "rationalized" (logical ordering of description by attribute)
Classification coding
It is highly recommended that Master data be classified to a hierarchical classification standard. UNSPSC (Universal Standard products and services code) is by far the most popular and natural choice. UNSPSC offers a single coding convention that covers all products/services (well, almost all) and provides the broadest collection of businesses, industries and commodities available today. The advantages of UNSPSC are
- Quick and easy ‘drill down’ search of product information
- Enables spend analysis by commodity grouping through “Rolling up” the hierarchies.
For more information about UNSPSC, see http://www.unspsc.org
Usage of parametric data
Parametric data (attributed data) is a necessity rather than a luxury for plant equipment and spare identification. They help in providing specifications to the user in a clear and concise format.
Grihasoft has developed a data dictionary for describing item specifications known as the Grihasoft Taxonomy to provide a consistent, reusable set of categories for a unified catalog of products and services. It is a flat dictionary having several “Product Names” (Similar to a commodity category) combinations. For more information about Griha Taxonomy, scroll down further.
Application of standards
Application of standards leaves little space of ambiguity. Standards can be applied for a number of data elements at different levels within the Master data. Following data elements pertinent to eProcurement have a defined set of standard denotations.
- Currency codes
- Unit of Measure (UOM) codes
- Location codes (locales)
- Language codes
Enrichment
Enrichment is an optional exercise that if undertaken would add depth to the content. The more information is provided to the user, the better will be the purchasing experience. Adding a Long description, Picture, Drawing, MSDS, Keywords etc would enhance the user experience.
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Grihasoft Taxonomy
Grihasoft has developed a data dictionary for describing item specifications known as the Grihasoft Taxonomy to provide a consistent, reusable set of categories for a unified catalog of products and services. It is a flat dictionary having several “Product Names” (Similar to a commodity category) combinations. The category specific attributes are appended to items classified under Grihasoft Taxonomy Product Name combinations, so that end users may make informed comparisons of the generic, purchase essential characteristics of like items and perform parametric searching on these values.
Grihasoft Taxonomy provides a credible alternative to other commercially available taxonomies. It currently covers about 2000 most widely used Product Name combinations. It has about 9000 attributes defined. Grihasoft is presently constructing example values and definitions for each of these.
Grihasoft Taxonomy's category-specific attributes are designed to capture generic and purchase-essential characteristics common to all items within a category. Proper value population within Grihasoft Taxonomy's category-specific attributes enhances the finding experience of end users by providing accurate and uniform purchase-essential information with powerful parametric refinement.
Below given are example screenshots of Grihasoft Taxonomy when viewed through “Grihasoft Taxonomy Viewer” application.
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