Table of Contents
7 Signs your MDG solution is not living up to its promises
Your Master Data Governance solution (ERP-centric or data-centric MDG) is not meeting expectations and needs help if you see any of the following.
- Extensive use of Email/Excel-based data collection by business teams
- Long cycle times for master data requests (days/weeks instead of hours)
- Low first-time-right rates (<85%)
- Persistent data quality issues in operational systems (ERP, Planning, Logistics, Manufacturing Execution Systems, CRM, E-Commerce)
- Errors are getting fixed in operational systems
- Business users rarely use the system
- Costly MDG consultants are doing non-value-added Master Data tasks
Root causes for underperforming Master Data Governance
3 root causes lead to underperforming and ineffective Master Data Governance
Front-end processes that business users use for master data collection
ERP-centric and technical master data (database tables) are far too cryptic and complex for business teams to understand. There is no escaping the use of simplified Excel forms for data collection and for translating data from them to ERP and technical master data. This fact leads to the perpetual presence of the signs listed above.
MDG does a passable job for core master data and completely ignores extended master data
The picture below shows the full scope of Material Master Data. While MDG solutions do a reasonable job (only when business users use the MDG solution) with core master data below, they provide little or no support for Extended Master Data. Extended Master Data can account for up to 80% of the overall master data scope. Essentially, you have a 20% solution on your hands.
Lack of error-proofing lets poor master data propagate in operational systems
This is the worst manifestation of the failure of MDG solutions and processes. Most MDG solutions do not support front-end data collection and error-proofing at the source and, as a consequence, cannot stop master data errors from entering and propagating.
How to fix this
You should follow the maxim: “Don’t break what works.” If the traditional MDG solution is handling core data well and distributing it to operational systems, we recommend keeping it as is.
To fix the seven signs of breakdown, you can add a process orchestration-based solution like ZMDM to support:
- Simple and governed front-end data collection from business teams
- Error-proofing as part of front-end data collection
- Extended Master Data and related processes
