Table of Contents
Highlights
Industry: Specialty Chemicals
Geography (Global): HQ in North America, Plants/Sales Regions in Asia-Pacific, EU, Mexico, Canada, Latin America, South Africa, China
Scope: R&D Materials, Materials Management (Finished Goods, Raw Materials, Service Materials), New Customer Onboarding, New Vendor Onboarding
Cross-functional Teams: Finance, Supply Chain, Purchasing, Inventory Management, Customer Service, Sales, and Master Data Management
Systems Supported: SAP ECC, Microsoft Dynamics
Total number of stakeholders involved in Master Data workflows: 300+ globally
Key Master Data Issues before ZMDM adoption
- Extended lead time for New Customer onboarding (Sold-to, Ship-to.), resulting in shipment delays and customer satisfaction issues
- Stakeholders send incomplete and incorrect information as part of requests
- Email-based reviews and approvals are not getting completed or getting dropped, resulting in delays
- Stakeholders spend a lot of time reentering information into SAP, Dynamics, and other systems
Results
| Before ZMDM | After ZMDM |
|---|---|
| Ad hoc and long process for creating new R&D Materials, packages and extending to plants/sales areas | Simple, cross-functional process for creating R&D Materials, different pack sizes, and ability to manufacture in different plants and sell in different sales regions |
| New customer onboarding is a confusing and lengthy process for creating new customers and customer ship-to locations | New customer onboarding is a cross-functional process that is fast and simple for all stakeholders involved |
| Each region and plant using emails to support master data processes | Each region and plant have their own workflows to support flexibility and agility |
| Many people across regions engaged in and supporting Master Data processes | Fewer people dedicated to supporting master data processes |
Case Study Details
The Specialty Chemicals organization adopted ZMDM to support Master Data Management for all key domains (Materials, Customers, Suppliers, Finance) and all sales regions/plants located on four continents.
Materials Management
The specialty company’s business model relies on its ability to blend and design chemicals tailored to meet individual customer needs. This approach creates various research and development (R&D) materials.
Once the R&D team finalizes the design of these specialized chemicals, the materials are extended to specific production plants and sales areas. These plants are responsible for manufacturing and delivering the chemicals to the customer. The process, designed for scalability, ensures the company can adapt to changing market and customer needs.
However, the company’s approach creates and extends many materials across various plants. Each request for a new or modified chemical product requires the involvement of multiple stakeholders, including R&D, production, quality control, and logistics teams.
The complexity of this process, with its numerous touchpoints and dependencies, makes it challenging to manage efficiently. Supporting this intricate process manually or through traditional master data management approaches has proven to be cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive.
The overall process for introducing new material is shown in the picture below.
R&D Materials
The Research and Development team develops new materials tailored to customer specifications. Once created, these materials undergo a thorough review by the Compliance team, who assign the necessary regulatory information. Following this step, the workflow automatically creates material information (Basic View and Classification information) in the SAP system. This process ensures that new materials meet customer needs, comply with relevant regulations, and are ready to be extended to plants and sales areas.
Creating different Pack sizes of R&D Materials and Extending Materials to Plants and Sales Areas
Having R&D Material is insufficient to make and ship to customers. The R&D material is manufactured in different plants and sold to customers in various package sizes. This process, from a Master Data perspective, is accomplished by using Create New Package and Extend Material workflows as shown above.
New Customer Onboarding
Because of the nature of the business, sales teams and customer service reps continuously add new customers and ship-to locations. Sales teams and customer service representatives frequently submit urgent requests for new customers or ship-to-location creation. Additionally, prospects in Microsoft Dynamics may transition into customers, necessitating integration and utilization of information for new customer setup.
The onboarding process is highly cross-functional, involving different teams and various checks and balances to ensure proper billing, product delivery, and compliance with regulatory requirements. Ultimately, accurate customer master data is created in SAP to support order-taking, fulfillment, delivery, billing, and financial reconciliation processes. The following picture shows how the whole process is made collaborative, cross-functional, and integrated/automated in ZMDM.
