Our Client is a leading US-based company that manufactures pre and finished products for the bakery, baking industry, and foodservice. They produce food products and distribute bakery supplies and ingredients, including mixes, dough, toppings, icings, frozen products, and ready-to-bake sweets. Clients include Mrs. Fields, Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, and other restaurants, supermarkets, and institutional bakeries. It also manufactures and distributes baking equipment.
Implement Master data governance model for MVCBR multi domain and cross domain objects:
M – Material
V – Vendors
C – Customers
B – Bills of material
R – Routings
Food Products manufacturer had acquired some similar organizations and built additional sites to satisfy a geographically broad customer base. Some of these locations operated on disparate systems and had their custom business processes. The manufacturer embarked on a transformation journey to streamline its operations to manage inventory better, improve customer satisfaction, and optimize suppliers. One of the biggest challenges in this journey was the complexity and variation of Master Data across the sites and geographies, hindering the ability to consolidate the processes.
As a result, the manufacturer decided to implement Governance for the Master Data as the first step.
The manufacturer has set up a Master Data Governance processing using SharePoint forms and workflow. Users from 4 different teams have to approve master data. Sometimes they do not fully understand the implications of the data and enter a valid though a faulty base unit of measure, causing problems making corrections once a transaction is processed. It currently can take 3-4 days to a new customer into the system. And it has to be keyed manually into SAP, bringing its own set of synchronization issues.
The manufacturer is amid a global rollout of SAP. There are other solutions, like JBA and legacy applications, also being used for operations. Also, various integration solutions like SAP Data Services, Informatica are used to keep these systems in sync. Traditional Integration Solutions require teams with varied skillsets to maintain and implement any new functionality or change in the business process. Also, Numerous Data issues resulted in business costs due to surplus or low inventory, thereby impacting the profitability of operations.
And in some cases, even understanding the consequences of a planned change became a challenge. Bringing a Master Data Governance solution would provide a perspective and control on the source of an issue and an opportunity to fix it promptly. It enables the business to incorporate new functionality or rollouts in a more efficient and controlled fashion.
The solution proposed was dataZen (a cloud multi-domain MDM Component) that runs on the ChainSys Smart Data Platform. dataZen comes with prebuilt templates, thereby reducing the effort and time involved in implementation. And this also enables the usage of Agile methodology wherein the Business users can participate in the validation of the results very quickly.
dataZen is based on Web-service based architecture and is fully configurable to suit the business needs. Hence, validations previously maintained in different systems or outside the ERP were quickly consolidated and implemented in dataZen. We improved the business process and reduced the training needs as the screens can be configured with drag and drop UX based on the user role.
ChainSys resources are familiar with most major ERP solutions. This enabled the team to operate virtually and in a self-sufficient manner, reducing the load on the IT team and the Business users.
The implementation of dataZen with total Agile Methodology helped the first round of testing starting in 3 Weeks. The Out of the box Templates for FMCG SAP Vertical helped the Agile execution. It's a merely configurable platform and no programming approach to the solution process. With a minimal footprint and virtual team operation, the ongoing support workload is also 20% compared to a traditional implementation.
The manufacturer expects to recover the investment in less than a year based on a reduction in inventory wastage, improved Customer shipment percentage based on ability to produce due to material availability at the right level, and Vendor Optimization.
These savings will be generated on an ongoing basis, even on future activities, whenever new materials or vendors are onboarded.
The manufacturer will continue to expand the usage of dataZen with further rollout costs being 20% of the initial implementation costs. This enables quick buy-in from the various stakeholders.
And this includes the reduction in training costs and the decrease in IT and Business users' workload in the new rollouts. The platform inbuilt flexible integration architecture of dataZen wherein legacy system adapters is configured in 2 weeks.
dataZen - To 'Get Clean' and 'Stay Clean', and Introduce Master Data Governance.
