Multi-Enterprise Master Data Management in the Supply Chain

How to use Master Data Management to Drive Transformation

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Video: The Power of Multi-Enterprise Master Data Management.

For a truly digital supply chain, your enterprise needs to be digitally connected across business units and divisions, across manufacturing plants, warehouses and distribution centers.  It also needs to connect externally with customers and trading partners outside your company.

What’s essential for a digital enterprise is a common supply chain business network and a common language for communication.

Today, the major challenges holding back companies from achieving this are the technology hurdles that prohibit connections and cost-effective collaboration. These stand in the way of becoming truly digital, and realizing the benefits in speed, efficiency, and process performance.

The Importance of Master Data Management

A true multi-party digital platform capable of optimizing in real-time and autonomously managing the supply chain, must have a Multi-Enterprise Master Data Management system at its core. This enables every participant in your supply chain to reconcile master data efficiently and accurately with a common operating backbone, even across separate ERP systems.

One key to enabling the digital enterprise and digital supply chain, is a common business network and a common language for communication. - says @TerenceLeungSF Click To Tweet

One Network’s Multi-Enterprise Master Data Management system is purpose-built for complex supply chains, and manages information about customers, products, suppliers, locations, and logistics.  It’s multi-party, multi-echelon, and process-oriented, with comprehensive industry-specific data models that traditional MDM systems do not have.

It takes a unique network-based approach to master data, making it much simpler and highly efficient. Because the MDM scope extends to every supply chain participant, an organization can reference their partner’s master data, but no longer needs to maintain their partner’s data.

Multi-Enterprise Master Data Management in Action

This saves time, reduces costs, boosts quality, and eliminates errors. Every trading partner now has a real-time single version of the truth, and can operate efficiently across every mutual business process.

For example, a manufacturer and a supplier can optimize the inbound replenishment process together, as they share volumetric data about parts, orders, and deliveries.

For new product introductions, One Network’s MDM enables companies to communicate incremental engineering and formulation changes, with details about bill-of-material updates and effectivity dates, between engineering and supply chain departments. This can happen internally and across every tier of contract manufacturers and suppliers.

Recommended: How to Achieve Effective Multi-Party Master Data Management

For procurement and supply chain processes, the platform has a complete representation of the value chain, from inbound supply to outbound fulfillment, so companies can operate digitally, across their multiple ERP instances and other systems.  We call this a dual platform approach, where the business network and its MDM system become the primary operational system of record for the supply chain.

MDM Enables a Single Version of the Truth on the Network

With Multi-Enterprise MDM, network-wide partners are connected to a shared network solution. Trading partners connect just once to the network. Each partners’ master data is represented just once, not N times. And partners need only create their own mappings. They do not need to maintain copies of all item attributes.

Referencing partners’ data without needing to maintain it, saves time, reduces costs, boosts quality, and eliminates errors. Every trading partner now has a real-time single version of the truth, and can operate efficiently across every mutual business process.

One Network’s MDM is the foundation of a true many-to-many business network, where your company has full control over who can see and collaborate with master data. All parties manage data access with One Network’s secure, proven permissions framework.

For example, in collaboration on a product promotion, your company can assign time-bounded roles to two of your distribution partners in order to grant temporary permissions and assign roles to users for specific time periods.

As your company expands into new processes and new business models, you need to be able to create new interfaces, data models, processes and workflows. One Network’s SDK lets you do all this quickly and easily, using the same tools that built the platform.

Multi-Enterprise MDM eliminates friction, maximizes efficiency, and enables the fast, accurate decision-making necessary to drive digital business and results. It’s essential to a truly digital supply chain, and provides a competitive advantage for every network participant.

Recommended:  Master Data Management for Supply Chains

Terence Leung
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