Customer Master Data: Common Challenges and Solutions

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1 Customer Master Data: Common Challenges and Solutions By Will Crump President, DATUM LLC Executive Summary Master data within an enterprise is typically segmented by domain, or a category of related data elements. Examples of common domains include Materials/Products, Suppliers, Assets, Finance, Employee and Customer, among others. Elements within master data domains may overlap in some cases, especially as certain master data management events such as new product creation, make-to-order, quote-to-settle or other business processes may involve multiple domains, as well as shared attributes across them. Each master data domain has unique characteristics that can vary based on a company s business operations or organizational relationships. This paper discusses the Customer Domain in terms of its overall identity, common challenges and data governance indicators. It also outlines a set of solution parameters that can streamline customer master data governance and provide organizations with the readiness they need to quickly meet evolving regulatory and business requirements.

2 Common Challenges of the Customer Domain Master data domains can be characterized as having push/pull or upstream/downstream types of qualities in terms of how data originates and how it creates challenges in an ERP landscape such as SAP. The Customer Domain most often exhibits external pull or upstream challenges, in addition to the normal internally managed operational requirements. The attributes typically associated with a customer, such as entity name, billing address, shipping address and customer contact, are determined outside the enterprise. Therefore, customer master data is largely dependent on the contribution from the customer, in the course of normal business practices, to validate the quality and completeness of those attributes. The ownership of such data is a hotly contested topic. Business users can own a process for maintaining data integrity. However, data such as rebranded customer name can t be assigned ownership to a party within the company in the same way as other information that is generated internally. In cases where stewardship of such data is critical, process and policy definitions are important deliverables in clarifying contention around ownership and maintenance of these attributes. In addition to ownership challenges, customer information also has a unique position of appearing in many places throughout the enterprise, even in the most consolidated of IT architectures. CRM systems develop customer details that only become relevant in ERP processes once an order is taken. When logistics execution/delivery systems or third-party providers are added into the mix, a distribution problem in maintaining customer data between the CRM environment and the separate ERP environments can occur. Conversely, having a common ERP environment but regionally based CRM systems can increase the need for synchronization and global visibility of customer data activity across the enterprise. Business interruptions and financial losses related to customer information are nearly always the result of duplicate, inaccurate or incomplete customer master data, caused by inconsistencies in data entry or data input processes and/or a lack of synchronization between disparate ERP/CRM environments. Companies operating in regulated industries or in certain legal jurisdictions may also need to keep customer information current, segregated and searchable to fulfill specific compliance requirements. In summary, the Customer Domain is commonly challenged by the following factors: A strong business need to maintain current and timely distribution of data between systems Synchronization and conflict resolution between systems of record and systems that allow change to customer information A need to establish readiness benchmarks to support compliance or business integrity, with emphasis on master data stewardship, accuracy and usability Indicators for Customer Data Governance An effective Customer Data Governance program can help organizations address the challenges listed above. The following examples illustrate types of business issues indicating a need for a well-developed master data governance program. Compliance Some industries are highly regulated by various government agencies (e.g., FDA, DoD, ATF, etc.), as their products may pose health hazards, security threats or other risks. As a result, trade restrictions are put in place to specify who may purchase or gain access to these products. Without proper controls to maintain up-to-date content and prevent master data errors, a manufacturer or distributor may conduct business Customer Master Data: Common Challenges and Solutions 2

3 that is out of compliance with local or federal regulations. A wide range of compliance concerns could lead to a penalty from the governing body. Therefore, compliance can create a strong incentive to establish a data governance program. For example, consider a company that sells regulated products and ships them through a common distribution channel such as UPS, DHL or FedEx. A review of the log showing product returns due to incorrect ship-to addresses might alarm regulatory authorities, especially if the returns were initiated by the product recipients, rather than the shipping provider. By establishing governance controls to validate customer data prior to each shipment, the company could prevent noncompliance issues and save considerable costs associated with product returns. Operations Many companies depend on accurate customer data for daily productivity and profitability. In such cases, the quality of customer master data has a direct impact on business operations and financial performance at all levels of the enterprise. For example, the effectiveness of a sales organization is often dependent on the quality of customer information available to drive key measures. Imagine a company reviewing end-of-year sales numbers and realizing that the sales team overstated its performance compared to the actual transactional performance in the field. Investigation reveals that the problem stemmed from duplicate customer entities in master data, which clouded the reporting of sales activities and performance. As a result of this error, the company overpaid sales commissions throughout the year and overextended credit terms to customers. Implementing a set of governance processes to check for and resolve duplicate entries could have helped the company avoid significant financial losses in payments and incurred credit risk. Analytics The same scenario that affects operations could also have strong implications for analytics. Errors and inconsistencies in customer master data could easily lead to inaccurate reporting, affecting decisionmaking, strategic planning and financial output across the enterprise. In the example above, a sales organization overstated performance due to duplicate customer entities in master data. As a consequence, the sales team may suffer attrition from restated commissions, and incorrect reporting may have diverted marketing attention to areas that were less successful than stated. It can be a challenge to separate data issues associated with analytics from those attached to operations, but the key determinant is the root cause associated with the event. More often than not, data governance opportunities are embedded in the refinement of roles, processes and policies that describe good business practices. Identifying Business Needs When assessing the need for customer master data governance, organizations should start with a business-centric dialogue around the three fundamental areas of compliance, analytics and operations. The critical question to ask is, What are the operational impacts of incorrect or uncontrolled customer master data? Examples may include incurred fines as a result of noncompliance with regulatory requirements, misdirected deliveries due to inefficient operations or grossly incorrect forecasts due to inaccurate analytics, among other issues. Once the business risks and challenges of working with ungoverned master data are clearly defined, the next steps will involve establishing the primary areas of focus and the processes required to address Customer Master Data: Common Challenges and Solutions 3

4 these challenges. Companies should consider how to readily compile the knowledge needed to address each identified issue, how to manage the people and data elements involved, and how to measure governance success. A well-defined Customer Data Governance program should incorporate both agility and control to ensure that business needs are seamlessly met as they evolve over time. Leveraging user-friendly tools will also help organizations to easily adapt to changing regulatory and operational requirements without glitches or delays. Choosing Your Customer Data Governance Solution Companies should take care to select a Customer Data Governance solution that encompasses both function and flexibility to meet their short- and long-term business needs. Organizations should look for the following capabilities during their selection process: Data Validation: A technology solution should allow users to validate customer master data requests at the point of entry against rules inside and outside of SAP. Cross-Business Integration: An effective, end-to-end solution should provide a robust set of configurable customer master data creation and maintenance workflows (e.g., serial, parallel or conditional), multi-step approvals, conditional logic for branching, support for extensive notifications and alerts for service-level management, designed to work across a global enterprise platform such as Microsoft SharePoint. Data Governance: Business users should be able to create role-based and traceable customer master data governance processes that route change requests to different stakeholders for input, review and approval. Streamlined Data Entry and Processing: Minimizing the manual handling of customer master data is critical for ensuring data integrity. A robust Customer Data Governance solution should eliminate the need for data re-entry, while providing a deeply integrated platform from in-process data lookup, extraction and filtering to data validation and the final SAP update. It should also provide forms designed for specific department updates, with no extraneous information. Mass Maintenance: Users should be empowered to perform mass maintenance of customer master data directly from Microsoft Excel without any programming. Winshuttle for Master Data As the leading provider of end-to-end SAP solutions, Winshuttle has helped hundreds of companies worldwide to optimize their customer master data processes to date. By integrating common, user- friendly interfaces such as Microsoft SharePoint and Excel with SAP functions, Winshuttle s products allow organizations to transform inefficient, ineffective and cumbersome customer master data processes into agile, automated and fully auditable workflows that speed up productivity and free up valuable corporate and IT resources. With the company s extensive industry benchmark database and customization capabilities, organizations can easily identify key areas for improvement and implement the most relevant master data process updates to meet specific business needs. Customer Master Data: Common Challenges and Solutions 4

5 Winshuttle provides: 1. The expertise and industry benchmark data you can rely on for your customer master data usability assessment; 2. An industry benchmark database that is comprehensive in both volume and breadth of customer master data process improvement resources and data; 3. A consistent customer master data methodology that guides usability process improvement; 4. A technology solution that provides end-to-end customer master data creation and maintenance capabilities, from input, validation and workflow to auditing, reporting and SAP system update; 5. An integrated solution that fits master data processes to your business and input requirements not the other way around. Winshuttle for Master Data provides the quickest path to better SAP master data by empowering business teams to make immediate improvements in master data processes without programming, thereby allowing businesses to quickly solve their most critical data problems and progressively move toward higher master data integrity. This market-leading toolset streamlines and enhances: Data Validation: Users can validate master data requests at the point of entry against rules inside and outside of SAP. Data Governance: Users can create role-based and traceable governance processes that route change requests to different stakeholders for input, review and approval. Mass Maintenance: Users can perform mass maintenance directly from Microsoft Excel without any programming. Winshuttle for Master Data allows business users to instantly resolve urgent problems with customer and other key master data objects. With better customer master data, organizations can reduce costly business interruptions and noncompliance oversights, while improving productivity and profitability. For more information about how Winshuttle can help your company improve customer master data governance and get the most out of your SAP installation, visit or info@winshuttle.com. Customer Master Data: Common Challenges and Solutions 5

6 About the Author Will Crump is the president and co-founder of DATUM LLC, an independent leader in Enterprise Data Management Strategy for Large Enterprises. Widely recognized by global enterprises, software vendors and systems integrators as an expert perspective and critical success factor in delivering strategy for EIM, Information Governance, and Data Management Innovation for companies treating data as a process. With over fifteen years invested in building high-performance, cross-functional teams Will brings a wealth of experience in team selection, alignment and motivation in addition to 12 years of management experience in software product development for consumer, OEM, and enterprise business-to-business web-application technologies. Theresa Ciacchi Senior Account Executive - Business Solutions Group 118 W. Streetsboro Rd. Suite 221, Hudson, OH p. (440) c. (440) e. tciacchi@adaptivecorp.com Adaptive Corporation, Inc. Providing Innovation by Design Cleveland Dayton San Francisco Irvine Raleigh Dallas Toronto 6