Master Data Management
Revamping your supply chain with master data management
The emergence of process management systems and evolving consumer demands are reshaping the supply chain industry. Hence, businesses have to be more proactive in adapting to current industry expectations. Global supply chain management is expected to grow at a 11.2% CAGR from 2020 to 2027 regardless of the pandemic.With rising sales volumes, distribution networks, and stores, it has become imperative for supply chain professionals to work with structured data. Thus, master data management (MDM) plays an essential role in offering consistent data. Supply chain MDM helps businesses get a complete overview of the supply chain process, especially those equipped with complex business processes that frequently change and expand.
Common challenges faced in supply chain functions
Despite spending a lot of time and money, managers find it challenging to smoothen out their supply process, even with supply chain management (SCM) systems. Let's discuss the common challenges that businesses face in the supply process in absence of proper data management
- Order fulfilment:
- Warehousing and distribution:
- Excess stock:
As SCM has no standard data definition, customers and retailers sometimes find it challenging to order items based on specific information of the product, such as the barcode, price, or size, as they are incorrectly entered into the system.
Businesses can face heavy losses when product descriptions don't match the order displayed on the system. As a result of this error, products can be shipped back to the warehouse and distributors can claim expensive shipping charges.
There are chances of overstock if there is no proper supply chain planning. Excess inventory can result in significant losses.
How can MDM benefit the supply chain?
A seamless supply chain is built on the foundation of significant data that helps supply chain managers ascertain different processes — from supply to delivery. With evolving technology, business leaders discovered opportunities to digitise their supply chain.* But even with SCM, managers found inconsistent data, which results in heavy losses and delayed delivery.
MDM is one of the solid data-driven processes that help businesses with better data to make informed decisions and avert the challenges mentioned above. It can provide complete, consistent, and accurate information to avoid errors and confusion. Additionally, efficient implementation of MDM in the supply chain system offers businesses a single view of all data, ultimately eliminating the expensive disorganised information caused by data silos.
The importance of MDM in the supply chain system
Managing sheer volume of data, improving performance, and consistent data are the primary factors that businesses are looking for in effective supply chain management. Adopting a centralised data strategy and implementing solutions in supply chains will result in uniform data across departments. This removes data silos and duplication, as well as improves quality and integrity. Here’s how MDM helps businesses achieve the same:
- MDM in supply chain helps centralise and synchronise data across supply chain networks and distributors.
- MDM encourages transparency and homogeneity of data, which results in cost-cutting and delivers revenue generation opportunities.
- MDM provides reliable data for predictive and prescriptive analysis as accurate prediction is essential in inventory management.
- With increased global opportunities comes equal accountability. MDM facilitates a smooth transition of information and accessibility between supply networks, further improving collaboration among the internal and external parties.
- MDM in supply chain gives businesses an edge by ensuring proper data management and by providing a holistic overview of processes.
MDM enables supply chain professionals to create a precise plan for inventory based on location, region, or client. It also helps troubleshoot problems faced in frequent stock-outs or overstock, return of damaged products, or order fulfilment metrics. MDM solutions are built on a single platform with a consolidated and scalable digital framework that collects data from multiple domains.
How can Infosys BPM help?
Infosys BPM empowers organisations by offering end-to-end solutions in MDM that ensure consistent data across retailers and distributors. These solutions cover a broad aspect of data solutions while providing Master data management services to streamline processes such as:- Digitisation in supply chain process that suits organisation vision
- Creating an ecosystem of a data-driven organisation
- Building a customer-centric mindset while setting up data management solutions
Learn more about Infosys BPM master data management solutions, which are built on understanding the next-generation digital supply chain and helping businesses get more value from their supply chain process.
*For organisations on the digital transformation journey, agility is key in responding to a rapidly changing technology and business landscape. Now more than ever, it is crucial to deliver and exceed on organisational expectations with a robust digital mindset backed by innovation. Enabling businesses to sense, learn, respond, and evolve like a living organism, will be imperative for business excellence going forward. A comprehensive, yet modular suite of services is doing exactly that. Equipping organisations with intuitive decision-making automatically at scale, actionable insights based on real-time solutions, anytime/anywhere experience, and in-depth data visibility across functions leading to hyper-productivity, Live Enterprise is building connected organisations that are innovating collaboratively for the future.
