Product information systems embrace company data for a single version of the truth
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 10/1/2005 6:00:00 AM
The latest attempts to arrive at "a single version of the truth" about company data are focused in consumer packaged goods and retailing, and revolve around data synchronization and product information management (PIM).
Jim Murphy, analyst with Boston-based AMR Research,says it's important to distinguish between these two processes.
"Global data synchronization is about companies sharing data with each other. Wal-Mart and others have mandated that product attributes come to them in a certain form, so manufacturers are trying to get product information out of existing systems and integrate it directly with UCCnet or Transora [now both part of 1SYNC, which provides standardized data-pool services]," he says.
PIM, on the other hand, is about building a central source of product information that can be used for multiple purposes—including catalog publishing, customer support, and internal operations.
PIM isn't new technology, says Murphy. It's been around for years under such names as product data management, catalog management, or product content management. Now product life-cycle management (PLM) vendors are getting into the act, offering ways to control data from the moment of product design forward.
The data-gathering potential of RFID is pushing manufacturers to look hard at PIM. "Companies are asking, if we can't compile and transmit 150 product data attributes to a data pool, what are we going to do when customers require 300," says Murphy. Consolidation of ERP systems also contributes to the interest. Companies need a way to combine data and make sure it's all clean and accurate, he adds.
In spite of its challenges, PIM brings benefits that make the effort worthwhile, says Murphy. It lowers delivery costs, accelerates time-to-market, increases sales, reduces errors, and improves efficiency.
Getting to these benefits takes time. Murphy estimates companies can synchronize data in six months, depending on their size, but a thorough PIM effort may take from three to five years.
To complicate matters, PIM is part of a much larger picture—master data management (MDM), which goes beyond organizing product data to encompassing data about suppliers, assets, customers, and employees, wherever it is found in the organization.
MDM is not a product per se, but multiple paths to that single version of the truth and to maintaining it in a systematic way, says Murphy. "One way is to have a single, huge database, but that's not a possibility for any company of a decent size. There are too many system and governance issues. The other approach is to have an integration strategy—leave all the data where it is and pull up views of it where and when it is needed. MDM is a system that determines what the authoritative source of data is."
Most development in this area is focused on what Murphy calls MDM for products, or MDM-P. Its goal is to establish and maintain that single version of the truth about products throughout their life cycle with certain high-level business goals in mind: reducing the cost and improving the speed of product-related transactions, enabling better collaboration, and capitalizing on market opportunities as they arise.
Murphy says getting to MDM in one fell swoop is not a reasonable strategy; instead manufacturers should start with PIM, integrating it tactically, with a view toward a broader MDM implementation down the road.
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