Data problems—and solutions—come in many forms
By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 10/1/2005 6:00:00 AM
As a distributor of electronic components for more than 300 manufacturers, Mouser Electronics, Wayne, Pa., handles five million-plus products. So it's not surprising that Mouser CEO Glenn Smith describes the company's efforts at keeping data about those products current—using a homegrown document management system—as "a nightmare."
The surprise came when Mouser started shopping for a packaged solution to address its data management needs. The first inclination was to look at a class of software known as product information management—or PIM—since product data is what Mouser needed to manage.
Erica Rugullies, principal analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, says PIM systems are popular with manufacturers and distributors that—like Mouser—handle diverse product lines. That's because the systems are good at cleaning up inaccurate or conflicting information that can creep into a product database as multiple parties add information over time.
"Product attributes and other information can vary from data store to data store, making it difficult to determine 'product truth,'" Rugullies explains. "Internal synchronization of this data, using a PIM system, enables users to eliminate errors, duplicates, and discrepancies."
As Mouser learned, however, there is a limit to how much data the average PIM system can manage. "After extensive review and evaluation, we discovered our database was too large and our performance requirements too high to be properly supported by some PIM vendors," Smith says.
FullTilt Solutions was one vendor that was up to the task, and within a few months its Perfect Product PIM suite was up and running at Mouser Electronics.
"Once it is fully populated, our database may be the largest ever contained in a commercial PIM system," Smith says, adding that FullTilt appears fully capable of managing that volume of data. I expect it to give us a significant competitive advantage."
The field of document management isn't solely concerned with product information, however. Consider, for instance, the case of Emerson Electric's Emerson Power & Transmission (EPT) division in Ithaca, N.Y., which wanted accounts payable (AP) work to be done offshore. "The idea is to offshore AP input so we can take advantage of the low labor rates in Manila," says Don Jansen, director of Emerson Business Services.
EPT decided to outsource the scanning, hosting, and management of documents, which is done by DataServ. The document management process begins when EPT's vendors send paper invoices to a P.O. box, where mail prep and scanning procedures are used to create electronic documents, says DataServ CEO Jeff Haller. Next, personnel in Manila view the scanned images of the documents directly from an Oracle ERP system. They take data from images to index the invoices and input information to the Oracle system to initiate payments.
"Labor rates in Manila are low and error rates are usually less than one percent, so we're pleased with the project," Jansen says. "One reason for its success is DataServ delivers the reliability and flexibility we need for a hosted solution."
While at first it seems Mouser and Emerson took different approaches, they actually followed the same strategy. Each company identified a way to improve business performance, determined how document management could help, and then deployed the solution that best fit their needs.
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