This global industrial group is one of the world’s largest employers and operates across a broad range of business areas. Its long history and continuous expansion have created a significant scaling challenge. The company manages hundreds of applications, thousands of interfaces, and a high volume of rollout projects and integrations each year.
To address this complexity, the organization partnered with Stibo Systems to create a modern data ecosystem. The goal is to provide trusted master data to employees, customers, partners and business units across the entire enterprise.
Challenges
Huge scale, complex ERP migration and complex integration requirements
With such an enormous scale, the organization needed reliable, enterprise-wide data available and updated in real time – or as near to real time as possible. Inconsistent or out-of-date data, especially data brought in from partners and suppliers, impaired operations and immediately caused process breakdowns. It didn’t help that there was no single source of truth for customer, supplier or business data. Definitions across systems and divisions were inconsistent, master data was often either duplicated across multiple systems or simply inaccurate, and variations in data models across different master data management (MDM) systems often led to still more process failures.
At the heart of the company’s challenge was the sheer number of data models it managed. With over 500 applications and more than 1,000 interfaces, it was easy for inconsistencies to sneak in, and organic growth had introduced multiple ERP instances across more than 130 business models.
A further complication: While it was obvious that master data was a problem, the means to measure master data health was severely limited. In fact, the basic measurement of quality was whether or not the business process was running.
Amid all of this, the company needed to upgrade its legacy SAP R/3 structures and modernize to SAP S/4HANA, and this called for the implementation of a multidomain MDM project to prepare the data for migration and get the most value from the new system.
An opportunity of this nature also comes with potential risk, and some parts of the business were reluctant to consider a centralized master data strategy. It was also difficult to identify, engage and align potential data stewards in different parts of the business, raising potential risks around governance.
Unsurprisingly, the team proposing to update the company’s master data strategy faced a certain amount of skepticism from colleagues.
“One of our biggest challenges was activating the master data community and preparing them for change. Half of the people said it was not possible, and 40% felt we should not proceed. This showed us that technology alone is never enough. You need a strong team behind it, and that team is not only the five or 10 MDM experts. It is the entire master data community across the business.” - Head of MDM Transformation, Global Manufacturer
To summarize, the customer faced the following challenges.
- Vast scale, inconsistent data: 500+ applications, 1,000+ interfaces and 130+ business models created fragmented, duplicated and inconsistent master data with no single source of truth.
- Failure-prone processes caused by data errors: Real-time, enterprise-wide data was essential, but inconsistent or outdated records routinely caused operational process failures.
- Migration to S/4HANA added significant complexity: The migration required harmonized B2B customer (business partner) data and deep integration across hundreds of systems.
- Low governance levels, limited quality measurement and organizational inertia: Quality checks were limited to whether the system worked or not.
Solution
Multidomain MDM lays the groundwork for ERP transformation
The transformation team selected Stibo Systems Business Partner Data Cloud solution to simplify and accelerate the company’s migration to SAP S/4HANA. This decision streamlined the onboarding process for the company’s existing SAP and other ERP systems, helped reduce or eliminate data discrepancies and errors, minimized disruption, aided the creation of robust data governance, and once established and migrated, enhanced the capabilities of the organization’s brand-new S/4HANA environment.
Master data created a backbone for the transformation project, establishing validations, mappings and rules for data that aligned with S/4HANA requirements and creating consistency as multiple S/4HANA systems were rolled out across different business divisions.
A key first step was to consolidate more than 200 legacy data models into five semantic models, creating consistent definitions for customers, suppliers and contacts. The Business Partner Data Cloud became the central master data environment, serving as the single source of truth and hosting the company’s Object Model. Semantic APIs were introduced to validate and create business partner records, ensuring accuracy and consistency across all downstream processes.
With the S/4HANA migration underway, further areas were addressed. With over 500 applications, middleware was employed to ensure golden records from the MDM were available across every system connected to the new ERP.
Secondly, a data governance framework ensured central governance and authorizations while data stewardship was deployed across the different business units, ensuring divisions continued to “own” their relationship with the data. This centralized governance and localized stewardship could only work with clear rules and controls, as well as a strict change management process in place.
The global manufacturer experienced the following benefits.
- Global access to high-quality data: The company’s business partner data was unified across both geographical regions and systems, reducing duplication and process breakdowns and creating the foundations for effective reporting, compliance and customer engagement.
- Greater operational efficiency and faster time to market: The implementation reduced onboarding complexity; made accurate data available in real time across 4,000+ processes; reduced manual effort and associated errors by introducing standardized workflows and automations; and increased the speed of decision-making.
- A strong foundation for SAP S/4HANA success: Validated and cleaned master data accelerated the transition to a new ERP, and a consistent object model cut both risk and rework effort.
- Improved AI, analytics and digital readiness: The new platform can easily integrate new systems, future acquisitions and new technology-based initiatives such as AI automations and more advanced analytics.
- A simpler, more cost-effective maintenance and IT set up: Fewer models means fewer integrations to keep in good condition, and past proliferation of customer logic and interfaces is prevented with central control.
Learn more about:
Outcomes
Centralized MDM coupled with SAP migration creates opportunity and efficiency
The opportunity to centralize MDM as part of the migration to S/4HANA allowed the organization to standardize, centralize and unify its business partner data. By reducing the number of legacy data models from over 200 to just five semantic models and building validated, harmonized master data across over 500 applications and over 1,000 interfaces, the company has certainly made things easier for employees and suppliers.
These foundational improvements have also enabled the rollout of over 600 global projects, accelerated the rollout of S/4HANA, and strengthened the company’s readiness for digital adoption and AI readiness.
