Centralized product information speeds up internal processes at Newell Brands

Executive Summary

Newell is a diversified company with multiple operating units and product lines. As a consequence, they experienced difficulties managing ecommerce product data for thousands of SKUs across numerous internal legacy systems. Internal stakeholders weren’t reliably able to manage, update and publish consistent product information in a self-service manner. The result was inefficiencies while formatting and transmitting product data to merchants in retailer-specific formats.

Newell uses Stibo Systems Product Master Data Management (Product MDM) to maintain consistency and quality of their product information in support of ecommerce operations and to feed accurate data to their retail partners.

The Customer Experience

Democratizing data processes enhances operational efficiency. Product MDM is helping Newell Brands centralize and enrich its diverse set of product data – from cookware to car seats – across the company’s portfolio of brands.

Newell Brands was one of the first companies to use Stibo Systems’ crawl, walk, run implementation methodology, combined with a train-the-trainer approach to user education, ultimately lowering the overall total cost of ownership for the company as they created a number of internal MDM experts that now drive their ability to onboard new brands and products very quickly.

The Product MDM solution and Newell’s approach to implementation has improved overall data quality, helping the company bring together many disparate business units in order to standardize a common process for their entire information supply chain.

This resulted in what they call decentralized empowerment, meaning that virtually any business user whose job role requires them to onboard, enrich or manage product data is now empowered and encouraged to do so.

This provided numerous operational efficiencies and simplified the process of formatting and sending data to retail partners.

Challenge

Rapid growth exacerbating data complexity. With a broad, diversified portfolio of products, Newell Brands had challenges managing all its product data in a consistent format with processes that enabled its internal sales and marketing users to reliably access and enrich it appropriately. Likewise, they had a need for a solution that would simplify the process of formatting and transmitting product data in the proper formats demanded by major retailers such as Target, Walmart and Amazon.

Newell Brands has also undergone rapid growth and transformation in recent years due to acquisitions and accompanying restructuring, making it imperative for them to find a platform with a data model flexible and easy enough to use that they could standardize their product onboarding processes across the entire organization. In order to keep their total cost of ownership low they also wanted to become self-sufficient very quickly, without having to rely on a software vendor or third-party consultant for day-to-day support.

Solution

Golden records enabling effortless downstream feeds. Newell Brands sought a product information management solution to centralize their product master data in support of a diversified ecommerce operation and to feed accurate data to their partner retailers.

They chose Stibo Systems Product MDM solution due to the company’s proven experience in the manufacturing and CPG industries.

Product MDM provides Newell Brands the capability to create golden product records that effortlessly feed downstream ecommerce systems, and a flexible data model that simplifies the task of formatting data for stringent retailer requirements.

Result

Faster product onboarding and sharing. Increased data quality using a central repository for consistent and up-to-date global product data is the most tangible result for Newell Brands. This means they have become able to deliver diverse sets of product information in varying retail formats.

Due to internal training on the MDM platform, teams can now onboard new and acquired brands live on Product MDM very quickly.

And finally, the company benefits from improved efficiency throughout the organization as sales, marketing and other business users are empowered to own and maintain their relevant product data.