Introduction

Master Data Management can be defined as the management of non-transactional data for an organization. Consistency of Master Data across multiple ERP’s, businesses, and geographies is critical to protect against data inconsistency, data inaccuracy, and provides the ability to efficiently make data changes. Master Data Services are vital, supporting a company’s efforts to manage complex data issues.

For more details about how Peeriosity member companies support Master Data processes, click here.

Company Experiences

A Peercast discussion in Peeriosity’s General Accounting (R2R) research area featured a global company with over $50B in annual revenue discussing their approach to optimizing the Financial Master Data Services process in Global Business Services (GBS).  Feature presenters for the one-hour Peercast included both the Senior Director and Director for Financial Master Data Services at the member company.  The Financial Master Data Services group is part Global Business Services, as a peer organization to Record-to-Report (including General Accounting, Cost and Intercompany Accounting, Fixed Assets, and Financial Data) and Business Planning & Analysis (including Forecast and Management Reporting, and Budgeting).

The design of this critical business process took shape over several years, beginning without the benefit of a dedicated service or application manager, scope that included source maintenance only, and tools that were limited to Excel, SAP ABAPs, and SharePoint.

The first step in the design was to create the service vision, including defining the organizational structure and where it best fit within GBS, and defining the scope including understanding the volume of data, and the number of manual and automated requests.  Next a team action plan was created, and scorecard measures were established.  Scorecard measures include a mix of Operations KPIs (for example, timeliness, right-first-time), User Experience KPIs, and Incident Management KPIs.

After defining the scope, the new organization was established as the primary approver and leader of all related processes and projects that included Financial Master Data activities.  A part of this effort included creating a formal FMDS Change Advisory Board to provide leadership and direction.

With these changes the company has seen a dramatic improvement in quality as a result of new automated tools and rigorous process design.  User Experience is also greatly improved with significant improvement in Net Promoter Scores.  In addition, there are many more tools available including automation with Pega, and other tools including Chatbot, MS Teams, Diligent, SAP Fiori, Userlane, Cloverleaf, Confluence, Planner/Jira, and Business Process Framework.  While there is more work to be done, the impact of the redesign has been dramatic and powerful.

For details, Peeriosity members are encouraged to sign into the members’ area to view the complete presentation and listen to the recorded Peercast.

Closing Summary

As GBS and Shared Services organizations increase their scope of services, having responsibility for a core business processes like Master Data Management is increasingly common, with significant positive impacts on the underlying work processes as likely outcomes.  Applying the mantra of “run it like a business” to Master Data, including processes like Financial Master Data Services, eliminates turf battles with endless amounts of rework, broken processes, and redundant data that was never completely fixed or clean.  While the effort may be significant, the positive results can be substantial.

How does you company manage Master Data processes?  What efforts have you taken to redesign your Financial Master Data Service processes?

Who are your peers and how are you collaborating with them?

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“Peercasts” are private, professionally facilitated webcasts that feature leading member company experiences on specific topics as a catalyst for broader discussion.  Access is available exclusively to Peeriosity member company employees, with consultants or vendors prohibited from attending or accessing discussion content.  Members can see who is registered to attend in advance, with discussion recordings, supporting polls, and presentation materials online and available whenever convenient for the member.  Using Peeriosity’s integrated email system, Peer Mail, attendees can easily communicate at any time with other attending peers by selecting them from the list of registered attendees.

Peeriosity members are invited to log into www.peeriosity.com to join the discussion and connect with Peers.   Membership is for practitioners only, with no consultants or vendors permitted.  To learn more about Peeriosity, click here.