Mastering High Performance through Data Management

Information is the lifeblood of global consumer packaged goods companies. Not only is it more critical than ever, it is also more difficult to manage, distribute and control. Data needs to be consistent-providing "one version of the truth"-across geographies and functions. Significant value is created and performance enhanced throughout an organization when high-quality data is available, governed and used to interact and operate differently. Numerous amounts of sales are lost every year due to incorrect prices or erroneous item numbers exchanged by trading partners. Worse yet, bad data delays time-to-shelf-dulling a company's competitive edge considerably resulting in losses in revenue and margin.

While bad data used to be "just" an internal issue, now, data inaccuracy has implications across all suppliers, trading partners and ultimately, customers. To build a high-performance organization, global consumer packaged goods companies need to first establish a solid foundation for data through efforts that go beyond data cleansing or governance programs. Accenture's master data management approach views data holistically, isolating the source of inaccuracies and putting data management processes in place to enable the business to operate seamlessly and realize benefits across the end-to-end value chain.

To learn more about Accenture’s approach to master data management download our supplemental article:

Master Data Management for Consumer Products Companies
[PDF, 138KB]
PDF Help

To learn about more Accenture Services, sign up for My Outlook, your single e-mail source for all of Accenture's latest ideas and innovation, personalized specifically to your business interests and the industry issues you face.

Accenture's approach to master data management is holistic, and involves an ongoing process of integrating technology, people and processes. Accenture works with consumer packaged goods companies to assess the root of data problems and address the process and people issues that are typically at the heart of the problem.

Accenture brings a deep understanding of the industry into each phase of the MDM process. This perspective, along with a robust set of proven MDM methodologies and templates, accelerates the MDM journey of our clients. Our overall approach can be broken into three phases:

• Understand: Our work begins with workshops aimed at gaining insight into specific business goals. We help clients articulate the value they hope to achieve through master data management.
  
  
• Define: Framed in the context of business goals, we work with clients to create an MDM strategy that embodies a company's future vision for data management as well as the external requirements from trading partners. This helps define specific organizational areas to be addressed and create an enterprise design for MDM that deals with the client specific needs and issues.
  
  
• Implement: The most difficult step of the process is making an MDM strategy a reality through the implementation phase. This involves data management process transformation, recommending automation where appropriate, integrating business rules, cleansing existing data, implementing measurements for compliance and, most importantly, synchronizing people and business processes to ensure high-quality information on an ongoing basis.

Although Accenture's approach is flexible enough to meet a company anywhere along their MDM journey, we recommend that consumer packaged goods companies travel through each phase to most effectively address their data challenges.

Accenture works with our consumer packaged goods clients to establish leading data governance capabilities enabling them to facilitate and maintain their MDM vision. At the same time, we help assess and prioritize the top data imperatives to allow clients to focus on outcomes that will yield the greatest value. The result: more nimble supply chains, increased return and effectiveness of sales and marketing investments, reduced back-office costs, improved collaboration and compliancy and increased growth.

Accenture's commitment to MDM is evident in our organization:

• Accenture Information Management Services—Working across Accenture's service lines and industry groups, this network of 13,000 professionals specializes in information management services, including business intelligence, portals and content management and data management and architecture.

To learn about more Accenture Services, sign up for My Outlook, your single e-mail source for all of Accenture's latest ideas and innovation, personalized specifically to your business interests and the industry issues you face.