Accenture’s global IT organization collaborated with the business to create a cross-functional master data capability that sits within Accenture’s Business Integration organization. Together, the team delivers production and end-user support for Accenture’s key platforms, including single global instances of SAP®, Workday and Salesforce. The team manages sales and pricing, finance and HR data. In addition, it centralizes and standardizes processes and controls with strong support from IT and business leadership. This support includes active data governance representing each stakeholder group.
A key development of the MDM capability was the implementation of a single, integrated data model spanning business processes and applications ensuring one version of the truth. IT resources were charged with designing, implementing and maintaining this integrated data model, collaborating with Business Integration and other business teams to ensure appropriate data definitions, relationships and service levels were in place.
The MDM capability naturally scaled in cost-effective shared services centers and was done so using a follow-the-sun approach to support their respective business and system processes. The team has evolved to more than 70 specialized employees managing more than 10,000 transactions per month.
Having the organization, process and technology foundations in place enabled optimization. The MDM capability was able to outsource most of its functions to the Accenture Operations organization, enabling further scale, cost savings, career development opportunities, sharing of best practices and enhancement of Accenture’s go-to-market capability.
Many of Accenture’s workflow and request management tools are today using the power of ServiceNow for enterprise service management. Among these tools is the automation of the MDM request fulfillment process. It performs real-time validation, seamless integration and master data creation across Accenture’s ERP, leading to a faster turnaround with higher quality and less effort.
Master data management critical success factors: