Who is Impacted?
Philip, a Category Manager at BlueBox Retailer, serves as the primary contact for the company’s manufacturers and suppliers with a focus on the household cleaning supplies product line.
Lance, a Sales Representative for CleanGoods, has the responsibility of validating the legitimacy of BlueBox Retailer as a prospective customer that CleanGoods Manufacturer wishes to do business with. This may involve validating against third-party syndicated data analytic companies (i.e., Nielsen TDLinx or IRI) which provide insight on the prospect’s business operations, retail sales data, corporate structures, and information on individual retail locations.
Kathy, a Controller from the Finance team, runs validations of the prospective customer including a credit check, which may also contain usage of third-party data providers (i.e., Dun & Bradstreet). Such validations enable CleanGoods Manufacturer in identifying any type of fraudulent activity.
George, a Logistics Specialist, is responsible for determining how to fulfill the order. This involves evaluating several factors such as projected order frequency, product assortment, volume, stock, package type, geography, etc. to determine how the customer is to receive the products.
Jennifer, an MDM Specialist, serves as the primary owner of the MDM system and approves all changes submitted by the various departments during the onboarding process.
What is the Business Problem?
BlueBox Retailer has begun negotiations to procure and resell products from two CleanGoods lines of business. BlueBox is especially interested in CleanGoods' line of household cleaning products as well as their charcoal line of business.
Philip has been negotiating with Lance, the sales representative from CleanGoods, in finalizing initial sales terms for their household products line of business. Once finalized, Lance will initiate the new customer request to begin the MDM onboarding / enrichment process.
Part of Lance’s responsibility during the onboarding process is to validate the legitimacy of the customer as a legal business entity. Such validations may occur outside of the operational MDM. If the results of the customer validations are favorable, Lance will continue working with Philip to classify / enrich the new customer record with relevant information. Such information that Lance requires includes (not limited to):
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Trade Channel - How do products reach the end-consumer (i.e., In-store retail, e-commerce, mail order, warehouse stores, etc.)?
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Product Lines - What types of products will Bluebox Retailer be purchasing?
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Line of Business - What particular line(s) of business will BlueBox be conducting transactions with?
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Location Setup
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All Ship To
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Location information for each physical location CleanGoods Manufacturer must deliver products to (e.g., warehouses, distribution centers, retail stores, etc.).
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All Sell To
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Location information for each Sell-To location CleanGoods Manufacturer must send invoices to (e.g., Corporate head office, regional offices, accounts receivable department, etc.).
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Financial / accounting information for each Sell-To location, used for invoicing purposes.
Additional processes may be required to be initiated in various operational systems external to the MDM to add additional information in those systems which do not belong in the MDM system, for example, it could be that certain data is local to one process and / or it is most convenient that the data be maintained in the operational systems.
As part of the onboarding process, Kathy from the Finance department must ensure finance-related enrichment activities take place. These activities include conducting credit checks of the customer for any financing approval by leveraging third-party services such as a Dun & Bradstreet company profile. Additionally, Kathy may work with Lance during initial negotiations to provide pricing and trade promotion of products sold to BlueBox. Pricing usually originates and is maintained within an ERP system.
Once the customer sales & financial enrichment process is complete, George from the Logistics department must determine if the customer requires:
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Ship to Store
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Ship to Customer Distribution Center
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Direct Pick-up at the Manufacturer
Considerations must be given to storage requirements as well as any regulatory requirements or hazardous material protocols. For example, some products may only be stored in specific warehouses equipped with refrigeration or hazardous products may require special shipping and handling instructions.
Current State
The current operational landscape of CleanGoods is rather siloed and does not provide a means to onboard and enrich customer data in a centralized way. Due to this, operational data is scattered across disparate systems with facilitation or governance in place. Each role may enact their individual governance to manage data integrity with little to no consciousness of impact to other departments or overall operations.
Currently, Lance must work with the customer to finalize sales terms and other commercial considerations, they must then work internally with a specialist to initiate a new customer request. Kathy from Finance is then notified via email of the new customer request and must then work out of ERP to determine exact pricing and update the financial portfolio. Should Kathy have any questions for Lance, they must likewise correspond with Lance over email or a phone call. Furthermore, the same process is followed to notify George from Logistics so they may address delivery and warehousing considerations.
Without a centralized ownership of the onboarding process and governance in place to ensure validations and regulatory requirements are adhered to, CleanGoods finds that their data is prone to error, often duplicated, and leads to unreliable business analytics, regulatory fines, and damage to brand reputation.
The current data flow is illustrated below:
Future State
With an MDM solution in place, the responsibilities and activities of new customer onboarding and enrichment are facilitated in a centralized fashion with all the necessary data integrity and governance in place for a more seamless experience. This ensures operational efficiency within the new customer onboarding process by leveraging the capture and enrichment of the right data by the right people at the right point in time.
Lance will now initiate new customer requests directly within MDM which runs a Find Similar algorithm to proactively ensure uniqueness and eliminates the risk of introducing duplicate or redundant customer records.
Lance will enter the terms of sale and all associated information onto the new customer request, at which point Lance will transfer the onboarding task (within MDM) to Kathy in Finance for further enrichment. Kathy then has the new task within their task list which informs them that they needs to enrich the same record Lance initiated.
Once the task is assigned to Logistics, George can find all the information in MDM. This allows George to quickly turn around and establish a plan to meet the new order requirements. Once logistical information has been entered a final review is performed by Jennifer and the new customer may be considered as an active customer of CleanGoods.
