Master Data Management (MDM) has been one of the hot technology areas lately. This presentatio gives you a case example from Product MDM case. Visit Talent Base website: http://www.talentbase.fi/ for more information.

1. Using MDM solution to manage
product data across systems
Case: Funster Company Oy

2. Agenda
• Starting point – Why project was initiated?
• Possible solutions – Why MDM approach was
selected?
• Project outcome – What was the value gained?
• Next steps – How to gain more value from MDM
solution in future?

3. Why project was
initiated?
Starting point

4. Existing ecosystem
• Three companies with wholesale, eCommerce and retail
operations in sports industry
• Wholesale provides products for over 100 retailers
• Own eCommerce via two online stores
• Own retail via two physical stores, amount growing

5. Existing ecosystem
• Several product suppliers
• Almost two hundred brands
• Over 50000 product variants annually
• Considerable amount of same products needed in business
operations of all these three companies

6. Existing ecosystem
• All companies have existing IT-infra
• ERP
• Ecommerce
• POS
• Multivendor environment
• Grape Consulting
• Talent Base
• Talend
• Solteq

7. What were the challenges?
• Lot of manipulation work required to transform various
supplier product lists to uniform format that could be
loaded to ERP
• Amount of time and manual work needed to enable
product data usage across business areas – All systems
have their own product data models
• Products created inconsistently to different systems –
Single view on product missing
• Need to integrate ERP with eCommerce

8. Original product data flow
2. ERP 1. SUPPLIER PRODUCT LISTS 2. POS
MANUAL
WORK
NEEDED
MANUAL
WORK
NEEDED

9. Why MDM approach was
selected?
Possible solutions

10. Possible Solutions 1/2 – System to system
integration
• Typical DI Project: Utilize current processes and
integrate ERP to eCommerce
ERP Data
Integration
Web Shop
POS

11. Possible Solutions 2/2 – MDM approach
ERP
MDM
Solution POS
Web Shop
Data
Integration
• MDM Project: Streamline processes and distribute product data to
all applications via centralized MDM solution

12. Why MDM approach was selected
• Many of data related processes were manual and hence
it was more effective to built MDM solution instead of
various system to system integrations
• It was seen as an opportunity to streamline processes
and define shared product data standard
• Company is expanding and it can bring more product
data consuming systems to landscape

13. Why Talend was selected as MDM tool
• Easy to use
• Beat big vendor in POC
• Easily accessible
• Versatile
• Data Integration, MDM and Data Quality tool in ”same package”
• Flexible and cost effective
• Different versions (and pricing) available according to complexity of planned
solution
• Free community version has a versatile component library

14. What was the value
gained?
Project outcome

15. What has been done?
• Requirements gathering and MDM Solution concept
• Data standard and reference data model: Product, brand, product groups, size
groups
• MDM solution
• Legacy data profiling, standardization and migration from ERP to MDM
• Unified template that can be used for all supplier product data imports
• Web user interface to manage product master data and simple interface for
product imports
• Integrations from MDM to ERP and POS which can handle the different product
data models in the receiving systems

16. Product data flow after MDM solution
1. SUPPLIER PRODUCT LISTS 2. MDM SOLUTION 3.ERP, POS & ECOMMERCE
STANDARDIZE
D DATA
IMPORT
DATA DELIVERY
CAPABILITIES
WEB UI TO
MANAGE MASTER
DATA

17. Realized benefits
• Operational efficiency: Reducing unnecessary work as product information can be
now created once and used many times (ERP, eCommerce and POS)
• Improved time to market: Products are more quickly available for sale
• Consistent product information: Single view on product improves reporting
capabilities across companies and their sites
• Enhancement to existing processes: Store and logistics operations benefit from
EAN code information as it is now added in product master data
• Investment on future: MDM solution can easily be scaled up to cover all future
master data needs and its value only rises with wider set of data consuming
systems

18. How to gain more value
from MDM solution in
future?
Next steps

19. What can be done to benefit more out of
MDM solution?
• Technical improvements
• Real-time integration between MDM and eCommerce
• Improved data quality functionalities: Duplicate matching for new products
• More sophisticated interface to manage data imports
• Wider utilization of Funster’s product master data
• Open interface for external parties, like retail customers, to subscribe and utilize
product data in their operations
• Implement BI to support business decision making
• Expand MDM Solution to cover other domains like customer master data

20. Possible product data flow in future
1. SUPPLIER PRODUCT LISTS 3.ERP, POS, ECOMMERCE,
DATA DELIVERY
CAPABILITIES
STANDARDIZE
D DATA
IMPORT
DUPLICATE
CHECK FOR NEW
DATA
2. MDM SOLUTION
WEB UI TO
MANAGE MASTER
DATA
INTERFACE FOR
EXTERNAL PARTIES TO
UTILIZE MASTER DATA
& EXTERNAL SUBSCRIBERS
WEB UI FOR
MANAGEMENT
REPORTING
MANAGEMENT REPORTING

21. Lessons learnt
• It is not easy to convince management – Prepare a
strong business case
• Start small, scale up
• Standardize information elements to guarantee usability
across systems
• MDM usually requires process changes in organization
and process changes requires change management and
commitment

22. Tech overview

23. Excel import template
• Product excel format differs between suppliers -> need for standard import
template
• Reference data as dropdowns -> better quality input
• Product data is enriched in the import

24. Talend MDM
• Eclipse based development environment and Jboss server
• ETL/Integration, Data Quality and MDM
• Web interface to create and maintain master data
• XML Data model and validation, multidomain
• XML repository for master data (eXist)
• Community and enterprise versions

25. ERP – Visma Nova
• Norwegian company, quite popular in nordic countries
• About 8000 customers in Finland
• Wholesale, accounting and industry
• 60 modules

26. Webshop – Smilehouse workspace
• Ecommerce platform
• Can be used as hosted service or own install
• Wosbee – free version

27. POS – Solteq Tekso
• Point of Sale system with integrated payment handling
• Kesko and Top-sport are other big Finnish clients

28. Architecture overview
Talend
MDM
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Excel import template for
product data
POS
(Tekso)
Webshop
(Workspace)
ERP
(Nova)
CSV dailyCSV daily
CSV,
manual
• Wholesale business
• Funster and Lamina
Import
• B2C
•Two webshops: Lamina and
Backhill
• Retail stores
•Two locations: Lamina Kamppi and
Backhill Ruka
• Product and Reference data

29. Read more and contact us:
www.talentbase.fi