Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems streamline critical business operations, but their success hinges on accurate product master data (PMD), especially in the chemical industry. PMD includes key product details like technical specs, safety data sheets and compliance information. Without comprehensive and accurate PMD, ERP systems can suffer from inefficiencies and compliance risks. We will explore why PMD is essential for successful ERP deployments in the chemical industry and how effective PMD management can optimize ERP performance.
What’s an ERP?
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are the backbone of many businesses, streamlining operations like inventory management, accounting and order processing. An ERP is essential for managing day-to-day processes in any enterprise organization. However, an ERP is not suitable for centralizing and maintaining PMD, especially for the complex world of chemicals.
What’s Product Master Data?
Product master data (PMD) is all information related to your products. This includes everything from technical specifications and safety data sheets (SDS) to regulatory compliance details and marketing descriptions. Accurate and consistent product data is crucial for efficient operations, regulatory compliance and customer satisfaction.
What’s PMD Got to Do with ERP?
We all know that “garbage in, garbage out” applies to all business tools. This is especially true in ERP as the data stored there is used across multiple business processes. An ERP has to be continuously fed up-to-date, accurate and complete product information for the data in ERP to be reliable and useful.
The Critical Role of PMD in ERP Deployments
PMD plays a critical role in ERP deployments in three primary ways:
Ensuring data consistency across departments
Enhancing operational efficiency
Enabling compliance and regulatory risk management
Ensuring Data Consistency Across Departments
A single source of truth for product data means teams stay aligned and reporting is consistent. Inconsistencies in product data can multiply quickly since different departments use and maintain different data based on their roles. Eventually, this makes data in an ERP unreliable and unusable.
Enhancing Operational Efficiency
Two big reasons companies rely on an ERP are streamlining processes and reducing redundancy. Accurate PMD enables these outcomes by simplifying inventory management, production planning and supply chain coordination. The average chemical product has 12 SKUs alone. PMD helps you create a golden record so that planning and reporting are accurate at the product level.
Enabling Compliance and Regulatory Risk Management
Accurate PMD ensures compliance with industry regulations and standards by:
Preventing errors in manual data transcription between systems
Reducing the time it takes to find relevant product data for regulatory information requests
Providing a clear view of how up-to-date the product data is
Potential risks of poor PMD management in regulatory contexts include:
Outdated, inaccurate product data
Non-compliance fines
Loss of market share
Environmental, health and safety events that harm employees or the community
Can I Manage PMD in My ERP System?
Some ERP consultants promote heavy customization of an ERP to manage product data. The truth is that you can’t effectively manage PMD in an ERP system. The more you customize a system, the harder it is to maintain. The complexity of chemical industry data poses unique challenges that an ERP is not designed to handle.
Chemical products involve intricate formulas, varying grades and purities, and diverse applications. Additionally, SDSs require specific formatting and regulatory compliance. ERP systems lack the flexibility to capture and manage this level of detail effectively.
Limitations of ERP systems include:
Lack of Flexibility in ERP Systems
Inability to Handle Specialized Data Structures and Attributes
Challenges in Integrating with Other Systems and Platforms
Next we’ll dive into how you can make your ERP deployment a success using PMD best practices.
How to Optimize Your ERP with PMD Management
Centralize Your Product Data
Start by centralizing your product data. Gather all product information from the departments with different product data versions. Examples include:
Descriptions and application benefits from marketing and sales
SKUs and package sizes from operations
Safety handling data from EH&S
Formulations and raw materials from R&D or manufacturing
Common places to find dispersed product data are:
TDS
Brochures
Team Sharepoints
SDS
Formulation sheets
Extract, Harmonize and Deduplicate Data
Once you have gathered all documents and sources of product information, you’ll need to extract, harmonize and deduplicate data. If you plan to extract data manually, be prepared for this step to take a long time.
When product documents are in PDF form, it often means they are scanned copies of a physical document. If you’re lucky enough to extract text, you will still need to format the data from rich or plain text into form values that can be imported and stored in your ERP.
Harmonizing product names sounds simple, but it can get complicated quickly. A single product might have four or five different variations (or more). Here’s what that might look like:
KNOWDE 828
Knowde 828 EN
KNOWDE® 828
KNOWDE® Solution 828
Start with a data governance strategy so you can decide quickly which names are standard, which data formats to maintain and how to categorize them.
You could do this all the hard way. Or you can leverage Knowde’s AI-driven Knowledge Engine, which will ingest, extract, cleanse and harmonize your data for you.
Use a Chemical Industry PIM with Integrations
Rather than creating hundreds of custom fields in your ERP system, use a PIM or MDM Platform that’s purpose-built for the chemical industry. When searching for a PIM, you should be looking for one that supports integration with your ERP and provides a built-in taxonomy to organize your product data.
Conduct Regular Data Audits and Cleanups
Regular data audits and cleanups can prevent data silos from forming and help to keep data formats consistent. Once you’ve connected your PMD to your ERP implementation, schedule data audits and cleanups as a recurring task. You can decide what the cadence should be based on your business needs. Things to consider include how frequently you update product descriptions, applications and markets, product properties and regulatory data.
Cross-Departmental Collaboration
Integrating PMD in your ERP system supports better cross-departmental collaboration. This collaboration helps to prevent data silos, which often lead to inconsistent, inaccurate and duplicate data. Additionally, this collaboration helps to keep all departments active in the ERP which increases adoption rate and can ultimately help you achieve efficiency goals in day-to-day operations.
Supercharge your ERP.
Are you ready to get more value out of your ERP system by integrating PMD? Knowde can help!
