PiLog - Cataloguing & Cleansing
PiLog hosts a Data Content Refinery and Codification house, offering specialized services in the structuring of catalogue data, codification of catalogue items, content enrichment, translation between codification systems/schema’s, supplier adoption/activation and publishing of quality content. PiLog developed the world’s first internationally proven standard for services cataloguing; USC. Although this has now been accepted to be part of the eOTD (ECCMA Open Technical Dictionary), the specific methodologies required to implement it successfully, remain with PiLog. The PiLog Data Content Refinery for the mass scrubbing and cleansing of the master data is rated to be one of the largest and best in the world with a current turnout of more than 70,000 line items per month.
PiLog is regularly called upon to provide strategic and operational expertise consultation in the area of Free Format Text Purchases (RTP’s) reduction, procurement optimization, and to optimize, clean and restructure material master, vendor master and services of existing ERP implementations that are not performing optimally. In addition, this normally includes a cleanup of the PM module in terms of plant structures, Bills of Materials (BoM) and standard tasks as well.
PiLog has also been involved in many projects in the creation of a consolidated Materials Master Catalogue and Vendor Masters, in support of central procurement serving several business units, each with their own ERP and catalogue. This scenario is particularly challenging and requires precise experience and unique methodologies to achieve success.
It is because of our experience in large data projects, that we have developed specific methodologies and niche software modules to ensure that the maximum value is added during the project and the entire project team representing the customer, as well as, PiLog can exercise the necessary controls. In addition, special methodologies and software modules have been developed to ensure that after the project the customer is placed in a position where the data can be maintained in the ERP and across business units, at the same quality and standards established during the project through the utilization of our niche cataloguing software. It is not only about cleaning data, it is about investing in the foundation that will ensure the maximum benefits can be derived from collaborative procurement.
Master Data Cleansing Is All About:
- Effective cleansing and structuring of a material master is a highly specialized field, requiring the use of international standards, such as eOTD, USC, EAN, ISO 8000, etc. The consistent and correct application of these standards in large volumes of data requires specialized processes, methodologies and software tools.
- The material master forms the basis for a myriad of business objectives. PiLog understands the complex task of translating selected business objectives into master data requirements and subsequently designing a project that is focused on delivering optimal results in a cost effective way.
- For a large number of line items, effective cleaning of the material master does require the cleaning and standardization of the manufacturers and/or suppliers. It therefore follows that a vendor/supplier cleanup and standardization is a logical consequence in the process.
- PiLog has its own specialized data refinery, PiLog Data. PiLog has developed superior technology and methodologies that are aimed at delivering the best possible quality, consistently and cost effectively.
- In answering the market need for the cataloguing of services in a consistent and repetitive manner, PiLog developed the world’s first internationally proven standard for services cataloguing, the USC. Although this has now been accepted to be part of the eOTD, the specific methodologies required to implement it successfully remains with PiLog.
- The material master, as well as other master data tables, requires standardized base tables for, amongst others; unit of measure, unit of purchase, material types and material groups. This is also a specialty of PiLog.
PiLog, together with its international subsidiary companies, is one of the few companies in the world that specializes in master data across all the disciplines, especially in the complex task of material master and services master for the improvement of supply chain management and particularly procurement. Most international data companies that do material master cleanup do not have the intimate knowledge of asset and maintenance management and therefore do not render an integrated service. Almost all asset and maintenance management companies do not understand the complexities of cataloguing and those that have attempted to do so in recent years have merely become fly by nights in this field, leaving their customers stuck with inferior results.
Data Standards Services
"The person who knows the most about an item is the person who makes or sells it!"
In a globally connected economy there is growing awareness of the importance of unambiguous communication not only across platforms and applications but also between end users. As the power of the internet- the primary tool for global communication- continues to grow, it is matched by increasingly well-funded and sophisticated efforts to use it to “manage” mind share or revenue share.
There are practical steps both parties can take, today, to leverage emerging open international standards for content ISO 22745 and ISO 8000. While the first standard provides guidelines for the implementation of the ECCMA Open Technical Dictionary (eOTD), a metadata registry of cataloging concepts used to create unambiguous, language independent descriptions of trading individuals, organizations, locations, goods and services, the second provides guidelines for the creation and maintenance of quality catalog data.
The following aspects need to be considered by any buyer or supplier organization in their drive for more effective procurement:
- Buyers want to enable their suppliers so that the suppliers can provide the information they need.
- Suppliers want to be empowered to control the distribution of their information.
- Neither buyers nor suppliers want to support multiple formats.
- Suppliers and buyers want to maintain their own catalogs in their own applications
- Suppliers and buyers use a common set of data elements with different subsets in a different order and with different definitions and names.
- Hierarchies designed for analytical purposes are difficult to use in an operational environment by untrained cataloguers.
- Classification version management can be a challenge.
- FFT Spend is difficult to analyze and control.
- Items are purchased on FFT while they are on the catalogue and in the store.
- Items cannot be identified in ERP material master due to 40 character description limitations.
- Inventory visibility is a function of the ability to understand the terminology used by the individual that originally described the item. Characteristic data allows buyers to find items that meet their needs and it also allows suppliers to differentiate their products. Buyers are looking to build their buy-side catalogs from standardized supplier hosted sell-side catalogs.
Benefits of Standards
Benefits Derived From Standardized Names & Structured Attributes
- Avoidance of duplicate items entering inventory.
- Items can be aggregated and compared, programmatically.
- Use of coded reply tables accommodates multilingual environment
Common Characterization Provide Benefits to Customer and Supplier:
Customer Benefit:
- Provide easy way to limit search domain using characteristics.
- Provide validating information for functional equivalent items.
- Characteristic data allows buyers to find items that meet their needs (and understand what they bought).
Supplier Benefit:
- Get items properly classified in customer’s Logistics Information System.
- Allows product differentiation.
How Quality Content Can Affect Success For Suppliers
- E-commerce requires the development of marketing-oriented content, versus internal operational-oriented content.
- Use of internal operations content requires the customer to learn supplier systems and limits the number of buyers to “experts”.
- E-commerce places procurement ability to the entire organizations desktops, requiring an easy to understand marketing oriented content.
- Expanded product descriptions, making it easier to look up and identify items.
- The addition of pictures, instilling customer confidence and reducing error and rework.
- Eliminating uncommon abbreviations, allowing buyers to better understand supplier’s products.
