MDM tool selection for Material & Business Partner (SAP S/4HANA)
Initial situation
In the preparation of a transition to SAP S/4HANA (greenfield approach), the customer was looking for an MDM tool that would offer workflow- and rule-based maintenance of material and business partner master data and thus ensure sustainably high data quality.
It was important to enter the selection process with a clearly defined catalogue of requirements and to critically evaluate this with the providers in terms of its degree of fulfilment.
Selection process
In the first phase of the project, a joint catalogue of requirements was drawn up together with all stakeholders.
The following requirements were defined or developed as essential:
- Implementation as a master data hub
- Supply of SAP and non-SAP systems with master data
- Integration with Central Finance
- Integration with Ariba, CRM and Siemens Teamcenter as a PLM solution
- Workflow and rule-based maintenance of material and business partner master data
- Future expandability to other data domains
- Development of data quality management
- Support for the transition to SAP S/4HANA by consolidating master records (“golden record”) with mappings to the data records in the existing systems
- Support and integration for data migration with SAP Data Migration Cockpit and SAP Data Services as an ETL tool
A “longlist” of MDM tool providers was then drawn up with the core project team, who were offered the opportunity to participate in the selection process in consultation and cooperation with Group Procurement. Both SAP-based solutions (“SAP AddOn”) and non-SAP-based MDM tool providers were analyzed and evaluated in the selection process.
After holding Q&A meetings, the feedback from these providers on the catalogue of requirements was reviewed and evaluated by the project core team and the top 3 providers were selected in consultation with the stakeholders.
In a second round, these top 3 providers were then able to present their offers to the project core team and stakeholders and explain them in detail. Here too, the bids were then scrutinized and evaluated. In addition to the degree of fulfilment of the catalogue of requirements, economic aspects (e.g. licensing and implementation costs) were also considered and a qualitative evaluation was carried out by the stakeholders.
At the end of the process, an MDM tool was selected that was set up as an SAP AddOn on a separate S/4HANA instance as a separate master data hub. This solution allows the customer to maintain other data domains (e.g. organizational structures, reference data and financial master data) centrally in the master data hub right from the start (e.g. with the classic SAP transactions or via the Fiori apps) and to expand it further in future from a data governance perspective.
Result
A tool decision based on a catalogue of requirements combined with a defined selection process led to a high level of satisfaction for the customer both during and after completion of the project, as the customer’s confidence in ultimately choosing the right solution grew with increasing clarity of their own requirements. Excalepro continued to support the customer during the implementation as a trusted advisor and, where necessary, as an interface between the customer and the implementation partner. Even during this time, the MDM tool decision was never questioned.
