Intel Masters Master Data

CASE STUDY Getting ready for SAP NetWeaver MDM 2 SAP NetWeaver Magazine Winter 2007 www.NetWeaverMagazine.com Intel Masters Master Data Intel, a company that prides itself on producing products of the highest possible quality, “had multiple systems of record that were managing data redundantly in different systems,” says Jolene Jo n a s , d a t a a r c h i te c t a n d S A P Ne t Weaver Master Data Management (SAP NetWeaver MDM) product manager for Intel. A single customer, for example, might appear in more than a dozen different systems as a record with little to no guarantee that the content matched among them. Customers, vendors, and products are examples of objects that are considered “master data.” Intel realized that keeping master data records in different formats in different systems was unproductive. “When you run 25 different customer systems and you’ve got 25 different groups keying in the same data redundantly, data quality goes down the tubes,” says Jonas. “There’s also the business expense of managing this data 25 times.” by Evan J. Albright, Senior Editor Photography by Bob Bahner, tktktcompany www.NetWeaverMagazine.com Winter 2007 SAP NetWeaver Magazine 3 However, there were limited options for Intel to concept to SAP, she says, with the hope that the address the issue of data quality and those options company would run with the concept. SAP passed. ty pically involved highly customized tools and Intel, meanwhile, focused on overall data quality. processes. Master data management technology is a “Data is an asset, and you have to treat it like an relatively new field, and one of the strongest prodasset,” says Jonas. “The goal of this project isn’t the ucts on the market today is SAP NetWeaver MDM data; the goal of this project is to provide quality (see “What SAP NetWeaver MDM Is and What It information to the business, so they can make Does” on page XX). knowledgeable decisions that increase revenue and In fall 2006 Intel plans to replace its SAP R/3 syssell more products. We need to deliver that informatem with mySAP ERP 2005, which will revolutiontion in the form [that the business] needs it, and ize how the company uses SAP. Implementing the that’s where the data-quality efforts come in.” next generation of SAP capabilities requires an Starting in 2001, Intel began a concerted effort enterprise architecture view of how to transform to improve its data quality. “We interviewed the existing business capabilities and business and asked them, ‘What foundational components first. The keeps you awake at night?’ ” says Intel team received clear direction Jonas. She and other Intel technolfrom Russ Heinsen, chief applicaogy experts translated those business tion architect, and Peter Loop, problems into data-quality issues. enterprise architect, around the “We were able to put data and finanfoundational importance of SAP cial metrics around what it means to NetWeaver MDM to mySAP ERP have a data problem,” Jonas says, and 2005 and Intel. in turn to identify solutions and esti“Historically, there’s been a barmate how much it would take to fix rier to using modules such as CRM the data. The team showed it to [customer relationship mana geupper management and got the goment] and SCM [supply chain manahead to improve the quality of the agement], or even the more comd a t a . In te l r e o r g a n i z e d I T a n d monplace capabilities that SAP carved out a new department, the delivers because a consistent, comInformation Quality Management p l e te v e r s i o n o f t h e d a t a ’s n o t — Jolene Jonas, Intel, Data (IQM) organization. there,” says Bill Giard, enterprise IQM spent its first two years identiArchitect and SAP NetWeaver a r c h i te c t a n d S A P Ne t We a v e r MDM Product Manager fying sound data-quality practices, MDM service architect for Intel. says Giard — repeatable methodoloFor example, Intel could not take gies, identifying their core data eleadvantage of SAP’s ability to track ments and data models and how are customer issues because the customer and product they used in the enterprise. The IQM raised awaredata were in different systems and not in a format ness throughout the company, instilling data-quality that could be used in SAP CRM. principles. It created a data-quality course for its Before launching mySAP ERP 2005, Intel needed employees, “and we went across Intel’s corporate to have a solid data foundation. SAP NetWeaver landscape around the globe, teaching the class to M D M w i l l h e l p to p r o v i d e t h a t f o u n d a t i o n . both IT and non-IT employees to instill a firm, solid, But implementing SAP NetWeaver MDM isn’t data-quality base,” Jonas says. like putting other SAP applications into practice. Intel no longer has an IQM organization, but its It has turned out to be a process almost 10 years in impact is still felt today. “You don’t hear of a project the making. anymore that doesn’t have data quality as part of its deliverables,” Jonas says. Intel today treats its data with the same care it Intel’s Master Data Journey gives to its microchips. “We put in a lot of testing Intel began preparing for SAP NetWeaver MDM to make sure that a chip, when we put it out there, long before the company upgraded to mySAP ERP. runs right,” says Jonas. “You need to treat data with “We always knew we needed a system to centrally the same respect. It should be well-defined, it should manage our master data,” says Jonas. In the late be well-str uctured with enterprise-wide terms 1990s, several Intel data specialists flew to SAP’s and definitions, and it should be well-tested to headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, to explain the deliver quality.” You don’t hear of a project anymore that doesn’t have data quality as part of its deliverables. 4 SAP NetWeaver Magazine Winter 2007 www.NetWeaverMagazine.com Enter SAP NetWeaver MDM For a long time Intel’s data experts believed that the company needed to standardize its business and business processes, and govern its master data with a more enterprise-focused approach, instead of project by project. When the opportunity came to start over with mySAP ERP 2005 and SAP NetWeaver MDM, “We decided we could take this opportunity to rewrite our master data and erase some mistakes. We decided to start over and use our key learning to get it right this time,” Jonas says. Making the case to the business was not difficult. In myriad business processes there can be a number of applications at work, explains Jonas. If, for example, you want to leverage customer data and the applications that tap that data, SAP NetWeaver MDM will enable a 360-degree view of the customer. The sales team could get intelligence about what a customer currently buys, what customerservice issues they have had, when their last order was placed, and the date of their most recent payment. Once the newly formed Master Data team was able to articulate how SAP NetWeaver MDM would At a Glance Intel Corp. Headquarters: Santa Clara, California Industry: World’s largest manufacturer of microchips Background: Founded in 1968 SAP customer since 1996 Employees: 100,000 employees, of which 6,469 work for IT 124 offices in 57 countries Revenue: $39 billion in 2005 SAP Solution: SAP NetWeaver MDM www.NetWeaverMagazine.com Winter 2007 SAP NetWeaver Magazine 5 What SAP NetWeaver MDM Is and What It Does “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” Shakespeare once wrote, but if you happen to be a large corporation that sells roses, having multiple names for the flower plays havoc with IT systems for procurement, inventory, and sales. With SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management (SAP NetWeaver MDM), organizations can provide a single version of the truth for customer, product, employee, supplier, or user-defined data objects. SAP NetWeaver MDM integrates with SAP and non-SAP systems, enabling the same data to be consolidated and harmonized, and available to multiple systems. It supports the following functionality: Master data consolidation — SAP NetWeaver MDM consolidates and cleanses master data objects from disparate systems and stores the data in a centralized repository. Synchronization and distribution of master data — Using global attributes, you can ensure that all systems receive the same master data during distribution, and enrich the distributed data objects with additional attribute values in the target systems. Centralized management of master data — SAP NetWeaver MDM supports company-wide quality standards by ensuring that central control of master data begins as soon as the data is created. Administration of master data — A powerful interface supports administrative tasks such as data exception-handling and assignment of role-based access to business processes and information. Management of internal content — SAP NetWeaver MDM collects and centralizes all your content, including parametric information and rich content such as images, paragraphs of text, PDF documents, and organizational intelligence about content, in an enterprise-wide repository. Catalog search — Intuitive interfaces help you locate items internally, publish Web catalogs on e-commerce storefronts and in supplier-enablement programs, and integrate easy-to-search catalogs into e-procurement solutions — all from a centralized repository and all at speeds surpassing normal SQL-based queries. Print catalog customization — SAP NetWeaver MDM disseminates product information directly from a centralized catalog repository to desktop-publishing programs, and automatically generates fully formatted and populated page layouts. Multichannel syndication of product catalog content — It publishes restructured and reformatted extracts or incremental updates of your product catalog content — and distributes them to trading partners in several delimited text and XML formats — on either an unscheduled or a regular basis. Business-process support — SAP NetWeaver MDM handles communications in a heterogeneous environment, and inserts master data into other systems. Business analytics and reporting — It leverages synchronized data for reliable analysis and accurate reporting. Although a rose may go by many names, SAP NetWeaver MDM ensures that, as Gertrude Stein said, “A rose is a rose is a rose.” Using SAP NetWeaver MDM, you can ground the company around a single term and definition to enable sharing from the procurement department to the sales department or the accounts receivable department. overcome business obstacles or create business opportunities, “The business told us, ‘Great, we believe you. Now, go deliver.’ ” “Creating data models and making a single term and definition wa s always step #1,” Jonas says. Three-Step Process for Standardizing Data Jonas is the lead architect for location master data. “We often find that there may be five different business groups talking about the same thing but they’re calling it by different names, decrea sing our ability to share information across groups. One of my jobs is to get [all those groups] in a room to agree on a single term,” she says. Intel used a three-step process to get consensus on definitions and b u s i n e s s r u l e s f o r m a s te r d a t a ; defining it conceptually, logically, and then physically. layer: “The con1] Conceptual is literally getting ceptual layer to that single term and definition and the business rules around it: When do I manage it? When do I create it? How do I create it? When can I get rid of it?” says Jonas. On a regular basis, she gathers representatives from different departments into a room and walks them through the process of defining a term in master data. The group creates a data model of the term including business rules, and once everyone is satisfied, the group signs off on it. For example, Intel has a term “site.” Although the term has been with Intel since its beginning, it has changed over time. Depending on the group you happen to be talking to, “site” could be a location, a database, or a factory. The first step was to get to one definition for this single term by bringing key stakeholders into a room and reaching an agreement. In this case, “Intel Site” became the new term, and the agreedupon definition was “a metropolitan www.NetWeaverMagazine.com 6 SAP NetWeaver Magazine Winter 2007 statistical area.” Next came the creation of business rules on when to create an Intel Site, how to name one, how to delete one. layer: The logical layer 2] Logicalterms and definitions andtakes the conceptual adds facts to them. “We start listing all the facts about that conceptual entity that we care about,” Jonas says, “and that becomes the logical model. For example, when it came to the term, ‘Intel Site,’ we needed to know from our customers the Intel Site Effective Date, the Intel Site Status Code, the Intel Site Address, and the Intel Site Expiration Date — all the facts necessary to successfully manage this item of master data through its lifecycle.” Intel’s ver 3] Physical layer: take the SAP NetWeaand MDM developers logical model convert it into code, into a database. The first version is built around the definition and business rules created during the sessions with customers. “Then the techies grab it and rearrange it to make it run faster,” Jonas says. Once it is running and optimized, Jonas’s team confirms the results with the customer. One of the most powerful benefits Intel sees in SAP NetWeaver MDM is the ability to build this database to include all the facts the business cares about, facts that existed in other SAP applications or other software packages. “We are able to build our logical data model without the burden of custom code in R/3”, Jonas says. Intel engaged SAP to build the first round of physical master data models, and asked SAP to work in parallel with Intel to build the common foundation, the infrastructure for SAP NetWeaver MDM, and perform a scalability analysis. Working with SAP consultants and the business, Intel wil l launch SAP NetWeaver MDM late in 2006 with customer, supplier, commodity, location, and item master data. Then, the team wil l focus on integrating SAP NetWeaver MDM into SAP and other systems. been pursuing it aggressively — but still not quickly enough to satisfy the business. “[The business] wants to move fast, and framework takes time,” says Jonas. Jonas warns that implementing master data is not as simple as throwing a switch. She says, “Put in the backbone data that SAP calls ‘config.’ That’s all your currency, languages, company codes, and all those infrastructure things that master data depends upon. “Enter the rest of the master data. “Bring in what the business would see as the meat, such as planning, procurement, and sales capabilities. “We’re fighting to keep master data first on the roadmap, and that’s where the politics come into play. Intel is patient and the executives are saying they understand that it’s the right thing to do. But we need to get it done and the longer we take to do it, [the more likely it is that] the business will lose patience with us. We have to keep this thing moving.” At the same time, the business wants to broaden the definition of what master data is. So the master data program established a clear definition of master data: It must have its own lifecycle, independent of the business processes that use it. Its lifecycle must also be independent of other master data. Using this definition, “‘Item’ is master data; ‘BOM’ [bill of materials] is not,” says Jonas. “Under SAP guidance, we are striving to use SAP NetWeaver MDM for what it is intended to do, and use other SAP Business Suites to manage the other types of data such as BOM. If data is [an important] foundation element at Intel, then by extension, master data is the most important of all. We must have a clear understanding of what this means.” “We’ve stuck by our definition of master data,” Giard says. At Intel, while it is important to get input from business, IT owns the data structure. “And it’s a very strong data team, very passionate, and we’ll protect it to the death,” Jonas says. “What we try to tell the business is, ‘you tell us what you need, you tell us what the capability is you’re looking for, and we’ll tell you where it goes.’ That’s IT’s job.” Winter 2007 SAP NetWeaver Magazine Intel will launch SAP NetWeaver MDM late in 2006 with customer, supplier, commodity, location, and item master data. The Politics of Technology Intel, in one fashion or another, has been working on a master data management system for years. With the advent of SAP NetWeaver MDM 4.0, the company has www.NetWeaverMagazine.com 7