How MDM and 360-Degree View Solutions Fuel Data-Driven Digital Transformation in Industrial Manufacturing

White Paper

About Informatica

Digital transformation changes expectations: better service, faster delivery, with less cost. Businesses must transform to stay relevant and data holds the answers. As the world’s leader in Enterprise Cloud Data Management, we’re prepared to help you intelligently lead—in any sector, category or niche. Informatica provides you with the foresight to become more agile, realize new growth opportunities or create new inventions. With 100% focus on everything data, we offer the versatility needed to succeed. We invite you to explore all that Informatica has to offer—and unleash the power of data to drive your next intelligent disruption.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary .......................................................................................... 4

Overcome Data-Driven Challenges in Industrial Manufacturing .............. 5

Realize an End-to-end Information Value Chain with MDM 360 Applications ..................................................................................... 5

Product Information Management Based on a Product 360 View ............. 6Supplier Relationship Management Based on a Supplier 360 View ........... 7 Reduce Costs and Increase Operational Efficiencies .................................... 8 Shorten Time to Market and Increase Agility .................................................. 10Ensure Global Consistency While Respecting Local Requirements ........... 12 Deliver Integrated and Engaging Omnichannel Experience .......................... 13Reduce Supply Chain Risk and Support Compliance .................................... 14

Use Cases and Best Practices in Industrial Manufacturing ...................... 16

1. Manufacturer of Security Technology Realizes Product Data Quality and Efficiency .................................................................................................... 16

2. Industry-Leading Aerospace Manufacturer and Distributor StreamlinesProduct Life cycle ............................................................................................. 16

3. Automotive Manufacturer Improves Customer Engagement and Marketing Efficiency ................................................................................. 17

4. Global Power Industry Manufacturer Modernizes Data Syndication toCustomers and Distributors ........................................................................... 17

5. Supplier Information Management at Manufacturer of Paints and Coatings .................................................................................... 18

The Next Wave of Industrial Manufacturing Leaders ................................ 20

Partner Acknowledgment ....................................................................................... 20

Sources ................................................................................................................ 20

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Executive SummaryThe combination of so-called Industry 4.0 trends (including automation and data exchange in

manufacturing technologies including cyber-physical systems) coupled with the rapid evolution

of the Internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are quickly disrupting existing business

practices for industrial manufacturers. These companies benefit from leveraging data-driven

digital transformation to ensure that they can leverage these trends to create opportunities

for—rather than threats to–their business. Leading organizations are increasingly reconfiguring

themselves from legacy producers of equipment and consumer products into value-added

service providers. Some have even launched businesses monetizing their production, sales,

and customer usage data as licensable intellectual property to other businesses.

Making transformative business decisions and accelerating digital transformation requires

that the next generation of industrial manufacturing leaders have quick, easy access to trusted,

relevant data. This requirement applies to new data sources and data types emerging from the

latest disruptive technologies and influences, as well as traditional data from the ERP landscape.

Crucially, master data must be of high quality to provide the correct context when combining

data from multiple sources to support new business processes.

In many cases, however, the business must deal with raw materials, works-in-progress, and

finished goods for production and aftersales, as well as supplier data that is spread across

different siloed systems, applications, business units, and regions. These systems occupy a

specific set of processes in the manufacturing and distribution value chain, from procurement

and asset tracking to manufacturing execution and accounting. This can make it difficult to have

a trusted, 360-degree view of their own data.

This also often leads to lost sales, operational waste, productivity loss, bad customer

experiences, and compliance issues. Poor data quality and availability hinder a company’s

agility and threaten its ability to implement the new business processes required to keep

pace with change.

Industrial manufacturers seeking to systematically and repeatedly unleash the power of their

product, raw material, and supplier data needed to create a flexible ecosystem in which everyone

along the supply chain has access to relevant information to work together collaboratively

toward eradicating waste across the value chain.

A modular end-to-end master data management (MDM) solution and a common data platform

for product information management (PIM) can enable this kind of full visibility throughout the

end-to-end information value chain. Such solutions can also include functionality to improve and

manage data quality. Following a unified approach towards excellence-in-data-management that

supports process optimization initiatives has a direct impact on the bottom and top line.

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Overcome Data-Driven Challenges in Industrial ManufacturingManufacturing today is in the midst of a fundamental shift, in many ways as dramatic as the

first industrial revolution, creating enormous opportunities for nimble manufacturers who

embrace this opportunity. Starting in the 1980s, Industry 3.0—the third industrial revolution–was

driven by the advent of automation and computer technologies focused on individual machines

and processes.

The current manufacturing paradigm, Industry 4.0, focuses on the end-to-end digitization of

physical assets (or information about those assets) and the integration of that data into digital

ecosystems with value chain partners. The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a fundamental

element of Industry 4.0. To get value from the IoT, organizations must efficiently process rising

volumes of data from a wide variety of equipment, sensors, and locations.

The global market and political mood add uncertainties for manufacturers. Brexit, tariff wars,

and the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are just three

geopolitical events that may disrupt established supply chains that cross borders multiple

times. Industrial manufacturers are also often lured to overseas production locations by labor

arbitrage. Manufacturers need to evaluate carefully how to respond to such a tempting premise

by analyzing their local yields when it comes to input cost, such as commodity, energy and labor

availability, cost, and quality. Some of these factors of production are more easily understood

and replaced than others, but the immediate and long-term impacts need to be carefully weighed,

as fluctuations in factors such as inventory, hiring, training costs, and local labor and emissions

regulations have a direct impact on financials.

Manufacturers often react to uncertainty by mitigating risks in their operations by outsourcing

large pieces of their supply chain, such as material cataloging, order processing, shipping, and

packaging. The semiconductor and consumer electronics sectors are at the forefront of this

change by focusing on design and marketing. Losing direct control over these outsourced

processes requires organizations to respond by introducing digital means to recapture visibility

and operational access.

In this white paper, we’ll first describe two MDM-fueled applications that help solve these overall

data challenges. Then we’ll walk through specific challenges and how these applications can help

manufacturers succeed.

Realize an End-to-End Information Value Chain with MDM 360 Applications Leading industrial manufacturers realize that the foundation of digital transformation is trusted,

governed, and relevant data to fuel their next-generation intelligent enterprise. In other words,

data is the digital core of efficient production and smarter products.

“Manufacturers investing in digital transformation will be able to maximize the outcome; the rest are held back by outdated business models and technology.”1

1 IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Manufacturing 2017 Predictions

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Manufacturers rely on MDM to ensure that trusted data fuels their process innovation and help

them overcome problems stemming from fragmented and inconsistent data. Informatica® offers

master-data-fueled business applications designed to meet these needs and to support and align

with distinct business processes and workflows.

These master-data-fueled solutions, Informatica MDM – Product 360 (Product 360) and

Informatica MDM – Supplier 360 (Supplier 360), support multiple departments, teams, and

suppliers of an organization with the ability to jointly manage their supplier and product data,

as well as omnichannel tasks rooted in a unified common platform. Informatica’s MDM 360

applications are built on top of a complete, modular, and integrated platform, the Informatica

Intelligent Data Platform™, which helps companies unleash the power and value of all data across

the hybrid enterprise, including industry-leading proactive data quality, holistic data governance,

and end-to-end data integration solutions, among other capabilities.

The following section provides a brief overview of Product 360 and Supplier 360, describing how

manufacturers can connect their supply chain and go-to-market strategies and improve their end-

to-end information value chain.

Product Information Management Based on a Product 360 View

Product 360 is Informatica’s master-data-fueled PIM solution. It helps industrial manufacturers

increase productivity, streamline compliance, and improve the B2B or B2C customer experience

through unified, up-to-date, and complete information across all sales channels.

With Product 360, industrial manufacturers manage and collaborate more effectively on rich

product content with an efficient end-to-end, transparent process along the product information

supply chain. By delivering clean, consistent, and trusted product data, Product 360 empowers a

company’s data-driven digital transformation, improving agility and time to market.

Product 360 Offers the Only Modular End-to-End MDM Solution

EcommerceManager

Check-InTeam

ProductManager

CampaignManager

Buyer

CategoryManager

ImproveOmnichannel

DataOnboarding

CustomerCentricity

Photographer

Data Steward

Suppliers Store

Data PoolsData Pools

BusinessPartners Digital

SourceSystems Social

Standardize

Exchange

Enrich

Collaborate

Manage

Approve

PublishAcquire

Customer 360Supplier 360

Product 360

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Supplier Relationship Management Based on a Supplier 360 View

For manufacturers that have gone through acquisitions or that work across multiple

geographies, supplier information is often managed in multiple siloed systems and applications

across regions and business units. Adding, changing, or correcting the information in one system

doesn’t automatically update it in the others. Additionally, without automated and standardized

workflows for supplier onboarding and collaboration, time to market is slowed; supplier

relationship teams wind up spending too much time inefficiently managing their suppliers’

life cycles, performance, and information. As a result, the information is often inaccurate,

inconsistent, incomplete, and fragmented, creating a huge data-management overhead.

Ineffective supplier relationship and life cycle data management hinders the efforts

of a manufacturer’s supply chain operation to accelerate the digital transformation of their

value chain.

Supplier 360 unleashes the power of a manufacturer’s supplier data by providing an intelligent,

end-to-end view of all business-critical supplier information across the enterprise. The application

enables a manufacturer’s supply chain organization to transform their supplier relationship

management by transforming inaccurate or disconnected supplier information into trusted,

governed, and relevant data to fuel business and analytical applications. It provides a flexible

ecosystem in which everyone can access relevant information and manage vendors, their

relationships, and the products and services they supply. Streamlining supplier relationship and

life cycle management, Supplier 360 accelerates the data-driven digital transformation of the full

information value chain. Sourcing, procurement, finance, and supply chain executives leverage

Supplier 360 to manage supplier life cycles, monitor supplier risk, and collaborate with vendors.

Market’s Only Modular End-to-End MDM Solution

Validate & EnrichSupplier Information

Onboard New Suppliers

Approve

Monitor SupplierCompliance

Monitor Supplier Risk

Manage SupplierRelationships

Fuel Other SystemsWith Trusted andGoverned SupplierInformation

Registration

Update CompanyInformationSuppliers

Analyze SupplierPerformance

Upload and UpdateProduct Catalogs

ERP

PIM

Bidding

Quotation

Accounts Payable

Invoicing

Product 360

Supplier 360

Buyer Org Users

Supplier 360Self Service

Portal

Supplier 360 is seamlessly embedded with Informatica’s Product 360 solution for

product catalog upload and product information management in a single application for

all supplier interactions.

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Manage Complexityof Product Data

SupplierSelf Service

Onboard NewSuppliers

Merchandising, Product Management,

Procurement, Marketing...

UploadProduct Catalogs

Self-Registration

ProvideSupplier Data

Sourcing, Procurement,Finance, Supply Chain, Supplier Management

Validate and EnrichSupplier Information

Manage DigitalAssets

Monitor Supplier Riskand Compliance

EnrichProduct Data

Analyze SupplierPerformance

Drive OmnichannelCommerce

Manage SupplierRelationships

Manage ProductTaxonomy

Fuel OtherApplications

Supplier 360 is available on-premises or as a cloud service and can be hosted on cloud platforms

such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.

Reduce Costs and Increase Operational Efficiencies

Cost reduction is among the top priorities in industrial manufacturing. Digitization plays a huge

role in achieving this objective. In fact, by 2020, industrial manufacturing companies expect

cost reductions of 3.6 percent ($52 billion) from digitization, according to a study from PwC.2

Industrial manufacturing companies often depend on multiple siloed systems and applications.

Product life cycle management (PLM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), manufacturing

execution system (MES), and supply chain management (SCM) systems are standard features

in their complex architectures. Each of them stores and manages information about their

raw materials, products, and suppliers to support specific business processes. The number

of systems used often crosses a critical threshold after an organization experiences one or

more acquisitions.

Traditional Manufacturing Data Landscape

2 http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/industrial-manufacturing/publications/assets/pwc-building-digital-enterprise.pdf

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As a result, it is impossible to access one trusted view of all entities (i.e., suppliers, products,

and services) and relationships among entities. Without this consolidated view, there is no

consistency in information supporting business processes, making it impossible for these

businesses to make well-founded decisions.

Increased product complexity combined with multiple, redundant, and manual processes to

manage, update, and share product information also creates unnecessary work for overloaded

organizations. Manually searching for information, or classifying and capturing data, can be error

prone and time-consuming. Ultimately, this leads not only to poor product and supplier data

quality, but also to increased inefficiencies and costs.

How MDM Applications Can Help

To master the increasing complexity of product data within the information value chain—and

to reduce the related costs–business users, like product and catalog managers, need one

common platform. Product 360 and Supplier 360 are built on a common platform, the Informatica

Intelligent Data Platform, which enables effective collaboration on product content and supplier

data. It substantially reduces duplicate tasks, allowing employees to focus their talents on

higher value-added tasks, such as the creation and distribution of richer product information,

digital media assets, descriptions, and classifications. Increasing operational efficiencies when

managing and collaborating on business-critical product or supplier data ultimately results in

multiple opportunities to achieve significant cost reductions.

Customers using Product 360 report increased efficiency and reduced costs, as demonstrated

by these results:

Streamlining Digital Processes Cost savings by aerospace customer using MDM – Product 360 with Supplier 360

Customer needed to onboard 10 million parts to increase e-commerce sales

and streamline supplier onboarding

Business Need Without Informatica With Informatica

Reduce time for loading partsImpractical task that would require 34 years to load all 10 million parts

• Can be done in a practical timeframe (6 months), a reduction of more than 98%

• Data is more accurate, increasing e-commerce volume across all channels

Reduce costs for loading parts $2,000 per part Expected reduction in costs: approx. 90%

Streamline supplier onboarding

Customer has had to turn away suppliers due to capacity constraints, resulting in estimated lost revenues in excess of $90 million

• Streamlined supplier onboarding including supplier self-service capabilities

• Fewer customer resources spent on supplier onboarding opportunity to increase revenue by at least $90 million

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Shorten Time to Market and Increase Agility

Manufacturers must deal with demand volatility, quickly adapt to changing market

requirements, and accelerate time to market to meet customer demands for new and updated

products. This supply chain flexibility must be coupled with business process flexibility as their

customers increasingly require new collaboration and procurement models to support their own

digital transformations.

An agile business can better handle the uncertainty of how customers will behave and how

markets will react. Fast time to market is a key requirement to remain competitive, especially

with fickle consumer demand, complex global supply chains, increased competition, and product

commoditization. Without quick access to consistent, trusted, relevant, and rich product and

supplier data, the supply chain slows down for manufacturers, costly inventory accumulates at

the wrong buffer points, and orders go unfilled.

Speed and process automation are also important in procurement, supplier qualification, pricing

negotiations, and onboarding workflows. Fast and easy access to supplier spend and supplier

performance metrics helps manufacturers make the right decisions, respond quickly, and

detect anomalies.

How to Speed up Time to Market and Increase Agility

A single product mastering solution provides the foundation for more agile digital business

models. Informatica’s MDM 360 apps are proven to streamline collaboration and automate

workflows, ensuring that everybody within the value chain has access to relevant product and

supplier information. This increases efficiency and process speed.

• Improved Collaboration With Role-Based User Interfaces

With intuitive task- and role-based user interfaces and dashboards that are designed for the

business, industrial manufacturers can streamline collaboration, workflows, and processes–

both internally and externally–to create and enrich great product content. Product 360 ensures

that the relevant information is shared with the right employees, channels, and departments.

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Business users who are involved (e.g., product editors, data stewards, product managers,

e-commerce managers, and product hierarchy managers) can focus on what matters most for

them and their role in the process. Additionally, a simple, fast, and powerful web-based search

lets users easily find all product information.

• Digital Asset Management to Manage Complex Data More Efficiently

Large collections of media assets are managed centrally through a fully embedded digital asset

management (DAM) or accessed through connectivity to external DAM solutions. Product 360

enables you to easily and efficiently handle complex product data, such as images, graphics,

documents, audio files, or videos, in the format provided by suppliers. This speeds up processes

and workflows for greater efficiency.

• Supplier Self-Service for Registration and Product Catalog Upload

With Supplier 360, the supplier registration process allows suppliers to self-register with an

easy-to-use interface that provides the buyer’s organization with all required information,

including financial, tax, and compliance documents. Automating this procedure with the

application saves time and is a prerequisite to speed up the entire supplier onboarding process.

Once onboarded, suppliers can update information about their company and upload new

product catalogs at any time by accessing the integrated Product 360 view, ensuring that the

buyer always has the most current supplier and product data.

• Qualifying and Onboarding Suppliers

Using the Supplier 360 portal, manufacturers can manage the full life cycle of their supplier

data across regions and business units, replacing a previously disjointed approach. Through

a process-driven workflow, they can easily verify their suppliers’ information and documents

and qualify them for onboarding, or even offboarding, for reasons such as non-compliance.

This streamlines the entire qualification and approval process of new suppliers and speeds

up time to market.

Customers using Informatica’s MDM 360 solutions have reported increased business agility,

as indicated by these results:

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Ensure Global Consistency While Respecting Local Requirements

When marketing products internationally or operating abroad, industrial manufacturers need the

ability to centrally manage all product information for efficient interdepartmental collaboration

across applications and locations. Different countries present different challenges, such as the

localization of thousands or even millions of SKUs or different local assortments. Within the

entire assortment of a manufacturer, not all products in all variants may be sold in all countries or

regions, depending on the local demand and customer needs.

Regional teams also often deal with numerous ERP, PLM, marketing, e-commerce, and financial

systems with no central PIM system to feed sales channels. Often, e-commerce sites are

also managed locally using multiple, disparate platforms. As a result, there is no consolidated

database that provides teams with a single trusted view of product information.

This local autonomy can result in a lack of overall consistency, as well as:

• Redundant processes across different teams or applications

• Duplicate workflows across different regions

• Inconsistent product information

• Lack of a unified customer experience across online and offline channels and across regions

While the manufacturer strives for global synergies in processes, they must also respect local

differences in product design and marketing driven by:

• Regional service models, including expected delivery times and price points

• Local standards, such as NEMA vs. IEC electrical standards

• Market applications (e.g., integrated services vs. simple products)

When online and offline channel teams work in isolation, this often results in duplicate—and

sometimes conflicting—product images, descriptions, and other marketing collateral created for

core products. Instead of duplicating the creation of core product content, local teams should be

able to focus on specific local aspects of their product marketing content. This might include the

local bill-of-materials (product hierarchies), labeling regulation (ingredients, country of origin, etc.),

and translation of product information.

To successfully handle the challenges of managing a global business, industrial manufacturers

depend more than ever on a single source of supplier and product master data to ensure global

consistency and quality while respecting local market and compliance requirements.

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How MDM 360 Applications Can Help

PIM systems help many industrial manufacturers align regions, locations, teams, and systems.

Product 360 is specifically designed to serve as a single, enterprise-wide, and trusted source

for all product data. It preserves global processes, automates the sharing of core product data,

and provides a management framework for localization activities. These activities range from

language translation to localized product hierarchies and product bundles that cater to differing

regulatory requirements and market requirements.

Deliver an Integrated and Engaging Omnichannel Experience

More than 70 percent of B2B companies are at risk of losing customers by not fully engaging

them.3 Industrial manufacturing companies need to move beyond simply selling to their

customers to cultivating and owning relationships with them through compelling digital

experiences driven by content. They need to provide business-focused web platforms that are

much more than an online version of their product catalog and that allow them to efficiently

serve their direct customers as well as end customers. Customers, resellers, and local agents

are looking to be inspired, influenced, engaged, and reassured that they have selected the right

supplier or partner.

Omnichannel, in other words, is no longer only relevant for retailers. Manufacturers and brands

often sell direct and through channels to their B2B customers, distributors, retailers, or end

consumers. They are also looking for ways to have a direct relationship with their end customers

to understand product use, uncover new product opportunities, or deal with product quality

issues. Readily available and rich product data is key to both business practices. This can be

challenging for manufacturers who disseminate product information across multiple systems

and channels.

Product information management in industrial manufacturing is often influenced by the need

for detailed product descriptions. For an engaging omnichannel customer experience, they

need the ability to consolidate complex product information from multiple systems and

departments to fuel their different sales channels and marketing systems with consistent

and high-quality information.

Many manufacturers provide product configurators on their website. Configurators can serve to

interactively select different parts for an individually designed product online, or to understand

compatibility among products to ensure appropriate combinations. A product configurator not

fueled with current, consistent, and clean product information will ultimately result in product

exchanges and returns, culminating in a poor customer experience and brand image.

3 http://chiefexecutive.net/implementing-digital-customer-experience-manufacturing-industry/

Over 70% of B2B companies are at risk of losing customers by not fully engaging them.

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How MDM 360 Applications Can Help

Manufacturers who want to provide an engaging customer omnichannel experience use

Informatica’s Product 360 as a central solution to:

• Successfully publish consistent and high-quality product data to fuel a unified omnichannel

customer experience

• Access editable channel previews to better envision the customers’ shopping experience,

ensuring consistent branding and driving higher conversion rates

• Easily connect all key sales channels, e-commerce systems, e-procurement systems,

e-marketplaces, catalogs, mobile devices, and data synchronization

Catalog Creation: Digital and Print

It is common practice to publish customer-specific catalogs, accessible to employees within

the customer organization and reflecting negotiated pricing and delivery terms. Coupled with

the need to publish public catalogs, this can—without automation and the ability to reuse data

efficiently—easily generate a large overhead cost.

As a master data solution for omnichannel commerce, Product 360 also supports various

print publishing solutions and provides direct connection of print solutions for creative and

standardized catalogs.

The E-Catalogs Channel creates file-based outputs of product data for distribution to B2B

customers. This channel makes it easy to supply the customer data systems with valuable

product information in formats such as BMEcat, XML, and CSV.

Reduce Supply Chain Risk and Support Compliance

Ensuring and keeping the quality of product data safe along the entire product life cycle and

information supply chain is a key requirement. Embedded data governance and high-quality,

rich product information are prerequisites for providing consistent content to customers and

the partner ecosystem. If manufacturers are missing central data quality rules and lack mature

data quality tools that support intelligent and holistic data governance, they can’t successfully

fuel Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) and order management systems across channels with trusted,

secure, and governed product data.

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Manage and Support High-Quality Product Information

Manufacturers need a way to ensure high-quality, consistent product information is used along

the entire product life cycle. Informatica’s Product 360 comes with industry-leading data quality

capabilities,4 ensuring all product data is standardized. Data stewards can use automated data

validation rules and dashboards to make the right business decisions. Manufacturers can also

rely on embedded data governance capabilities to define clear rules for handling their data,

processes, and exceptions. Traffic light symbols in the data quality dashboard show a clear

assessment of the current product data quality.

Fuel Other Applications With Trusted Data

Based on high-quality product and supplier information, industrial manufacturers can manage

all supplier, component, and sales product content in one central location. In addition, they can

also fuel other business and analytical applications, including ERP, bidding, quotation, accounts

payable, invoicing, and sales channels with trusted, governed, relevant, and authoritative data.

Ensure Supplier Contract Compliance and Help With Pricing Negotiations

Ensuring high-quality, up-to-date data is a key requirement for building and maintaining

successful supplier relationships. When partnering with multiple suppliers and sub-suppliers

in different countries, it is essential to have a full understanding of who the suppliers are and

who they work with to ensure supply chain traceability, transparency, risk assessment, and

compliance. For many manufacturers, it is not always easy to find information such as who

the supplier is, what type of company they are, what they deliver, who they work with, who

their sub-suppliers and key contacts are, and how to reach them. With the ability to reuse data

efficiently, Supplier 360 provides a complete understanding of all supplier relationships, supplier

performance, compliance, and spend across the company and regions. The 360-degree view

helps procurement personnel manage contracts efficiently and negotiate the best possible

corporate discounts, pricing, and payment terms.

4 Informatica has been cited as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Solutions.

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Use Cases and Best Practices in Industrial ManufacturingThe benefit of MDM solutions in industrial manufacturing is not merely theoretical. Many

manufacturers are already benefiting from the value of MDM in their organization. This value

stems from the ability of Informatica’s MDM solutions to support transformation of business

models by unleashing the disruptive power of product and supplier data.

1. Manufacturer of Security Technology Realizes Product Data Quality and Efficiency

Informatica MDM increases efficiency at a leading global manufacturer of security technology,

including door opening solutions and locks. The main drivers for leveraging MDM were to ensure

high data quality, maintain the quality level of their product master data during the entire product

life cycle, and automate data management processes. They were also looking to increase

efficiency in delivering product information to multiple channels, including their website and

printed catalogs, and to make more comprehensive product information available to their sales

teams and partners.

With Product 360, the manufacturer significantly increased automation of processes and

resource efficiency. The solution handles rich and complex product information (up to 70,000

variants) so that a far greater number (8,000 items) of products could be added to their website.

In addition to the web shop, Product 360 fuels other important sales channels with trusted,

authoritative, and governed data, including an online product configurator, e-catalogs, and

e-marketplaces (like Amazon or Conrad.de through BMEcats export). They reduced the time,

resources, and costs required to create their 13 printed catalogs via Werk II. Data quality and data

governance functionalities are embedded in Product 360, which helps define when a product is

ready to be released to the market. Internal sales teams and partners can now access required

product information in 17 languages from an accurate single source. In turn, they provide high-

quality information to customers and retailers in 106 countries, reducing the time required to

create personalized quotes.

2. Industry-leading Aerospace Manufacturer and Distributor Streamlines Product Life Cycle

The desire to reduce time to market and increase wallet share led a leading producer and

distributor of commercial and consumer products, engineering services, and aerospace

systems to consider MDM solutions. Objectives included increasing efficiencies in their product

onboarding process, and standardizing processes for data authoring, validation, and publishing.

Product 360 enabled a consolidated view of product information from numerous upstream

source systems, including Siebel, RAE Oracle, SAP, and SharePoint Workspace. Information

previously siloed across multiple business units is now aligned for over 100,000 products, thanks

to the introduction of an enterprise process methodology and the creation of standards for

product data. The automation of workflows, data quality and cleansing, and validation removed

business process redundancies and shortened item set-up time. Combined with a business-

friendly user interface, these market-leading data management capabilities increased the trust in,

and visibility of, product information.

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The company created holistic views of product data that incorporated images and other media

assets thanks to the integration of Product 360 with Adobe Digital Asset Management and

Scene 7. Similarly, the omnichannel capabilities of Product 360 streamlined the global syndication

and publication of data, as well as distribution of data in multiple languages to numerous sales

channels. Their Product 360 solution publishes cleansed and validated product data to over a

dozen downstream consuming systems with diverse requirements, including Hybris, Nashen,

SiteCore, and Apttus CPQ.

Product 360 has streamlined the company’s product onboarding process and driven efficiency

improvements by automating business rule execution, workflow task assignment, escalations,

data classification, and quality reporting. Clean and consistent product data is now centralized

and more readily available to customers through effective syndication across all channels.

3. Automotive Manufacturer Improves Customer Engagement and Marketing Efficiency

Without an MDM solution, one of the best-selling global luxury vehicle manufacturers lacked

the data consistency and clarity to easily support market-specific product offers. Their vehicles

typically contain thousands of functional components, tens of thousands of parts, and tens of

millions of lines of software code, supplied by thousands of manufacturers worldwide. Texts,

images, video, audio files, and documents for spare parts were siloed across different systems

and locations. Their partners and customers expected consistent and high-quality marketing text

and media for new vehicles and equipment. The manufacturer also wanted to streamline their

processes for creating and managing marketing text and media for aftersales. New business

models required an online shop for parts and accessories for their brands, in addition to fueling

their online car configurators with accurate product and spare part information.

For an engaging customer experience, the automotive company selected Product 360 with

embedded Data Quality. Today, Product 360 supports creation and curation of trusted spare part

content and descriptions for all car configurators globally, across all brands, options, models,

and series of a car. They manage spare part descriptions for 140 countries using Product 360

for consistent text information across multiple different languages.

Processes for text and media creation have been unified, leading to faster results and a shorter

time to market. The manufacturer also lowered costs in media production, while delivering

better consistency in the tonality of texts and images. Today, all regions, departments, and

systems have ready access to the latest marketing data. Marketing efficiency has been improved,

since data can be easily repurposed across marketing systems. With better access to existing

marketing text and media, the creation of redundant content has been reduced.

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4. Global Power Industry Manufacturer Modernizes Data Syndication to Customers

and Distributors

A global leader in the manufacturing and distribution of power management components and

solutions needed to centralize the aggregation of product master and critical operational data

for syndication to customers and distributors. Their objectives included the empowerment of

business users to create new syndication channels quickly and easily without IT involvement, and

to provide business users with a comprehensive set of data quality rules that could be enacted or

removed per syndication.

An integrated solution based on Product 360 and Informatica Data Quality enabled the

aggregation of legacy product master data and operational data from numerous ERP systems,

including both Oracle and SAP. Information previously aggregated via spreadsheets and

distributed manually in some cases are now automatically generated in multiple formats,

including XML, CSV, and Excel, based on the recipient’s requirements. New syndication channels

can be added, tested, and implemented in hours instead of weeks.

The business is engaged in a global rollout to one of their major industries and geographic

areas to implement the same consolidation and syndication capability. Business users can

distribute data easily and quickly in any of over 20 languages supported, in either imperial or

metric dimensions, and supporting multiple industry standard classification systems and

export formats.

5. Supplier Information Management at Manufacturer of Paints and Coatings

A global manufacturer of paints and coatings has a strong track record for their data-driven

initiatives. The company was even recognized with an award for an innovative supplier

information management project. The $4.5 billion company is using MDM to strategically manage

and share information about vendors and raw materials.

The manufacturer has multiple business units sourcing raw materials from thousands of vendors

around the globe with varying purchasing practices and based on various systems. As a result,

supplier data and raw materials data was often missing or wrong. This made it difficult to

calculate the total spend on raw materials or the total expedited freight costs.

“Our buying power was limited by the age and quality of available vendor and raw materials data.

That meant that our raw materials portfolio was proliferating, as was our vendor portfolio,” says

their global IT director. Employees used a manual, time-consuming, and error-prone process to

consolidate vendor and raw materials data for reporting, which revealed that their buying power

was limited by the quality of available supplier and raw materials data.

The company determined that by better managing and sharing supplier and raw materials

data, they could gain economies of scale in purchasing to negotiate better pricing and payment

terms. They could also better understand relationships with vendors across the enterprise and

develop internal process efficiencies to realize additional savings. They chose Informatica MDM,

Informatica Data Integration, and Informatica Address Verification to strategically manage and

share their supplier and raw materials data for global operations.

Reduced time it takes to add, test and implement new syndication from weeks to hours.

1818

Informatica MDM manages the company’s vendor and raw materials data centrally on an

ongoing basis. The company now benefits from a single trusted source for data.

Realized and projected benefits include:

• Streamlined RFX processes to accelerate raw materials cost savings

• Reduced total number of raw materials SKUs and vendors

• Increased productivity of staff focused on pulling and maintaining data

• Consistent global data visibility that can be leveraged for contract negotiations,

due diligence reviews, process standardization, and reporting

This customer assessed the business value of this solution as follows:

Conservative Likely Optimistic

Benefit #1: Productivity Improvement from Reduced Complexity and Data Proliferation, and from Keeping Employees Across Organization Informed and Consistent

$12,304,875 $15,915,396 $19,762,375

Benefit #2: Support and Extend Initiative to Reduce Raw Material Spend

$6,000,000 $8,000,000 $10,000,000

Benefit #3: Reduced Effort Onboarding and Changing Customer Bill-To/Ship-To Data

$312,000 $390,000 $468,000

Benefit #5: Improved Material Efficiency $2,500,000 $3,750,000 $5,000,000

Benefit #7: Improved Sales Margin from Better Visibility into Customer Profile and History

$1,670,696 $3,722,584 $1,465,507

Benefit #8: Expedited Realization of M&A Synergies

$3,000,000 $4,500,000 $6,000,000

Benefit #9: Reduced Costs Associated with Employee Turnover

$328,000 $492,000 $656,000

Total Annual Benefits $26,115,571 $36,769,980 $43,351,882

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The Next Wave of Industrial Manufacturing LeadersLooking forward, successful industrial manufacturing leaders must build a strong ecosystem

that capitalizes on the promise of analytics and connectivity to maximize efficiency for

themselves, their partners, and their customers. To drive digital transformation, companies need

more than just the right technology; leaders also need to develop a foundation of high-quality

data built in a strong digital culture with the right skills. This can involve quite a bit of change in

an organization that must be driven by C-Suite leaders with the goal of creating a robust digital

and data management culture. Implementing a robust, scalable, and high-impact MDM solution

is a critical step forward for any manufacturer seeking to stay competitive in their market.

Partner AcknowledgmentWe would like to thank our partner Infoverity for their contribution to this white paper with real

use case examples.

Founded in 2011, Infoverity is a global professional services firm that has successfuly partnered

with Informatica on more than 100 MDM, PIM, Next Gen Analytics and Managed Services

projects that help clients in the retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, financial and healthcare

sectors to simplify and maximize the value of their information.

Infoverity, named Informatica’s Partner of the Year four times in the last five years, is also

recognized by IDG’s Computerworld as one of the Best Places to Work in IT, as a Wonderful

Workplace for Young Professionals, and as the #1 Best Place to Work in its category by

Columbus Business First. Infoverity’s global headquarters is in Dublin, Ohio, and additional

service and support teams are located in Spain, Germany and Russia.

SourcesIDC, IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Manufacturing 2017 Predictions, 2016

PWC, Industry 4.0: Building the digital enterprise: Industrial manufacturing key findings, 2016

ChiefExecutive, Implementing the Digital Customer Experience in the Manufacturing

Industry, 2016

IN09_0119_03562Worldwide Headquarters 2100 Seaport Blvd., Redwood City, CA 94063, USA Phone: 650.385.5000, Toll-free in the US: 1.800.653.3871

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