Manufacturing and industrials

Four ERPs, and no one list of suppliers.

After a few acquisitions, nobody can name your top 20 suppliers by spend without a week of spreadsheets. The same supplier sits under several IDs, parts disagree between PLM and ERP, and every report depends on who built it. We fix the data foundation underneath, starting with the supplier, part and customer masters.

Book a scoping call

01 / Symptoms

What it looks like.

Spend by supplier that never ties out across entities.
Duplicate supplier records and duplicate payments.
Part numbers that differ between engineering and ERP.
Customer hierarchies that differ by plant or entity.
An ERP migration planned on data nobody trusts.

02 / Where it breaks

Where it breaks, area by area.

Master and reference dataThe same supplier under several IDs across acquired ERPs, with no parent-child hierarchy; part masters that disagree between PLM and ERP.Data qualitySpend by supplier that never ties out; duplicate payments; customer hierarchies that differ by plant.Data governanceNo named owner for the supplier master; supplier ownership chains nobody maintains for export and sanctions screening.Metadata and lineageMargin and spend metrics defined differently by entity.Data integrationERP, PLM and MES data that never meets; an S/4HANA migration planned on data nobody trusts.Data for AI and analyticsProcurement, quoting and forecasting assistants that inherit whatever supplier and part data they are given.

03 / Why now

Why this year.

Dec 31, 2027

SAP ECC mainstream maintenance ends December 31, 2027 (SAP). If master data is fixed before the S/4HANA move, it's fixed once, for both systems.

Source: SAP lifecycle

Supplier ownership chains matter for export controls and sanctions screening. That's a supplier master question first.

Procurement and planning AI inherits whatever supplier and part data it's given.

04 / Where to start

M&A Data Integration SprintSee the offer Data Quality DiagnosticSee the offer MDM RescueSee the offer

05 / Experience

Supplier and customer master: A global customer and supplier master at a large industrial company, integrated with SAP, Salesforce and about 20 ERPs.
Supplier master program: Program management of a supplier master program at the same company.
Product and supplier catalog: Product and supplier catalogs for a global industrial supplier.

Questions

We're about to migrate ERPs. Should we wait?

No. Clean the masters before the migration, so the new system starts clean and you don't fix the same records twice.

Our ERP vendor says its MDM module covers this.

It may. We diagnose first, and we'll tell you if the module is enough.