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Mon, Oct 6, 2008 19:32 EDT
Real-world solutions defying categorization
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Posted by: vikram chalana in Best Practices Topic: Applications
Current Rating: |
Often times the solution to a business problem may defy any technology categories defined by analysts. As pointed out both by Bill Synder in the article about Business Process Management by Ravi Shankar about Master Data Management , the eventual solution you adopt should be driven by the business problem rather than by the technology category.
A very nice example is the UnderArmour case study on Material Master data creation process described in Bill Synder’s article. The business problem that needed to be solved was that the product data creation process in SAP was too slow, error-prone, and expensive. This was not only a Business Process Management problem, it was also a Master Data Management problem – yet the solution to their problem was neither in a BPM technology nor an MDM technology. They were able to successfully solve this problem using Microsoft Excel and the Winshuttle Excel to SAP upload tool – simple low-cost practical tools to a real business problem.
The IT Toolbox forums are a great place to see how some real-world business problems are solved with simple solutions. A recent post by Mark Peartree, an MM Process Owner, describes how they have created an Excel-based business process for material master creation. Various departments, such as marketing, accounting, sales, etc. are responsible for adding content while creating a single material and they created a simple Excel template with tabs for different departments. This Excel file is routed to different departments for completion and is finally loaded into SAP by a centralized data governance team that is also responsible for checking and correcting data errors. I think this is another example of an elegant solution to both the BPM and MDM problem, which can be further enhanced by simply adding other simple tools like Sharepoint, for routing workflows, and Winshuttle for automated data loading .
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