Leveraging Item or Material masters in Procurement is certainly not new. As a standing best practice, there are simply different approaches that Procurement has taken. Creating a central repository in the ERP/MR for direct and production related indirect material has been implemented for years in most discrete and process manufacturing companies.
 

Indirect categories, specifically non-production related categories have historically been less well controlled in manufacturing industries, although in larger diversified companies and service related industries, the indirect categories have been the focus of spend analysis and sourcing efforts.
 
We’ve seen an uptick in interest for indirect catalogue masters as well as private extended “catalogue networks” that allow suppliers and manufacturers to provide direct input into the cataloging process. The execution challenge remains creating a common, standardized and normalized view from these heterogeneous sources – both from an end-user perspective as well as from a control perspective – given multiple cooks with multiple soups, all vying for the same shopping carts.
 
Blatant Self Promotion warning! – Verdantis’ Harmonize software is a great way to provide both the normalized format as well as the detailed attributes required for flexible, dynamic and meaningful search capabilities in a multi-catalogue environment for purchasing.
 
Seen any such trends in your organization? Or have you been part of a procurement cataloguing project? Let us know..

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Arthur Raguette

Arthur Raguette is the Executive Vice President at Verdantis. Arthur is very passionate about the application of innovative technologies to solve real-world business problems with a strong emphasis on large enterprise solutions. He has more than a decade of experience of working with Software for Master Data Management and Data Governance for multiple domains and across industries. Arthur’s prior technology passions included high performance B2B middleware and hybridized SaaS applications for HR, Employee and Education related domains.

Latest posts by Arthur Raguette (see all)

• On Demand Webinar:Strategically manage data quality in an ERP rollout - August 27, 2018
• Benefits of Material Master Data Management-Part 5 - March 21, 2018
• Benefits of Material Master Data Management-Part 4 - March 1, 2018