We’ve received an inquiry or two asking about the importance of the material master in the service industries. I can see the point, if your company is in the business of teaching balloon racing strategies and techniques to high net-worth individuals so that they can impress their neighbors (honestly though, I would love to take a lesson or two – there are large charity events held just northwest of Princeton every year and I think it would be a blast to participate) – the relative importance of a material master is small. Granted, spare parts lists, equipment lists, and inventory affect every business, but for some the challenge is small, for others it is large but focused on particular data.
 

Banking and Insurance companies for instance aren’t as concerned about maintenance, repair and operations equipment for their increasingly outsourced facilities management teams. Yet their operational success, and about 30% of their non-headcount costs are related to Information Technology and Information Services.
 

Managing this type of data, and sharing actionable information for IT/IS impacts the financial performance of service oriented companies. And nowhere is this realized more than in commercial/retail banking and insurance companies. Desktops, Laptops, Notebooks, Tablets, “Phablets”, SmartPhones, Routers, Bridges, Gateways, Remote Access Servers, SAN Subsystems – the list goes on. A single employee can easily have 3 assigned primary devices issues by the company.
 
Buying, Assigning, Deploying, Replacing, Repairing, and Supporting global IT assets requires a geographically consistent view so that assets are represented in a standard way with technical attributes being identified and normalized for effective search and comparison. The latter is especially true for Replacing, Repairing and Supporting.
 

Sure there are some very sophisticated IT asset management packages out in the marketplace today – but before investing millions into licensing proprietary software, it just makes sense to clean up the data you have and get a good handle on the 4 ‘Ws’ of your IT assets, Who has it, Where is It, What is it and When was it placed in service.
 
BYOD Policies only serve to increase the dynamism and enforce the requirement for having a living asset master rather than a static view, further “inflating” the requirement (apologies for the obvious pun).

 
What are your thoughts on the importance of material masters in service industries? Or have you tried out balloon racing? Either ways, we would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

 
Recommended reads:
White Paper: Empower end-users with Master Data Management
White Paper: MRO Master Data Management for Enhanced Maintenance Performance

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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