SAP EAM Data Standards

The value of data has been growing steadily for many years, with good data standards now being recognised as a strategic asset by all successful companies. However, not all data is useful, and flawed or inconsistent data can be highly misleading and may impair business operations, decision making and insight of company management.

Businesses can solve this problem by following a consistent approach to improving data standards across functions. This can only be possible by establishing a clear and fit for purpose data standards policy.

Gaining a consensus across a wider stakeholder group can often be a challenge, so our expert team typically start by engaging the Project Leads within your business to define and establish a high-level frame of reference, such as adherence to industry standards. Then, our expert consultants with work closely with your internal business process experts to gather the relevant business side information to ensure that all key business processes and scenarios are adequately catered for. We work together to develop and agree upon comprehensive and detailed data standard policies, right down to the details of individual data fields.

Some system review will be needed to ensure that all system configuration and pre-defined values, master data object field data and business process data are factored in. A few weeks into our consulting, we present the outcomes back to the Project Leads and start to think about the next steps, after all, defining data standards is essential to getting the foundations right.

We would invariably be invited to carry out some initial impact assessment and recommendation for potential remediation of legacy data, along with potential tooling and automation options to embed robust data governance practices when going forward. High-quality data standards are the building block from which the strategic, business benefits of data can become a reality.

1) Assessment

AG product implementation approach starts with a free readiness assessment. Here we usually assess the Business Process around planning, execution and reporting/analysis.

This will allow us to advice on potential 'process refinements needed', which usually take place in parallel to the rest of the project activities.

2) Implementation

Here at AG we follow SAP's proven 'Activate Methodology' and AG's proven governance model, designed to get all the necessary stakeholders involved at the right time.

The model involved weekly progress calls with progress reports and monthly steer-co meetings with project sponsors/owners.

3) Embedding/Adoption

The mentioned stakeholder engagement approach has proven to ensure successful project delivery and go-live and successful user adoption to derive the intended RIOs.

The implementation also includes a well-structured training program targetting all user groups, such as Maintenance Technicians, Team Lead, Master Data Maintainers and Management (for analytics).