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Distribution

Data Quality affects the successful running of the distribution supply chain from supplier to customer. Ensuring your data is of a high standard can increase revenues.

One of the aims of any distributor is how best to achieve reduced inventory costs.  With multiple warehouses and suppliers the ability to track inventory and gain visibility at every level is paramount. Maintaining the correct, appropriate inventory delivers the ability to take advantage of sales opportunities, optimize the supply chain and improve decision making.

Benefits of improved Data Quality within Distribution and Logistics

The quality of data in the distribution industry is of primary importance. Data quality affects the whole of the operation from suppliers to customer. It can:

  • Improve average time to deliver
  • Increase operating efficiencies
  • Reduce stock ‘leakage’
  • Reduce costs
  • Improve sales performance  
  • Maintain or improve margins
  • Help eliminate overpayments
  • Shorten the order to payment process

Application of Data Quality in Distribution and Logistics

Product Information Management (PIM) systems can deliver substantial improvements to distribution efficiency.  They are typically loaded with data from multiple sources. Datactics can provide a consolidation capability which cannot be performed by the PIM system alone.  The data is consolidated, centralized and standardized, creating a single and consistent view of the data.

Once cleansed, verified and validated, a data quality firewall should be implemented to prevent inaccurate and invalid data from ever reaching your operational catalog or database.

Datactics functions include:

  • Consolidate data: With massive volumes of data from suppliers using different formats, different descriptions, from different systems, perhaps from around the world, a single source of truth for each item is essential for optimizing the supply chain.  
  • Score and profile data: This ensures you know how reliable your data is. By scorecarding and creating KPI markers on your data, you can monitor where deficiencies occur and measure trends over time. This information is very valuable for shaping business strategy decisions.
  • Standardize data: Where data is unstructured or in different formats you can extract and standardize product information, maintain standard references, such as unit of measure, and ensure that all product data is aligned.
  • Validate data: Data can be validated against industry standards and master reference lists designed for your business requirements.
  • Clean any errors: Dirty data affects the business operations performed using the data not least the searching for particular products. Cleansing the product information will, for example, correct invalid, contradictory and obsolete data during data entry or data migration.
  • Deduplicate information: With standardized product information you can now eliminate duplication and achieve an accurate list of products held in stock.

Distribution Catalog Loading

Increase the speed of on boarding suppliers and introducing new products into your catalog. New items are loaded accurately, without duplication, transformed into standardized format even from remote, disparate sources. This can accelerate revenue generation by much faster time to market. Due to the speed of software in loading the data, labor costs can be reduced by 80%1. ROI is approximately 10 weeks1.

 

If Distribution and the supply chain are of interest to you please look at the following Case Studies which highlight the real results achieved by organizations operating within the distribution environment –

 

  • NHS Supply Chain.  The UK NHS (National Health Service) supply chain operation manages product sourcing and delivery for over 620,000 products to more than 600 NHS Trusts and Healthcare organizations.  Datactics delivered an innovative and automated solution for effective product and catalogue matching to the NHS Supply Chain
  • Terex (Global Benefit Tracking). Terex is a Fortune 500 company and a diversified global manufacturer with revenues exceeding $9Bn.  Following on from the successful delivery of the Datactics Data Quality Firewall and File Validation tool, Terex contracted Datactics to effectively track the savings and expenditure obtained across its global supply chain.
  • Royal Phillips Electronics.  With high volumes of ever changing product data, Phillips had a need for data cleansing.  Using Datactics, 30% duplications were removed and the data remained clean.
  • Terex (eCost). Terex is a Fortune 500 company and a diversified global manufacturer with revenues exceeding $9Bn.  With the successful delivery of Datactics solutions across 35 business units worldwide, Datactics enabled Terex to increase its purchasing leverage by consolidating spend data.

 

1 In-house Research