Supply Chain Management

So, data plays a very significant role for Go-Live & organizations use data templates & tools to load bulk data into the system. Praveen has rightly said that "EAMs are data eaters & master data management is a a critical aspect in EAM implementations" in his blog "Why my EAM implementation is not giving me as I expected?"

There are various checks & balances which you need to do to get this right first time. The below mentioned are the best practices for a master data load based on my own implementation experiences. I have categorized the best practices into various categories as mentioned below

Preparation for Master Data Load

• Prepare a list of data you need for Go Live
• Create a sequential order to load those data
• Identify the data which you need to create manually and the data which you need to load using load tools or other uploading methods.
• Categorize the master data into Organization specific data, user data, finance data, Meta data etc
• For each category, identify an owner to extract the data from various sources.

Validating source data before transferring into data templates

• Validate the source data, correct errors, correct duplicates, etc before you transfer the data into new data capture templates.

Preparation of Data capture template

• Prepare a data capture template to match the ERP application
• Prepare a data capture template per application or per master data like Item Template, Vendors Template etc
• Define basic validation rules (below mentioned) in the template to minimize the errors in data before loading
• Mandatory fields should not be left blank
• Key information should not be left blank
• Duplicate data should not exist
• Spelling should be corrected in detailed descriptions or terms & conditions
• Junk values should be avoided by having drop down lists in the fields
• Setup a checklist and instructions for filling the data so that the person who fills the data can do a self check & correct errors if any. Also mention some of the important business rules as part of this checklist so that the person can validate those checks also & correct errors if any.

Please add if you have come across any best practice related to master data load in your earlier implementations. In my next blog, I would like to continue the same category "Preparation of Data capture template" in a bit more detailed manner and also discuss about "Pre Load data validation".