Streamlining Product Data Post-Acquisition with MDM

Streamline product data across acquisitions with a unified MDM solution, boosting consistency, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency.

CASE STUDY

3-MINUTE READ

The Challenge at Hand

Being a retail company with a loyal customer base and global brand recognition means having a standard for the way products are developed, marketed, and distributed. When acquisitions are integrated into a company, they often bring with them their own unique branding elements, messaging strategies, and design aesthetics. While acquisitions can offer opportunities for growth and expansion, they can also introduce significant challenges, particularly related to maintaining and ensuring consistent branding standards across the newly merged enterprise.

Billabong went through a period of acquisitions where each entity retained its own product and customer informational system. As such, the same product would be described and sold differently depending on the products originating source. This led to:

Customer satisfaction and perception issues. Brand loyalty is built over time, and customers were not sure what product they were ordering.
Incorrect and unreliable inventory statuses, which further impacted customer satisfaction and internal reporting.
Cost increases and operational performance impacts led to decentralized customer and product data and inefficient processes.

Innovative Solutions Unleashed

Billabong selected Semarchy XDM as their Master Data Management platform to consolidate the disparate records across various ERPs, CRMs, and other systems across three continents to better manage product data.

D3Clarity was selected as the implementation partner to execute the integrations needed to support a centralized model. Deploying D3Clarity and utilizing an MDM hub allowed Billabong to:

Eliminate the data inconsistencies that were impacting brand value.
Unify a data model to resolve duplicate data being maintained across the different systems, each in different ways.
Improve inconsistent business processes by centralizing the data stewardship roles and activities for all products.

Transformative Results Achieved

The D3Clarity implementation approach is to follow a lightweight, agile, iterative, and collaborative project delivery model. The approach is designed to complete a project rapidly and efficiently with minimal impact on Billabong staff.

Billabong’s enterprise adoption of the acquiring systems formed a need to have a strategic integration project between various ERP, CRM, and other applications that would run in parallel with the MDM implementation initiative. D3Clarity was the lead on the integration project.

The first task was to identify the sources and integration pattern. A total of 30 integrations, composed of both inbound and outbound sources, were identified and prioritized based on size, complexity, and technology pattern (DB, JSON, XML).

D3Clarity worked with Billabong on the identification of key product data elements. A logical data mapping artifact was created for review and acceptance. This formed the basis for establishing an accurate and consistent enterprise-wide data model that was ultimately implemented within the MDM system.

D3Clarity designed the data flow and developed the associated integration scripts, which included product information sources, inventory management, order information, retail management software, and other applications. Connectivity was established with each endpoint, and the job sequence and cadence were defined.

D3Clarity established monitoring metrics and provided maintenance and support operations for both the data integration and MDM application for a period of six months after deployment.

Acquisitions introduce a multitude of challenges when it comes to ensuring consistent branding standards. Acquisitions at a global level heighten the complexity. Navigating the complexities requires a strategic approach that includes:

Technology to unify the unique aspects of each acquired entity’s brand identity and increase product data trust.
Skilled and agile implementation partners to navigate the sensitivity of each entity’s data elements to provide fast time-to-value with short iterations.
Flexible architecture for increased revenue with faster time-to-market.
The expectation that maintenance support and change management are necessary for adoption and harmonizing better brand awareness.