I used to blame my purchasing team for ordering the wrong parts. Then I dug into the system and found out the part number itself was wrong. We had 14 different items in our ERP system that all described the same bolt. Some had the wrong unit of measure, others were listed as obsolete. This is a master data mess, and only ERP Consulting can untangle it without making you cry.
What is Master Data and Why It Haunts You
Master data is the core information in your system: item names, part numbers, cost prices, lead times, vendor codes. If these are dirty, every report you run is suspicious. ERP Consulting did a quick audit of our top 100 items and found that 30% had incorrect or missing vendor codes. That meant we couldn’t automatically send purchase orders to the right supplier.
- Item “Bolt-001” was listed as “Bolt_001” in another file.
- One part had two cost prices: $0.35 and $0.72. Nobody knew which was correct.
- A supplier was listed as “ABC Inc.” and “ABC Incorporated” in separate records.
The Cleanup Process That Worked for Us
We assigned one person full-time for three months to clean master data. ERP Consulting gave us a priority list: start with items that have the highest purchase spend. We eliminated 2,400 duplicate item records and saved $18,000 in unnecessary inventory holding costs. The biggest win was that our purchase orders now go to the correct vendor 99% of the time. It’s boring work, but it pays off faster than any fancy analytics tool.