Infoverity has successfully completed a product data Risk Assessment for a Fortune 500 company in the healthcare products and pharmaceutical distribution industry. System and process issues were identified and categorized into the root causes of workarounds, ambiguities around data definitions and downstream consumption.
The project team quantified the areas of risk and generated a roadmap to eliminate inconsistencies, redundancies and expense by clarifying responsibility and ownership of the product master, then refreshing the product data architecture.
Approach
Infoverity completed the risk assessment by working with IT and business areas to understand the uses and gaps of product data, aligning issues with root causes and developing a roadmap to mitigate risks near-term and resolve them long term.
- Develop Understanding of Product Data Landscape
Subject matter experts on product data from different business and IT functions were interviewed to understand the complete business processes for item information management and delivery within the information architecture.
- Organize Risks by Root Cause and Impact
An issue matrix highlighting issues found during the team’s investigation was produced. Issues were linked to root causes and risk categories and scored based on impact to current and future initiatives. The matrix enabled the issues with highest impact to rise to the surface and demonstrated which root causes were responsible for the most pain points. The project team uncovered over $10 million consumed by workarounds and excess overhead to support current product data architecture.
- Delivery of Product Data Roadmap
Infoverity advised a series of projects, segmented into phases to establish governance around product data, maximize current system capabilities and prepare for an eventual system upgrade. Short, medium and long term milestones were established to continuously improve the quality of product data consumed by business functions and reduce the cost and risk of an aging data landscape.
Results
The Infoverity approach was successful in identifying areas of risk and developed a practical roadmap to mitigate the risk and refresh the information architecture.
- Governance and Ownership before System Changes
Infoverity proved a lack of control and ownership of product data contributed to the current state. Project sponsors agreed key governance controls are a prerequisite to a successful system change and elimination of current pain points.
- Analysis and Roadmap Approved
Project sponsors from various business areas approved of the findings and set in motion to put phases outlined in the roadmap into effect.
