Master Data Management - Any Takers?

Not sure if this is what you are looking for, so please ask questions.

My entire department is only 2 years old and was created as a part of a larger department creation to manage and control the data in our MMIS. Frankly, I think we are way behind the eight ball, but are working fast to get close. We have not implemented any automated tools yet. Currently, all management is done manually by pulling reports from Lawson and PowerSourcing through GHX's Nuvia tool. So far we have touched 24,826 of 35,282 items, about 70% since last October. Additionally, we have worked with the OR on a clean up project of their Cerner Surginet system which Lawson feeds into. Several things we did:

1) Established standard rules for what and how data is added/inactivated in the system. (We have had to validate this several times due to push back).
2) Created a standardize form for submitting all requests.
3) Create data structure maps and process flow
4) Cleanse data already in the system.
a) Focused on contracts first since we require all items to have a contract or pricing document before loading in Lawson. This also naturally drove cleanliness of items as we worked the contracts.
b) Used the GHX Nuvia tool to cleanse and catagorize items
- Applied UNSPSC code to all items
- Search for duplicates
- Search for manufacturer discrepancies
c) Increased EDI usage which had us clean Vendor information as we boarded new vendors
d) Inactivated all items in the system that had no usage in the last 24 months (We are still working through items that were in PARS/Inventories that we do not use.)
e) Create reports for continued maintenance (below are some)
- IC11/IC12 MFR Ctlg# match
- Item Packaging in fields matches text entered in IC11 description 2
- IC11 items without contract headers
- IC11 items without a default PO13
- IC12/PO13 Vendor match
- IC11 Active records compare to PO25.6 Priority 1, Not on Hold
5) Measure progress of changes and quality of the system (# contracts updated in system, #EDI errors, #PO Discrepancies)
6) Set up process for communicating Lawson changes to Surginet items

We found out some very interesting things during this process. There was a VAST lack of understanding of what information was needed and resources needed to add or maintain items within Lawson.The contracting people and the hospital were using PO spend and receipts to make contracting and budgeting decisions, but the data was so unclean when we began that there was a huge discrepancy between PO spend, Invoice spend, and Matched/Paid price. Also, we found items that were in PARS/Inventory that had only been reordered due to expiration not use.

I am now looking for a data center for us to start pulling cleansed data from...I was at a conference several years ago where this was mentioned in relation to GS1 standards.

Hope this is helpful.

Rebecca

We're using GHX's NuVia as our "MDM" to keep Lawson data standard. But that interface is GHX to Lawson (usually via excel uploads) - it's not going as an interface to something else. (We update Lawson. Lawson updates the others. Not GHX updates Lawson AND other interfaces.)

If that is what you meant - then we're very similar to Rebecca. We've got an online ticket system to request new items. These tickets and additions from Contracts/VAT generate standard spreadsheets. These are put through NuVia (Power Sourcing) and loaded with the standardized descriptions and categorizations from that site.

NuVia is also how we update those fields: Description, Noun, Type (Classifications), UNSPSC, Latex flags, conversion ratios, contract informaiton, etc. We've just recently had Finance agree to a standard that would help us load the issue account and CDM based on NuVia data.

They have our PO History so NuVia also finds potential obsoletes and discontinued product. The rest are done on the queries (same as Rebecca - although we did create a process flow "button" on PO13.3 to update IC12 via IC330 that all but eliminated the "IC12 has wrong vendor/part number issue.)

This is all very useful - but it is on us so to speak. What kind of MDM were you thinking of? Lawson doesn't have one that I know of and I'd be interested to hear if there was one where the interface was integrated and not upload dependent.