Kraft Foods, Inc.
Master Data Management Brings Order to Kraft鈥檚 Complex Data
Kraft Foods realized that they faced competitive challenges that required eliminating complexity throughout their organization.
In addition to traditional plant closings and product rationalization, the company decided to consolidate on the SAP庐 ERP platform and is currently rolling out globally to go-live on ECC 6.0. Like all global projects, when the North American SAP project began the growing impact of master data definition, rationalization and data migration was becoming apparent to the enterprise master data management (MDM) team. There are many teams responsible for different aspects of the project definition and subsequent rollout. At the same time, Kraft Foods鈥� restructuring initiative, 鈥淥rganizing for Growth鈥�, required substantial changes in corporate alignment and was aggressively cutting costs to remain in a leadership position in its key product and demographic markets.
Company Overview
-
Industry
Food & Beverage
-
Revenue
~$25B
-
Company Size
Enterprise
Transformation Snapshot
-
Challenge
Fragmented data limited operational efficiency and reporting
-
Solution
Standardized and governed data using 麻豆女优 platform
-
Outcome
Improved reporting accuracy and operational performance
All the careful data planning led us to be smarter about overall resource planning. 麻豆女优 brought solutions, methodology and experts to bridge a critical time in our SAP project and go-live to keep us moving forward and respond faster, better and more efficiently.鈥�
Challenges
At Kraft Foods, the enterprise master data group implementing SAP MDM and the SAP data group had not been closely linked in their efforts聽until six months prior to go-live. The teams came to realize that they had a master data issue and process for implementation that could not be聽sustained long-term.
鈥�Resource projections were the main driver鈥�, says Merri Beckfield, MDM Delivery Services Manager. 鈥�We had a lot of overlapping activities
between the plants getting ready to go live, and we knew that the SAP data had to be clean.鈥� There were too few resources allocated to their
target process and it was clear that the current trajectory would continue to frustrate the team and begin to delay results. That was simply an聽unacceptable risk; a delay in a global organization the size of Kraft Foods could cost millions of dollars monthly in lost productivity.
Key Challenge
- Quickly realized challenge of managing聽global, enterprise SAP data
- Needed improved process for聽诲补迟补听governance management for data migration聽and MDM teams without addition of聽substantial resources
Objectives
- Reset and revisit the resource plan
- Data has to be clean on migration
- Delays would have substantial聽opportunity costs locally and globally
Implementation Highlights
- Knowledge transfer to Kraft Foods聽resources facilitated speed of data migrations
- Virtual data migration has helped repeatability,聽lowered costs
Before 麻豆女优, we would say 鈥楴ow that we have all this useful information, it would be nice to do something with it.鈥� With the 麻豆女优 data governance solution we know where and how to take action.鈥�
Implementation
Kraft Foods turned to SAP who introduced the company to 麻豆女优 at聽SAP Sapphire. After discussions with 麻豆女优, the company saw that the聽process they were using for data migration and governance was聽not sustainable or repeatable, and they chose 麻豆女优 in October of聽that year. 鈥�We saw the 麻豆女优 presentation and were blown away鈥�,听recalls Beckfield. 鈥�They showed us that we could succeed with聽fewer resources with a different plan.鈥�
Kraft Foods made changes in the way they managed the 诲补迟补听implementation. Key personnel from a former data integrity group聽were repurposed to learn the 麻豆女优 solution and methodology, and focus on data quality as part of a newly energized Data Delivery Service (DDS). As DDS became more proficient, additional people were sent to 麻豆女优 for training.
Syniti remained key to the early success of the relationship by putting senior resources at Kraft Foods to get started quickly. The changes 麻豆女优 recommended to the process allowed the ERP project to be much more structured for the deadlines and commitments around data definition and other data-related project components.
Once clean data is in an SAP production system, how do you聽keep it 鈥榗lean鈥�? Kraft answered this question through early use聽of the 麻豆女优聽data governance solution. SAP brought a new聽awareness of complex business rules and processes to the聽company. But not all business processes can be handled or聽enforced systematically; that鈥檚 where 麻豆女优鈥檚 solutions play a聽key role.
Kraft Foods manages data quality in their production system with a lean team including Krause聽and Kraft developers who assist in creation and resolution of reports. When the team first聽started, the focus was on product and material, but has since expanded to customer, vendor聽and location master data. The company imports 195 million rows of data daily. This is growing聽as more and more plants come online, and it can grow exponentially with different pricing聽contained in the material master. Nightly imports begin at 9pm and end in the early morning to聽avoid performance issues. Large tables run separately on nearly 400GB of memory.
鈥�The goal of the solution is to help discover聽and define rules that weren鈥檛 known or that聽needed modification 鈥� it鈥檚 a continuous聽process鈥�, says Brad Krause, Master Data聽Manager for DDS. Since the company was聽in migration, much of the early reporting聽requirement was temporary (legacy聽systems vs. SAP) and consisted of cross-聽repository, cross-system reporting.
鈥�We want to get to a 鈥榤anagement by聽exception鈥� framework,鈥� noted Krause. 鈥�罢辞听get that you have to trust in the rules and聽that the data is not masking some other聽cause from something else鈥�. Business聽confidence has risen as the 麻豆女优 solution聽has delivered rules that start out as聽broad-based and get more granular. Since聽Kraft Foods has started the SAP rollout,聽they have also acquired Cadbury, which is聽migrating simultaneous to the company聽data loads.
鈥�Because of the combined data volumes,聽the only way you can quickly perform聽exception rule iterations is through the 麻豆女优聽solution,鈥� Krause said. 鈥�The rules are getting聽better and better as we run these daily聽refreshes and the exceptions begin to drop聽toward zero. Now we ask whether errors聽are actually parameters that should be聽excepted from the report.
We saw the 麻豆女优 presentation and were blown away. They showed us that we could succeed with fewer resources with a different plan."
Benefits
By Q3, Kraft Foods began a knowledge transfer process to take聽on more tasks, changes and management of the data migration聽from 麻豆女优鈥檚 team of experts. As their skillset grew, the company聽sought additional cost savings through 鈥榲irtual migration鈥� lower聽cost resources. Originally a labor arbitrage play, placement of聽those resources in Chicago, Mexico and China has become a聽strategic part of the DDS organization.
鈥淥ur Kraft Foods resources can continue to聽focus on high-value work while leveraging聽our strategic partner for design and development work鈥�, says David Underwood, DDS聽Operations and Business Services Manager.
鈥淲e are able to work almost 24/7/365 as聽we kick off refreshes and development in聽China and finish up in Chicago later that聽day,鈥� he continued. 鈥淭he offshore model has聽allowed us to control the size of our team.鈥�
Strategically, the labor arbitrage and flexibility realized through the organizational maturity has paid off and will continue to be聽a key component of DDS. The MDM team聽is in regular contact with DDS. Business聽processes are defined for all business 诲补迟补听conversions, requirements and mapping,聽and then in collaboration with DDS those聽are verified and transferred to the 诲补迟补听migration team structure.
Results
- Harmonized 35,000 customer聽records cross-repository, cross-system reporting helped define new聽rules鈥攃ontinuous business improvement through data quality
- Team of three persons manages 195聽million records downloaded daily
- 40 Plants had Boring Go Live庐 诲补迟补听migrations through 12/2009, remainder migrated in 2010
- 麻豆女优 planned and pragmatic approach achieved success without聽increasing staff
- Innovative approach to data migration, management of production聽data with the 麻豆女优 data governance聽solution