Transform the quality of product and materials data
It is easy to say “we want a single version of the truth”, but much harder to deliver it in reality, as many companies who have tried to do it themselves have found to their cost!
sparesFinder have developed the
Masterpiece module of our award winning software suite to allow you to achieve a unique, clean set of master data for the same material item globally and then deliver high quality data back to all of your transactional systems (ERP / CMMS) in an optimised format for each system and language.
This can only be achieved by an application with data structures and workflows specifically and uncompromisingly designed for this task by experienced engineers, cataloguers and inventory specialists, who understand what is required to properly define a stock keeping unit or item of supply and to manage a complex project across multiple locations, languages and time zones.
The right tools need to be expertly used and sparesFinder offer a range of data cleaning services ranging from the full outsourcing of all activities through to simply advising you on how to implement and use Masterpiece, and supporting your own internal project.
We have a flexible business model, able to work with big or small data cleaning projects, so please
contact us and let’s discuss how we can start working together, or
click here to learn more about Masterpiece.
Maintain high quality master data - globally
High quality, consistent materials data is an important and valuable asset, which is very easily damaged, so you need to make sure it is properly maintained and readily available. Moreover, with increased regulation and accountability, getting your data governance processes right is increasingly seen as business critical.
To govern your materials data effectively you will need to organise your people in the right structure to follow your processes rigorously. We have designed our
Gatekeeper data governance
application to provide the platform you need to achieve this quickly, comprehensively and globally.
Gatekeeper is not an empty database, enhanced only by the latest MDM marketing material designed to drive the revenues of an army of system implementers! Out of the box it has fully defined workflow, entry control and data distribution processes. These range from capturing the initial requirement for new or modified data, through the input and approval of structured attributes, to the final replication of complete, accurate data into your transactional and analytical systems in the best format for each one.
If you have the motivation to really take control of your organisation’s materials data,
click here to learn more about Gatekeeper’s impressive functionality or
contact us directly to discuss your data governance plans and learn how we can help.
Understand how to reduce costs quickly
We understand that you need to leverage your investment in cleaning materials data, and we have developed the tools to help you do so quickly.
Even with high quality master data it is unusual for companies to have implemented a single inventory management system, which presents problems in building useful reports that help reduce stock or rationalise the supply base across an organisation. Engineering spares are also often seen as a tricky area to deal with and, although there are really significant benefits to be gained, managers can struggle to make headway.
sparesFinder’s
Insight application was developed to solve just these problems, and has been delivering the information required to help our customers optimise their inventory holdings and supply chain since its initial implementation in 2000. By combining readily available feeds of transactional and inventory data from your ERP or CMMS systems together with the highly structured data available in our software suite, we are able to give you a unique capability to help you focus on the key drivers to reduce your working capital and operating costs, as well as a flexible, ad hoc query package.
Click here to learn more about Insight’s analytical capabilities or
contact us directly to discuss your approach to driving down your costs and what information you need to help you.
Discover who has got the urgently needed spares
When all you need to do is find a spare part, why are there so many systems, screens, catalogues and suppliers to deal with, and even then no-one actually has the part you need? As our company name implies, sparesFinder was originally established to deal with this problem, and while we’ve developed lots of other software and services since, the idea behind our
Virtual Pooled Inventory (VPI) application remains a very powerful one.
VPI operates like a club, where you contribute information about your spare parts and decide who is allowed to view that data and possibly buy or borrow the spares. You can join the global community of sparesFinder users, or use the software to form private clubs, perhaps restricting membership to your industry group or even just your own company. VPI was designed around a set of key principles, crucial to making the concept work in reality, namely:
- Inventory stock data has to be accurate and up to date. We achieve this by setting up an automatic feed of your stock levels into our central VPI database.
- You need to control who sees your spares and what level of information they see, so you don’t get hassled by people with whom you don’t want to share your spares.
- The search has to be fast and easy to use, with the items found being relevant to the person searching and displaying sufficient data to make a decision. Results improve with cleaner data, but our search engine has a number of powerful indexing features that enable us to deliver useful results whatever the source data.
We have implemented the VPI concept in many different ways, often simply to provide a better search or stores request process for maintenance engineers who are frustrated by the difficulties of using the ERP systems.
For a large manufacturing company with a mass of different systems we’ve enabled the stores staff at over 50 factories to view what spares are available across the group and manage inter-company transfers. A regional group of Oil & Gas companies have used VPI to create a pool to allow them to share critical spares. A major equipment manufacturer has used VPI to allow their customers to search the stock held in all of their global warehouses stock, thereby improving customer satisfaction and reducing their internal administration costs dramatically.
VPI is highly flexible and with so many possible options, we really would like to talk to you about how you could leverage VPI in a solution that works for you, so please
contact us, or
click here to learn more detail about the product.