Manufacturer 1: Doing GDS for years now - but MDM?

Couple days ago I talked to a big, multinational active FMCG manufacturer who is already doing GDS for years now.

I thought that they should have a very solid MDM program in place and that they should by now master the whole GDS stuff very easily. When I was talking to them my thoughts got even underlined, as they perceived themselves as quite progressed in their GDS approach. They esp. highlighted the complexity of their products because they needed to deal with display shippers, promotional information and also with dangerous goods information!?

For some reason we asked them to provide some test data to us. When we jointly looked at it they admitted that they have not yet implemented neither the promotional stuff, nor the dangerous goods stuff!

I was really surprised - to not say shocked!

They are doing GDS for years, but they have not been able to implement key attributes for their core business!? You would think that this is only adding some simple mappings and maybe your MDM Team to collect the data from the right systems or - worst case - from the right people (if you are an alerted reader you immediately would stop here and say: "Hey, that implies that you have an MDM Team in your organization and that your IT Infrastructure allows for simple mappings. That is not always a given!").

I am not in the details of this company, therefore I cannot really judge what the real reasons are for that situation. And they also did not tell me.

But if I would be asked to give my best guess - I am quite convinced that they failed in setting up a proper MDM program. In one of my next posts I will describe in some more detail what I see as a "proper MDM program", so stay tuned ;-)

In this case I think it failed straight from the beginning. I think they did not have an appropriate vision where they want to go and therefore they also went wrong in their strategy, how to reach that vision. Either it was to complex, or they did not take GDS in account, or their only vision was "let's implement a PIM".

Can I be completely wrong? Maybe ... but why are big, multinational manufacturers struggeling so much, to do GDS? With the right MDM program (esp. organization, processes and IT infrastructure) it should be manageable.