(Lavinia Marica)
Data Maintenance is the heart of the business, the steering wheel of Euromaster, as all the other departments rely on us for accurate and reliable insights. This is why it is important for us to guarantee the consistency and accuracy of master data on the road to actionable insights within the company.
DM was the second department formed in EBS back in 2015 and the team provides expertise and services for 11 Euromaster or Michelin Group entities, in the following countries: France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, UK, Netherlands, Romania, Denmark, Italy.
Our scope is to maintain the Master Data of the countries for all domains of data (fleet, products, services, vendors, organization, customers, finance & pricing master data). The objective of the DM team is to streamline all the processes (despite the complexity of processes or tools used today) in order to achieve standardization and to succeed in becoming a data driven company.
In 2018 we developed a complex strategy towards data cleaning and process alignment for all countries because one of our priorities was to create and standardize a unique and accurate database regardless of the systems used in each country. This is an ongoing journey and there is never a dull moment in our day-to-day activity.
The DM department consists of approx. 40 employees who, since January 2020, are organized in a functional organization, into 4 streams (Products, Services & Vendors; Customers, Organization & Finance; Pricing, Conditions & CCS, and Fleet Maintenance). In the past we were working per individual countries but the reorganization proved to be very beneficial: it improved visibility on the end-to-end processes across the business and facilitated best practices to be implemented for all countries in scope.
In 2019 we implemented local governance in each country – a data owner for each stream who is responsible for all communication and validation with the local business stakeholders and with whom we maintain constant communication. We started bringing all the data owners together, organized various workshops and online sessions and we facilitated a stronger collaboration between Euromaster countries and EBS.
In 2020 all the processes for Products, Services & Vendors were redesigned (24 processes), defined in a streamlined way in order to start the deployment of a ticketing tool and also a common way of working between countries. This massive redesign was conducted through a series of workshops and validation flows established with all the stakeholders. The key to our success was a great and constant collaboration between the EBS team (14 persons) and the data owners from the countries (10 persons). Each of them was involved and required to assess the local business needs and legal constraints in order to be able to create standard and compliant processes at the European level.
Based on this alignment, by the end of 2021, DM Products, Services and Vendors stream will have implemented a unique ticketing tool for all types of requests received from the countries. This tool will increase efficiency and improve data traceability. DM PSV is, therefore, the first team in Euromaster Group to have standard processes applicable to all countries in spite of their local business specificities, different systems and legal constraints.
Our work does not end here: we always challenge the status quo; we constantly strive to align and optimize our services. DM Products, Services and Vendors Stream is working towards its main goal: to create and maintain a unique database (despite different systems used) with the same accurate references throughout the countries (~1 million products).
The Organization Stream is next in line for process standardization (definition of streamlined processes in progress this year) and our goal is that by the end of 2022 all processes in the Data Maintenance Department will be standardized and aligned within all Euromaster countries (approximately 70 processes).
Working with large sets of data is an ongoing challenge. Throw in 10 countries, various systems and interfaces, specific processes, legal constraints and different business requirements and you will get an obstacle course. We welcome obstacles, we love to overcome them and the satisfaction when we reach our goals is worth all the hard work. We are writing history in Euromaster’s administration processes in order to make our customers happy!