CASE STUDY
Optimizing Product Data Management with Turn-key Solution Support
CLIENT:
Billabong International Ltd.
EMPLOYEES:
500 - 999
INDUSTRIES:
Consumer Products
Retail
SERVICES:
Data Architecture Service
Data Management as a Service
MDM Implementation Service
PLATFORMS:
Master Data Management
DATA DOMAINS:
Bill of Materials
Product
Reference
ABOUT:
CHALLENGE:
Being a retail company with a loyal customer base and global brand recognition means having a standard for the way products are developed, marketed, and distributed. When acquisitions are integrated into a company, they often bring with them their own unique branding elements, messaging strategies, and design aesthetics. While acquisitions can offer opportunities for growth and expansion, they can also introduce significant challenges, particularly related to maintaining and ensuring consistent branding standards across the newly merged enterprise.
Billabong went through a period of acquisitions where each entity retained its own product and customer informational system. As such, the same product would be described and sold differently depending on the products originating source. This led to:
- Customer satisfaction and perception issues. Brand loyalty is built over time, and customers were not sure what product they were ordering.
- Incorrect and unreliable inventory statuses, which further impacted customer satisfaction and internal reporting.
- Cost increases and operational performance impacts led to decentralized customer and product data and inefficient processes.
Questions?
Schedule a free call with a senior solution architect,
not a sales person, to answer questions,
provide a second option, or help you take the right next step.
SOLUTION:
What we delivered:
Billabong selected Semarchy XDM as their Master Data Management platform to consolidate the disparate records across various ERPs, CRMs, and other systems across three continents to better manage product data.
D3Clarity was selected as the implementation partner to execute the integrations needed to support a centralized model. Deploying D3Clarity and utilizing an MDM hub allowed Billabong to:
- Eliminate the data inconsistencies that were impacting brand value.
- Unify a data model to resolve duplicate data being maintained across the different systems, each in different ways.
- Improve inconsistent business processes by centralizing the data stewardship roles and activities for all products.
How we delivered:
The D3Clarity implementation approach is to follow a lightweight, agile, iterative, and collaborative project delivery model. The approach is designed to complete a project rapidly and efficiently with minimal impact on Billabong staff.
Billabong’s enterprise adoption of the acquiring systems formed a need to have a strategic integration project between various ERP, CRM, and other applications that would run in parallel with the MDM implementation initiative. D3Clarity was the lead on the integration project.
The first task was to identify the sources and integration pattern. A total of 30 integrations, composed of both inbound and outbound sources, were identified and prioritized based on size, complexity, and technology pattern (DB, JSON, XML).
D3Clarity worked with Billabong on the identification of key product data elements. A logical data mapping artifact was created for review and acceptance. This formed the basis for establishing an accurate and consistent enterprise-wide data model that was ultimately implemented within the MDM system.
D3Clarity designed the data flow and developed the associated integration scripts, which included product information sources, inventory management, order information, retail management software, and other applications. Connectivity was established with each endpoint, and the job sequence and cadence were defined.
D3Clarity established monitoring metrics and provided maintenance and support operations for both the data integration and MDM application for a period of six months after deployment.
RESULTS:
Deliverables:
- Development, Staging, and Production environments with DevOps configuration management for the establishment of the Billabong v1 Global Product Hub solution.
- Billabong-specific data app portfolio that eliminated spreadsheets and streamlined data collection and approvals throughout the new project origination lifecycles.
- Event-driven data stewardship data visualization and data problem-solving UI. Workflow and remediation application with robust security, access management, governance, and lineage.
- Product Hub cross-reference functionality enabled unified visibility into product planning, customer demand trends, and product sales analytics.
Business Value:
- Streamlined their operations by having a consolidated solution for product data management at a global level.
- By using the Semarchy unified data platform, Billabong was able to increase revenue by reducing time-to-market costs and optimizing product data management processes.
- Allowing stewards full access to the decision-making process of a curated product has vastly improved the quality of Billabong’s product data and the overall management process.
- Combining product data across three continents into a single solution allowed Billabong to ensure that every customer got exactly the information they wanted, regardless of the entry channel.
Acquisitions introduce a multitude of challenges when it comes to ensuring consistent branding standards. Acquisitions at a global level heighten the complexity. Navigating the complexities requires a strategic approach that includes:
- Technology to unify the unique aspects of each acquired entity’s brand identity and increase product data trust.
- Skilled and agile implementation partners to navigate the sensitivity of each entity’s data elements to provide fast time-to-value with short iterations.
- Flexible architecture for increased revenue with faster time-to-market.
- The expectation that maintenance support and change management are necessary for adoption and harmonizing better brand awareness.
Success provides clarity | D3Clarity.
I’ve been working with D3Clarity since 2017. They've helped us migrate over our very first application from Azure to AWS and have been with us since. They have a very knowledgeable & professional staff that have helped us in our digital migration from our on-prem data centers to the AWS cloud.
Anthony Raiti
Director of Cloud Operations
Avis Budget Group
D3Clarity provided us with invaluable insights, visualizations, topography maps and tools to help us make better decisions with our cloud infrastructure.
Greg Falconer
CEO
iVitaFi
We selected D3Clarity to architect and migrate our Customer Services application to AWS and I can confidently say that their services are “top notch.”
Kavita Singh
Functional Manager, Customer Services Apps
Payless Car Rental
D3Clarity went above and beyond. They are great to work with and create long lasting relationships!
Tam Anderson
Program Manager
Independent Publishing Coop
Great partnership with D3Clarity!
Kevin Acker
System Architect
Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds
D3Clarity’s experience with multiple MDM vendors, helped make the implementation a success.
Gary Daniell
Director of Engineering
AGDATA
every size. every industry.
Recent Case Studies
D3Clarity was asked to help a very large client in the oil and gas industry with a digital data transformation
Assisted in the establishment of the Enterprise Data Governance Framework
TALK TECH WITH DATA DAVE
PODCAST
RECENT BLOG POSTS
Choosing the Right Master Data Management Platform
