Improving Your Data’s “Communication Skills”
Using dashboards for master data cleaning
A lot of companies (and you know how you are) are navigating ERP projects. You might be heading toward S/4HANA and MS Dynamics, or something less expansive like Odoo – but in all these situations, the investments of both time and capital really only pay off if the data is right.
Data: you need it clean, harmonized across legal entities, organized by business lead requirements, and in open tech formats that encourage machine learning and AI benefits.
The problem is that a data project is not just hard work, it can be grueling at a time when everyone’s doing more with less and market uncertainties rise.
Many times we see a problem with what we’ll call the “Communication of Data”: it can be difficult to connect what senior leadership requires with do-able priorities. While this is a broad topic, we are finding that setting up some standard dashboards can accelerate the process.
For example:
A sales dashboard that drills all the way down to the product level can quickly reveal mismatched product codes, inconsistent naming conventions, or revenue recorded in the wrong buckets.
Profitability analysis across entities or business units often exposes cost allocations that don’t line up with reality, such as missing hierarchy mappings in the chart of accounts.
Inventory dashboards highlight duplicate SKUs, units of measure inconsistencies, or stock items with no clear owner.
The bottom line is, dashboards such as these don’t have to be ready for management decisions out of the gate. Instead, they can serve as a practical tool for ERP and enterprise project teams to spot the master data gaps that matter most. For instance pointing out mismatches or inaccuracies in the system going over certain thresholds.
We honestly have yet to see a client with perfect data. It’s just important to have a solid quality basis, and visualizations can make that job much easier.
In other words, sometimes perfection can actually be the enemy of progress.
By giving teams a clear visual of where the data “doesn’t add up,” dashboards create shared focus. They help cleaning teams prioritize high-impact fixes, align business users with IT, and ultimately shorten the path from raw, messy data to a harmonized, reliable foundation that makes ERP, CRM, and finance reporting projects worth the investment.
Healthy businesses are constantly changing and of course that includes data. Help yourself by making data management transparent, honest and plannable along this journey.