So, you’ve indentified Data Quality as an issue…

Data Quality & Readiness:

The planning, execution, verification, and documentation of data migration from legacy or source systems to SAP are critical components to any successful SAP implementation. SAP requires and expects master and transactional data of high quality for the intended process integration benefits to be realized. Data quality and readiness often is, however, one of the most overlooked aspects of an implementation project. This is partly because so much emphasis is placed on re-engineering the business processes; the readiness of data automatically takes a lesser priority. In fact, nearly all System Integrators require data to be “SAP ready” prior to cutover. Based on our experience, we would suggest many SAP implementation projects lack the means and methodology to systematically identify and perform data readiness activities and resolve data quality issues. To mitigate this critical risk area, GROM has developed a comprehensive data migration and governance methodology as part of our Implementation Methodology (GEM). Our approach to data cleansing, migration, and governance can easily be integrated into any SAP project with GROM or another strategic partner.

GROM’s Legacy:

GROM Associates has been in the Data Migration and Master Data Management business since its inception in 1982. Bob Grom, Founder and President of GROM Associates, provided data integration, data interfaces, and implementation services for HP, DEC, and IBM mainframe systems. In 1986, GROM Associates provided Data Migration services for one of the first SAP R/2 implementations in the US at Exxon Chemical. Data Migration and Master Data Management have been an integral part of every GROM project since then. Over the past twenty five years, we have been asked to resolve a multitude of Master Data Management issues involving various governance structures (central, decentralized, federated), various applications (from ERP to MES), various MDM repositories (SAP and non-SAP), and various MDM governance tools.

GROM’s Data Practice:

GROM’s Enterprise Data Management Practice (EDM) provides data management services across the complete value chain from strategy definition to program execution to ongoing operations, leveraging the value of ‘business-ready’ data to drive operational effectiveness and business intelligence initiatives. Our data quality and readiness methodology is based on a pragmatic approach to data migration. We focus on uncovering all the tough challenges early in the process. Our years of project success have proven to us the value of establishing a comprehensive, robust, and repeatable process upfront and accommodating and documenting change throughout the project cycle. Our approach focuses on the key activities of analyzing the data and writing actionable data quality reports that provide clarity and efficiency to the data migration project. We strongly believe in the principle of letting the data speak for itself. The results of these data quality reports are communicated back to the business process owners and to the project team so they can use the information to make key decisions regarding business processes, configuration, and data consistency. Our approach is compatible with commercial ETL applications such as BackOffice’s Data Staging Warehouse, IBM’s WebSphere Information Integration (formerly Ascential Software), Informatica’s PowerCenter, and other commercial ETL tools. On projects where a commercial ETL tool is not available, our approach can also support native database tools such as Microsoft’s DTS or Oracle’s Warehouse Builder. A separate and dedicated data quality and readiness team is typically established to focus on data migration requirements and activities.

Why GROM?