Panasonic and It’s Data Problems

2. How did Panasonic’s information management problems affect it’s business performance and ability to execute it’s strategy. What management, organization, and technology factors were responsible for those problems.

Panasonic was too big for their IT system. This is often the case with older companies that have not updated business processes as the communication capabilities of the internet have increased. Because of this lack of maintenance and updating of processes, data was being poorly managed and not cross checked between corporate networks thus there were many inconsistencies from one database to another leading to incorrect and inconsistent information being shared with the business partners of Pansonic. The responsibility for this problem is due to legacy outdated inventory systems that different between the locations. These data and inventory management systems were probably state of the art when they were first installed, however, global communication has dropped in costs significantly and it appears that Panasonic did not use that fact in their data management, nor does it appear that they gave centralized data management guidance to the various business units. I don’t see that it was a technological factor that caused the problem, it was more of a management problem by not managing the corporate data and information in an uniform way across business units.

3. How did master data management address these problems? How effective was this solution?

Master Data Management software is designed to marry data which has discrepancies to try create a most accurate database and then modifies the processes to maintain that data as the authenticated source. This allowed Panasonic to better provide consistant data to their customers and distributors which reduced any conflicting information giving the impression of a well run company. Furthermore, this more accurate data allowed Panasonic to share this data with their retailers which allowed them to improve their inventory management and saved them money. According to the article, the implementation of the MDM software was a vast improvement over the previous inventory process. This improvement helped not only Panasonic give a much better public profile to the customer, but also enhanced the profits of it’s retail partners.

4. What challenges did Panasonic face in implementing this solution?

Panasonic faced not only the typical technical challenges of trying to merge inconsistent databases, but they also had to contend with the protectionism that is typical of database managers. Database managers typically know the value of the data that they control and (thankfully) are very careful with how the data is shared. Even within the company, data can be analyzed to see deeper within the organizational unit than many desire, especially by corporate parents. I think that the MDM software was the best option that Panasonic could have selected. Trying to optimized such a massive amount of data by hand would have been a Herculean effort to say the least. This is a perfect use of the data consulting services offered by an expert corporation such as IBM.