Analysis by vendor; do we need full-blown MDM?

Analysis by vendor; do we need full-blown MDM?

In order to do spend analysis by vendor, is full-blown MDM required or only the "MDM Catalog," which it seems is included with the SRM license? My question would be for release 6.0 of SRM.

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You are correct that with the SAP SRM 2007 (6.0) release, SRM-MDM Catalog license is included. Please note that the capabilities in SRM-MDM Catalog are specifically designed to cater to catalog and content management capabilities. It is not designed for doing any master data maintenance, or harmonization - for that a separate SAP MDM solution license is required.

I'm assuming that as an organization you have a lot of vendors that require harmonization and cleansing in order to get good vendor spend analysis. For that purpose MDM would definitely be helpful. I'm working with a few organizations right now that are considering the MDM solution to assist in the exact same purpose. So you seem to be on the right track.

However, the painstaking method is still available via Excel downloads and uploads, which obviously is not a sustainable or recommended choice J.

There is an interesting blog on the ELP network forum on spend analysis. You might want to read it. The blog is application indifferent but nevertheless talks in simple terms about spend analysis & visibility. You can see it here: http://blog.europeanleaders.net/procurement-blog/2007/2/14/avoiding-the-evils-of-the-spend-analysis-debate.html

This was first published in September 2007