Nilfisk-Advance

Nilfisk-Advance is a growth-oriented global concern in the professional cleaning equipment industry. Nilfisk-Advance’s goal is to achieve 6% organic growth, and the concern is active in acquiring other companies. Nilfisk-Advance invests over 3% of its annual turnover in development, and the company’s 250 engineers send more than 30 new products to market each year. Nilfisk-Advance manufactures vacuum cleaners, sweepers, burnishers, carpet cleaners, and floor polishers. The concern consists of the following brands: Advance, Clarke, Clarke American Sanders, Nilfisk, Nilfisk-ALTO, Nilfisk-CFM, Nilfisk Egholm, U.S. Products, and Viper.

About the Project

Place material in a certain category, and with a single keystroke, anywhere between 15 and 25 fields in SAP are automatically filled out. This was the reason behind Nilfisk-Advance’s decision to switch to it master data simplified.

“An error in the data may mean that our warehouse staff is unable to process the right material, which can result in several hours of delay and costly fines. Such errors are expensive per se, but they also weaken our confidence in other data and are a source of frustration. It’s easy to see why we would want to eliminate them”, explains Kristina.

When the Master Data Team discovers a source of error, they are now able to contact the individuals who are responsible for entering incorrect or insufficient data within the organisation, or they can sometimes implement a rule in it master data simplified that eliminates the problem completely. The Master Data Team uses the automated approach offered by it master data simplified. This results in a high level of flexibility, as the concern can now make large-scale data changes relatively easy. Time is saved through a reduction in manual data-entry, and the company also benefits from a lower likelihood of errors.

“Instead of manually keying in our way to enhanced data quality, we now spend our time on business processes and defining rules. We are in contact with all of the other company departments, because everyone depends on the same data. We test and develop things like dataflows, which affect purchasing, sales, or invoicing. But we also look at release processes, which requires working with the developers, factories, and maybe even sales representatives” explains Kristina Johansson, leader of the Master Data Team at Nilfisk-Advance.

Today Nilfisk-Advance’s it master data simplified consists of around 2,000 rules that significantly simplify the daily challenges presented by material data. Nilfisk-Advance implemented its it master data simplified in 2007, in cooperation with the NTT DATA Business Solutions-company, 2C change.