Item Master Cleansing & Maintenance

I'm looking to put our item master cleansing out to bid. We currently use Vizient DataLynx and are somewhat satisfied, but I am curious to see what other companies are out there. We are a Lawson V10 Single-tenant, cloud organization and I'm looking for a company that can easily accommodate the 30 character descriptions that are required.

Please let me know the following:

What company do you use to cleanse your item master?
How satisfied are you with the product? Very Dissatisfied, Somewhat Dissatisfied, Neutral, Somewhat Satisfied, Very Satisfied

Thanks!

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Infor Lawson Supply Chain Management - Discussion

Comments

unknown

Some years ago we used GHX and all worked well: Very Satisfied.

unknown

The GHX product is NuVia and we are Somewhat Satisfied and very close to Very Satisfied. When GHX works, it is a wondrous thing. I can powersource my 100K+ item master is an hour or so. But when it's off - the data is very off.

gtesche

Kat, when you say the data is off, what kinds of errors or problems do you see with Nuvia's info?

unknown

We've used Nuvia through GHX for several years. Very configurable. But, It's still someone's interpretation of data so not always categorized the way the nurses would understand, but they do work with you on it. Very Satisfied.

ben-auer

We've been using GHX Nuvia.

We have had mixed results. Disappointed in some aspects of their data. Overall for data cleansing item numbers and obsolete items we could do better working direct with the vendors or using the GHX MyExchange exceptions as a working point to determine which vendors need some additional work.

My take on GHX Nuvia. I've been using it for about 14 months now.

Good Points -

UNSPSC Codes updates
Duplicate resolution
Power Sourcing
Virtual Item Master data tool with spend/usage and plenty of configurable fields
Description Generation
Non File reports
spend by vendor
GL code review

Bad Points -

UNSPSC Codes updates - The data is not always correct. I see some of their suggestions and they made no sense. All of these updates require your thorough review if you want to avoid bringing in possible incorrect data.

Description Generation - Consistency can be lacking. Again you will need to spend your precious time reviewing every suggestion to make sure they A.) make sense and B.) are the same format as other items in the same product line. I have plenty of examples and cases opened with GHX Nuvia on these.

Vendor Manufacturer Part# suggestions in content management - Lack of consistency and lack of accurate information. For example two Mentor implants same type but different size which do not require dashes for the vendor number. If they have the dashes they will come back as an item exception in GHX My Exchange when an order goes through. Nuvia had recommend one item without the dash and the other with the dash. Their recommendation of adding the dash was incorrect. I have seen errors like these with Roche, and other vendors. Againyou will need to spend your precious time reviewing every suggestion if you want correct and consistent data.

Vendor Manufacturer Part# suggestions in content management - There recommendations do not capture everything. Rough example if you have 6,000 items in your item master that have wrong manufacturer or vendor part# errors they may only have suggestions for a portion of that.

Vendor Manufacturer Part# suggestions in content management - Speed at which the information is updated. For example Stryker Instruments updated their prouct codes to include dashes on July 8th. Today is August 1st and Nuvia doesn't have any recommendations for us yet..... even after we emailed GHX support and Rep.

Nuvia is a cool tool, but there is still much to be done in my opinion. Especially if you plan on using them for data cleansing. Not sure how much is paid for the tool, but if it's the equivalent to a salary it may be better to just have someone dedicate their skills to making item master cleansing their top job function.

unknown

Gretchen, much of what the user above just mentioned.

We have a policy of no duplicate descriptions and have seen both - powersource duplication of description or - even worse in my opinion - it's reordering the duplicate descriptions but with wrong information. For example ortho screws came back with all the same size per sku. The descriptions were just reordered with the same words in a different order all the way down - but that didn't change the fact that it was the wrong size in that description.

Their "EDI Number" was meant to be a verified part number but is more along the lines of a list of every version they've seen. Still don't know if the dashes should be in or out until the EDI messages start coming in.

unknown

I realize this may be off topic, but what about GHX contracting service? Do you use it?

unknown

We use CCXpert - the Contracting piece - yes. It's nice for the locals and has a feed from Premier. It's easy enough to grab a download to excel and upload back to sql to find price changes.

As POs get transmitted, you see PO price, Contract Price, Vendor Acknowledge Price - and it will have * on places where Contract Center did math to get the price (UOM mismatches etc)

unknown

We also use GHX's NuVia product (and CCXpert) - as ongoing services.

At a previous organization, we used GHX for a one-time cleanse - we had a 2-person team who did all our item adds, so they based all new descriptions off what was provided by GHX.

When you setup NuVia, you can choose their 'out-of-the-box' description options, or you can custom-build based on your organization's priorities (say for example, if the Cath Lab likes the device's brand name in the short description). Like most things, it's more work, but really helps build meaningful descriptions - we have about 30K items, and don't have any duplicate descriptions. The fact that the descriptions are consistent has been the biggest satisfier. We've also worked with a few departments to tweak the customization parameters to provide even better descriptions - update the algorithm, download the new descriptions, and upload into Infor (we're V11, multi-tenet).

That's not to say that we haven't found inaccuracies with some of their information (I think in those 30K, we've seen maybe 4 or 5). UNSPSC's have been mentioned - I think we've found a couple that were definitely wrong, but many of these are somewhat open to interpretation, so like the descriptions, as long as they're consistent, we're satisfied. In addition to the reporting ability of UNSPSC, we built a cross-reference using the UNSPSC to determine the Account.

Using the Specials option for contract lines, we've loaded entire contracts into Infor. So for something like an ortho contract, we Power Source all the 5K contract lines, and use that to add descriptions, UNSPSC and Account.

We are with Vizient, but at a previous organization we were with Premier. I think Premier has a larger database of items, but doesn't offer the depth of information that NuVia provides.

gtesche

Are you using Vizient's Datalynx? If so, how would say it compares to Nuvia?

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