Why Master Data Quality is the Missing Link in Consumer Products Procurement

Sourcing delays. Blocked invoices. Inconsistent supplier records. These may seem like operational annoyances, but for procurement teams in consumer products, they signal a larger, often hidden problem—poor master data quality. In fact, according to Gartner research, poor data quality costs organizations at least $12.9 million a year on average.

In a sector driven by new product launches, promotional packs, fast-moving SKUs, and global vendor networks, accurate, timely, and consistent data is essential. But while many organizations focus on improving procurement tools and analytics, they overlook a critical enabler: master data governance.

Procurement Is Only as Good as the Data It Runs On

Consumer product companies handle a high volume and variety of materials and vendors. Think about it—every product refresh, co-manufacturing agreement, or seasonal campaign adds new records to your system. But if vendor banking info is outdated, material descriptions are inconsistent, or tax data is missing, your sourcing and payment processes can come to a halt.

The consequences of poor data quality aren’t hypothetical. Procurement teams face:

• Payment delays due to mismatched vendor information
• Sourcing issues from outdated or duplicate material masters
• Blocked invoices that require hours of manual rework
• Compliance risks when documentation or tax identifiers are incomplete

These problems are magnified in consumer products, where time to market is short, supply chains are complex, and competition is fierce. Even small data errors can stall production runs, disrupt promotional launches, and affect store replenishment cycles.

Why Consumer Product Firms Are Especially Exposed

Most industries deal with some level of master data complexity, but consumer products amplify the challenge:

• High product turnover: New SKUs are launched regularly, often with minor but critical material changes.
• Diverse vendor base: Sourcing ingredients, packaging, and promotional materials involves many different types of suppliers.
• Regional compliance: Supplier master data must reflect varying tax codes, certificates, and regulations across countries.
• Omnichannel fulfillment: Data must be aligned across ERP, e-commerce, logistics, and retail systems.

In this environment, regional process variances, inconsistent classifications, and duplicate data can cascade into missed shipments, excessive cycle times, and costly compliance breaches. Poor Master Data Governance (MDG) is estimated to cause 1% to 5% of revenue leakage across industry verticals, underscoring the urgent need for standardized, scalable, and intelligent data practices in the consumer products sector.

The Gap Between Procurement Tools and Master Data

Many companies try to fix procurement inefficiencies by investing in digital procurement platforms. These tools offer automation, analytics, and supplier collaboration—but they all depend on one thing: clean, consistent data.

When material and vendor data is outdated or duplicated:

• System workflows break down.
• Analytics are misleading.
• Approval processes are delayed.
• Procurement teams lose trust in the data and resort to manual workarounds.

The result? Increased costs, lower agility, and missed opportunities.

To truly modernize procurement, consumer product companies must treat data as a strategic asset—and that begins with embedded, business-led master data governance.

Master Data Governance: The Foundation for Better Procurement

Instead of treating data cleanup as an occasional IT project, procurement leaders need to embed Master Data Governance into daily operations. That means establishing clear ownership, policies, workflows, and tools that ensure high-quality data across the vendor and material lifecycle, and also extending that discipline to related domains such as finance, assets, and recipes, which directly affect procurement in consumer goods.

This is where Cherrywork Master Data Governance, powered by SAP BTP, brings critical capabilities to procurement. It enables teams to move beyond manual cleanup and reactive corrections, offering a governed, intelligent, and integrated way to manage master data.

How Cherrywork’s Master Data Governance Solves Enterprise Data Challenges

Built natively on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), it integrates with SAP ECC, SAP S/4HANA, and non-SAP systems — supporting the entire Source-to-Pay (S2P) cycle while extending far beyond procurement into finance, manufacturing, and supply chain.

Material Master Data Management:

• Flexible Business Rule Engine: Configure validations and workflows by material type, plant, or business unit without writing code—perfect for adapting to consumer product complexity.
• Multi-language Availability: for global supplier and product datasets.
• Bulk Data Upload Management: Users can create or update material records in bulk using Excel, while automated task routing ensures accuracy and speed.
• Multi-View Material Support: Ensure consistency across Basic Data, MRP, Accounting, and other key views—no more mismatched entries or partial updates.
• Intelligent Change and Extension Handling: Manage plant or sales org extensions with automated downstream notifications.
• Duplicate Data Check System: Prevent redundancies and confusion with real-time duplicate detection during material creation.
• Supports All Standard SAP Capabilities: Validations, classifications, product hierarchies, and the ability to extend material datasets (including Z tables)

Finance and Vendor Master Data:

• Full Lifecycle Coverage: Create, modify, block/unblock, or extend finance records like GL accounts, cost centers, or bank keys.
• Dynamic Workflows Based on Change Type: Requests are routed intelligently based on type of change, approval hierarchy, or business rules.
• Configurable Governance: Custom screens and fields, audit-ready tracking, and full visibility into compliance metrics.
• Centralized Workspace: All master data requests are managed from a single interface—simplifying collaboration across procurement, finance, and IT.

Business Rules Management

Cherrywork Master Data Governance empowers business teams to shape and control their master data environment without the need for complex coding. Rules can be modeled to direct workflow task routing, manage access and authorization, or handle conditional logic such as inactive plant or sales organization settings.

Every aspect of field behavior can be tailored—from setting default values and making fields mandatory or dependent, to enforcing UI validations and determining editable tabs. These rules are governed through structured approval workflows, complete with version control and rollback capabilities, so changes are both agile and auditable. Large-scale updates are simple through mass creation and editing tools, and business-friendly object names make even complex configurations easy to understand. Role-based access ensures that sensitive changes remain in the right hands.

AI-Powered Data Intelligence

1. Generative AI extends these capabilities with intelligent, proactive data management. The system can automatically cleanse and classify records, identify missing fields or anomalies, and prevent duplicates before they occur—using predictive insights drawn from historical data patterns. Conversational AI enables quick, natural-language master data lookups, turning time-consuming searches into instant answers. And as the platform learns from each user correction, its recommendations grow smarter over time, ensuring data quality not only improves, but stays consistently high.

   These features make Cherrywork Master Data Governance a comprehensive data governance solution tailored for procurement-heavy organizations like those in consumer products.

Built for Business Users, Not Just IT

What sets Cherrywork apart is its business-friendly interface and real-time integration with SAP and non-SAP systems. Procurement and supply chain teams can:

• Easily track request statuses through intuitive dashboards
• Use Excel for mass operations, removing dependency on technical teams
• Get real-time lookups from organizational ERP systems for faster decisions
• Maintain full document traceability for every master data change request

Whether you’re onboarding 50 new vendors for a new product launch or updating hundreds of SKUs for a packaging refresh, Cherrywork Master Data Governance helps you move faster and with confidence in your data.

Tangible Results from Better Data Governance

Organizations that adopt data governance in SAP using Cherrywork Master Data Governance have reported:

• Up to 60% faster turnaround in material and vendor master creation
• Significant reduction in blocked invoices and manual rework
• Improved supplier satisfaction through faster onboarding and payment cycles
• Better audit readiness with traceability and compliance reporting

This isn’t just IT hygiene—it’s a competitive advantage. With clean master data, procurement teams can act faster, respond to supply disruptions more easily, and deliver real business value. 

More Than Cleansing—Sustaining Long-Term Data Quality

A one-time data cleanup won’t solve the real problem. Without governance, poor data creeps back in. That’s why Cherrywork Master Data Governance goes beyond data correction—it builds a system of continuous data stewardship:

• SLA-based workflows and escalation
• In-built analytics to highlight bottlenecks or recurring issues
• Dashboards to monitor data quality KPIs over time

In short, it enables organizations to sustain good data practices, not just fix errors after the fact. 

Conclusion: Data Heads Must Champion Data Governance

In the rush to digitize procurement, don’t overlook the data you’re digitizing. For consumer product companies, where procurement speed and accuracy directly affect business outcomes, master data governance is the missing link that unlocks real efficiency.

By investing in solutions like Cherrywork, procurement teams can:

• Eliminate delays caused by bad data
• Onboard suppliers faster
• Execute sourcing events with confidence
• Reduce compliance risk and audit headaches

It’s time for procurement to lead the charge—not just in driving cost savings, but in driving data quality. Companies that invest in Master Data Governance, ERP Data Governance, and Data Stewardship will gain a competitive edge and boost procurement ROI.

Looking to bring procurement and data together? Book a demo of Cherrywork Master Data Governance and see how better data can drive better decisions.