Optimisation of material master data: The success story continues at ERDINGER Weissbräu!

2nd March 2025

ERDINGER Weissbräu is the largest family-owned wheat beer brewery in Germany. For more than 130 years, ERDINGER Weissbräu has stood for sophisticated Bavarian wheat beer culture and maximum enjoyment – with total sales of 1.5 million hectolitres of beer in 2020, and the trend is rising.

Initially only sold in Bavaria and then in Germany, the private brewery now exports its 10 specialities to 106 countries on five continents and – with ERDINGER Alkoholfrei as an isotonic thirst quencher for athletes – becomes the market leader in the non-alcoholic beer sector in just five years. The 11th beer in the ERDINGER product range, the ‘Festweisse’, is not sold on the free market and is reserved exclusively for the Munich Oktoberfest.

Phase 2 of the master data optimisation at ERDINGER: Following the systematic quality improvement of business partner and article master data in phase 1 – using our Data Mining & Profiling (DMP) tools – we have now focused on the creation of new materials while fundamentally optimising the process.

Let's take a look inside our iDM toolkit

As part of our ‘consenso Intelligent Data Modelling’ (iDM) framework, the toolkit includes, in addition to the DMP tool and the duplicate check, the article manager. The latter can be used to create new materials in the SAP ERP system, whereby different processes are triggered depending on the material type. These processes automatically notify the responsible departments by email and prompt them to fill in certain fields in the associated SAP Fiori app. Customizing can be used to individually manage the timing of each process and to determine the mandatory fields, visible fields, and fields that can be edited. This ensures maximum flexibility while maintaining defined standards.

Efficient tracking and control of the process

A second Fiori app makes it possible to track requests, view the current status and actively intervene in the event of delays. This ensures that each material passes through all the process steps and is fully maintained – in a reliable and user-friendly way.

Following the final approval by the master data team, an automatic check is carried out to see whether the material already exists in the system and whether all the previously defined quality rules have been correctly applied. While in phase 1 the focus was on analysing and improving existing data, we now use the same rules to ensure that no more incorrect material master data enters the system. The end result is a properly validated material that is booked directly in the SAP system.

Flexibility even in the event of changes

In addition to enabling the creation of new content, the article manager also provides a structured change process. Business departments can request material changes, which are then checked and approved by the master data team. Here, too, the data quality is again ensured by the DMP rules. Role-based adjustments to the change process can also be easily made via customizing.

Taking data quality to the next level

With this enhancement, we have created a clear structure at ERDINGER to ensure that only the right people have access to specific fields. The integration of the DMP tool and duplicate checks guarantees that newly created materials meet the same quality standards as those already in the system.

But the solution goes one step further: The DMP app now also controls clean-up steps, such as the delisting of materials. Based on defined criteria, DMP performs a rule-based check to determine if a material should be delisted. If necessary, delisting can be initiated directly from the DMP app. Alternatively, it is also possible to request this step via the article manager.

Successful optimisation of master data

The new solution ensures efficiency and flexibility for ERDINGER, along with a very high level of data quality – intelligent master data management in a user-friendly, modern environment.

Last but not least, we owe the project's success and rapid implementation to the excellent cooperation with our customer's IT and business departments. We are already looking forward to tackling the next challenges together with the ERDINGER team.

Photo: Baranov (stock.adobe.com), with the kind permission of the private brewery ERDINGER Weissbräu Werner Brombach GmbH, Erding