Supplier 360

Supplier 360 in CluedIn — Step-by-Step Implementation Guide

Supplier 360 delivers a single, trusted, and actionable view of each supplier across ERP, procurement, finance/AP, risk, and contract systems. This guide walks you through the end-to-end build in CluedIn: ingest → standardize → match/link → golden record → enrich → govern → publish.

Outcomes

  • A golden supplier record per supplier (and per site) with complete, standardized attributes.
  • Linked entities: supplier ↔ sites ↔ contacts ↔ contracts ↔ POs ↔ invoices ↔ risk events.
  • Quality, lineage, and auditability for compliance and operations.
  • Publish/Sync to downstream systems (ERP, procurement, analytics).

Prerequisites

  • Access to source systems (e.g., SAP/Oracle ERP, Ariba/Coupa, AP platform, spreadsheets).
  • RACI: Ensure you have Accountable access for the objects you’ll import/export.
  • A dedicated environment (or VM) for heavy jobs (ingestion, matching, toolkit operations).

Reference Data Model

Core entities

  • Supplier (legal entity level)
  • SupplierSite (site/plant/branch)
  • Contact (people)
  • Contract
  • PurchaseOrder
  • Invoice
  • RiskEvent (e.g., sanctions hit, delivery failure, ESG breach)

Common attributes (examples)

  • Supplier: LegalName, TradingName, TaxID (VAT/ABN/EIN), DUNS, RegistrationNo, Country, Address, BankAccount (IBAN/BIC), EmailDomain, Category, Status.
  • SupplierSite: SiteName, Address, Country, GLN, ParentSupplierId.

Relationships

  • Supplier has many SupplierSites, Contacts, Contracts, POs, Invoices, RiskEvents.

Step 1 — Connect & Ingest Sources

Portal: Data Sources → Add Source

  1. Add ERP master data (Vendors/Suppliers + bank data).
  2. Add procurement networks (catalog, onboarding).
  3. Add AP/Finance (invoices, payments).
  4. Add risk/enrichment sources (sanctions, credit, ESG), optional.
  5. Add ad-hoc files (CSV/XLS) for legacy/one-off data.

Tips

  • Use sampling first to inspect field sparsity and formats.
  • Define source metadata (system name, extraction time, primary keys).

Step 2 — Define Entities & Mappings

Portal: Entity Explorer → + Create Entity Type

  1. Create Supplier and SupplierSite entity types.
  2. Map source fields → target attributes (normalize names like VendorName → LegalName).
  3. Track provenance (SourceSystem, SourceRecordID).

Tip: Keep site-level data separate from the parent supplier; many duplicates stem from conflating these.

Step 3 — Standardization & Normalization Rules

Portal: Governance → Rules (Data Part Rules)
Create rules to standardize inputs before matching:

  • Names: strip punctuation/stopwords; uppercase/lowercase consistency.
  • Addresses: split house/street/city/postcode; normalize country codes (ISO-2).
  • Phones: E.164 standardization.
  • Tax IDs: remove separators; validate checksum per country.
  • Bank: IBAN/BIC validation.
  • Email domains: extract domain from contact emails.

Recommended tags

  • Standardized, NeedsValidation, InvalidTaxID, InvalidBank, LegacySource.

Step 4 — Configure Identity Resolution (Matching)

Portal: Entity Matching → Supplier

  1. Blocking keys (to reduce comparisons):
    • (Country + CleanedLegalNameSoundex)
    • (TaxID) when present
    • (EmailDomain) (fallback)
  2. Match rules (examples):
    • High-confidence: exact TaxID OR exact DUNS.
    • Medium: CleanedLegalName fuzzy ≥ 0.92 AND same Country.
    • Supplemental: phone OR email domain OR address similarity ≥ 0.9.
  3. Set thresholds (e.g., Auto-merge ≥ 0.97; Steward review 0.90–0.97).
  4. Run a matching job and review candidates in Data Stewardship.

Pitfall to avoid: Over-aggressive fuzzy name matching across different countries. Always include Country as a condition unless you have multi-national evidence.

Step 5 — Stewardship: Review & Merge

Portal: Data Stewardship → Match Review

  1. Inspect candidate pairs; verify with TaxID, DUNS, or contracts.
  2. Approve merges; reject false positives; tag edge cases (AmbiguousMatch).
  3. Use Unmerge if a mistake is found (audit captured in History).

Tip: Triage by confidence and impact (number of downstream links).

Step 6 — Golden Record Survivorship

Portal: Governance → Rules (Golden Record Rules)
Define attribute precedence and tie-breakers:

Attribute Precedence (highest → lowest) Tie-breaker
LegalName ERP > Procurement > AP > CSV Most recent update
TaxID/DUNS ERP only N/A
Address Site-specific registry > ERP > Procurement Highest quality score
BankAccount ERP (verified) > AP Verified flag = true
Category Procurement taxonomy > ERP Most frequent value
Status Risk compliant > Pending > On hold Most recent risk check

Add Actions:

  • Tag VerifiedSupplier when TaxID valid & sanctions clear.
  • Compute completeness score and tag LowCompleteness < 0.8.

Step 7 — Enrichment & Risk

Portal: Data Sources → Add Source (enrichment), Governance → Rules

  • Pull official registry details (legal address, directors where available).
  • Run sanctions/PEP checks; tag SanctionsHit with evidence fields.
  • Append credit/ESG risk ratings; store dates and providers.

Tip: Separate enrichment freshness (LastCheckedAt) and set a rule to re-check periodically.

Step 8 — Quality Scoring & Dashboards

Portal: Data Quality → Profiling / Dashboards

  • Define KPIs: completeness %, duplicates, invalid TaxID, invalid bank, address parse rate.
  • Track Golden Record creation rate and match precision (steward overrides vs auto-merge).

Step 9 — Governance, Security & Lifecycle

Portal: Governance → Policies / Retention / Permissions

  • Apply RACI: Accountable access for stewards; Restricted for sensitive fields (bank).
  • Retention: e.g., archive inactive suppliers after N years; delete after audit closure.
  • Audit: Ensure changes (merges, overrides) are captured in History; enable rollback.

Step 10 — Publish / Integrate

Portal: Exports

  • ERP sync: push Supplier + Site golden attributes.
  • Procurement: push status/category/compliance flags.
  • Analytics: export wide table to warehouse/BI.
  • Eventing/APIs: expose CRUD/read APIs for master data consumers.

Tip: Start with a read-only feed to validate mapping, then switch to authoritative sync.

Step 11 — Scheduling & Operations

  • Schedule ingestion, matching, and golden updates (off-peak where possible).
  • Monitor job runtimes; alert on spikes (likely due to source anomalies).
  • For large batches, run heavy jobs on a dedicated server/VM to avoid timeouts.

Step 12 — Validate & UAT

  • Sample checks: 50–100 suppliers across regions and sources.
  • Verify tax/bank/address survivorship; confirm no cross-supplier conflation.
  • Have AP/Procurement/Compliance sign off on a go-live checklist (below).

Step 13 — Package & Promote

Portal/CLI: Product Toolkit

  • Export entities, rules, policies, dashboards.
  • Promote to staging → production.
  • Ensure you have Accountable RACI and run large toolkit jobs on a dedicated box.

Go-Live Checklist

  • Ingestion schedules configured and ran successfully.
  • Matching thresholds tuned; low false-positive rate verified.
  • Golden survivorship rules approved by data owners.
  • Sanctions/credit enrichment configured and refreshed.
  • Exports mapped and validated in target systems.
  • Retention & access policies applied.
  • Runbooks for rollback/unmerge documented.

Common Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them

  • Conflating sites with legal entities → Model SupplierSite separately; match on site identifiers.
  • Over-reliance on name similarity → Require TaxID/DUNS or multi-evidence for auto-merge.
  • Dirty TaxID formats → Normalize and validate before matching.
  • Bank detail risk → Use verified source precedence; never crowdsource survivorship.
  • Timeouts on big runs → Stagger jobs; use dedicated compute; batch by country or source.
  • Re-polluting golden records → Disable or adjust problematic Rules before rollback/re-runs.

Example Rules (Patterns)

Data Part Rule — Normalize TaxID

  • Condition: TaxID present
  • Action: strip non-alphanumerics; upper; set TaxID_Normalized; validate checksum; tag InvalidTaxID if fail.

Matching — Auto-merge

  • If TaxID_Normalized exact OR DUNS exact → Confidence = 1.0 (auto).
  • Else if CleanedLegalName fuzzy ≥ 0.92 AND Country equal AND (EmailDomain OR AddressSim ≥ 0.9) → Confidence = 0.96 (steward).

Golden Record — Survivorship

  • LegalName: ERP > Registry > Procurement (most recent tie-break).
  • Status: if SanctionsHit then OnHold else Active.
  • Tag VerifiedSupplier when (TaxIDValid AND SanctionsClear AND completeness ≥ 0.85).

Troubleshooting

  • Too many duplicates: Lower auto-merge threshold; add blocking by Country; require TaxID/DUNS.
  • Missed matches: Add alternative keys (RegistrationNo, GLN, EmailDomain); tune fuzzy threshold upward/downward.
  • Wrong golden values: Review precedence order; check source quality; re-run with corrected rules.
  • Slow processing: See performance article; run heavy jobs on dedicated compute; schedule off-peak.

Success Metrics

  • Duplicate rate ↓, auto-merge precision ≥ 98%.
  • Golden record completeness ≥ 85–95% (target by region).
  • Time to onboard new supplier ↓ (days → hours).
  • Sanctions/risk check freshness ≤ N days.
  • Downstream exception rate (ERP/procurement) ↓.

Summary

Supplier 360 in CluedIn combines standardization, robust matching, clear survivorship, and governed publishing to deliver one trusted view of every supplier. Follow the steps above, validate with real samples, and iterate your rules until precision and completeness meet your business targets. .