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PiLog the innovative master data quality solutions provider hosts international master data conference

Dr Salomon de Jager, CEO of PiLog

Pieter Strydom, CEO, PiLog, Africa Region

11th September 2015

By: Creamer Media Reporter

  

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Today, everything is about data, alignment to data standards and embracing master data system software solutions. Throughout industry, data systems are generally operating from within a silo structure, offering extremely limited data communication compatibility,” says Dr Salomon de Jager, CEO of PiLog, a Centurion-based international company that specialises in master data quality software solutions and services.

“With the increased need by business and consumers, for tracking the history of products, ingredients, industrial compositions, components and processes, a highway of seamless data information needs to be achieved that conforms to internationally recognised standards. However, it needs to be ‘clean’ data; corrupt data offers us no synchronicity.”

“The ISO Standards Conference and Workshop that PiLog, an ISO 8000 accredited master data software solutions specialist, has agreed to host in September, was organised in response to the demand for further knowledge and inter-action not only by our existing customers, but also by those key personnel working in this sector,” said De Jager.

PiLog Systems
De Jager continued “PiLog Systems was launched after a management buyout of the industrial division of Paradigm Systems Technology, which was founded in 1978. The technology that was originally developed for use in the armed forces, was adapted and scaled for commercial applications by PiLog”.

PiLog has developed its software solutions efficacy while expanding its global footprint, becoming the leader in data clean up solutions and the resulting creation of “clean” master data systems. These systems offer particular benefits to municipalities, procurement agencies, supply chain sectors, environmental and general manufacturing and replacement industries where tracking of processes is critical.

A key belief of PiLog is that data is the essential ingredient to every business, and it is the quality of your data that determines the value to your business and the potential savings or cost avoidance.

The PiLog group of companies has established offices in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Russia, the US, India, Oman and South Africa, with alliances with all the major global standards’ organisations including: SAP, Oracle, ECCMA,  DLIS, NATO, SABS and DAMA SA, IAIDQ and EIDIQ.

  • PiLog inherited the 20 years of investment in parameter driven systems development from Paradigm Systems. Systems which were way ahead of its time and that were configurable and scalable to comply with the most complex asset life cycle management systems such as to what is needed in nuclear plants and aviation down to the simplest of assets such as a school classroom.
  • PiLog pioneered these parameter and meta-data based systems continuously into the latest technology trends over the past 20 years, such as object orientated, Java technologies and lately HTML and cloud based solutions that works on any mobile device.
  • Today PiLog brings the integration of unique technology, complex ontologies and master data content with proven governance work-flows with real-time syndication with ERPs thus ensuring master data quality.
  • The current solutions ensure bulk upload from various sources, automated data structuring according to standards and continuous governance and maintenance of ontologies and reference information.
  • It is on the leading edge of cloud solutions providing software as a service for master data quality.

International Conference on Master Data Quality – ISO 8000
A three-day conference on master data quality, ISO 8000 is being held at the Royal Elephant Hotel in Centurion, Pretoria from September 15 to 17, 2015.

De Jager stated “For the first time in South Africa, international speakers offering specific industry insights and previews of the latest trends and technologies as well as ‘party’ and ‘product’ data will gather in Centurion”.

It is of particular importance to all levels of the business hierarchy, including: (Please run below over two columns)

  • CEOs
  • CIOs
  • CFOs
  • Data architects
  • Database administrators
  • Application developers
  • Data analysts and scientists
  • Supply chain managers
  • Maintenance managers
  • Project managers
  • Procurement officers
  • Business analysts
  • Data stewards
  • Master data managers
  • Cataloguers

ISO 8000 training is scheduled for September 15, 2015 while the conference will take place on September 16 and 17, 2015.
The first day of the conference focusses on standards for master data quality, in particular ISO 8000 and the link to ISO 55000 and the role and requirements for multilingual ontologies for effective master data governance. International keynote speakers on the first day include Dr John Talburt (University of Arkansas Little Rock, US),  Dr Timothy King (UK, the convener of the ISO working group developing ISO 8000 ) and Imad Syed (CEO of PiLog India).

On the Second day keynote speakers such as Mike Shussler and Professor Louis Fourie (Deputy Vice Chancellor: Knowledge and Information Technology Services at Cape Peninsula University of Technology) will address the conference. The day will focus on the latest technology trends for master data governance software, and the acquisition of master data for assets, maintenance and procurement, based on ISO 800-110 and ISO 55000. Master data for facility management will also be addressed. This will be augmented with international case studies which includes a master data project of the current largest petrochemical project in the world as well as a facilities management master data case study of the world’s largest airport.

“We are expecting this to be an enlightening conference, imparting not only the latest trends going forward, but also highlighting the critical need for master data solutions to a wide cross section of delegates from government and  the private sector,” said de Jager.

Master Data Offering
PiLog not only conducts basic data structuring and cleansing, the company also undertakes “intelligent master data” domain servicing, recommending that their customers govern their master data centrally and feed the results into specific areas. “For example in a plant maintenance environment, often a disconnection is apparent between procurement and supply chain requirements, and what is required by the maintenance teams in terms of material masters. Populating plant maintenance (bill of materials, functional locations, standard tasks and such like) and the link back to the material masters is what we refer to as ‘intelligent master data’, that is not the only speciality that PiLog brings to the table, we also specialise on all the different master data domains like materials, services, vendors, human resources, customers as well as in up to 22 different languages across the world,” said Pieter Strydom, CEO, PiLog, Africa Region.

Strydom said “Essentially the best time to collect and structure data is when the plant, operation or facility is in the developmental phase, that way we can develop methodologies and processes to assist clients in ensuring that only core items are taken up in the data and the stores. It will be structured according to ISO 8000 principles in support of procurement, inventory and maintenance processes driven by enterprise resource planning (ERP) on a transactional level. We are the Master Data specialists that keep the ERP system performing at the intended maximum levels”.
“Our Master Data can be used in virtually any application, and we implement extremely secure software solutions to ensure not only data protection, but to ensure that we are aligned to the latest available standards for application at hand. It is our objective to remove all the ‘stop’ streets from our ultimate destination of establishing a ‘smooth highway’ of standards and seamless communications,” said Strydom.

Benefits for the African Region
“What is important to us from a South African point of view, particularly due to our partnerships in Africa, is our link to the recognised South African Bureau of Standards (SABS), especially from the ISO 8000 perspective and SABS’s support in this regard. Being a voting member ensures that we are exposed and up to speed on all new standards within the ISO 8000 umbrella, which is critical for PiLog due to our collaborations with, for example, the military. Ontology ISO 8000 sets have been developed to meet all industry requirements,” said Strydom.
Strydom continued “Major opportunities exist for our software solutions across Africa, especially as the infrastructure industry grows throughout the region. Issues such as good governance processes, offering visibility and controls in governmental financial planning and procurement; central and local government asset management; inventory controls; accounting and billing systems and streamlining purchasing procedures can only assist government departments here and continent-wide. Even BBEEE scorecard, tax collections and postal service processes can benefit from our master data solutions”.

The PiLog Global Footprint
Saudi Arabia
In 2001 the Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) awarded PiLog a three-year contract for  the data cleansing of their material master across their 17 affiliates resulting in PiLog establishing PiLog Saudi International (PSI) as a SAGIA registered company in Saudi Arabia.
While still retaining SABIC as a client – currently rolling out the PiLog Master Data software globally within SABIC – PiLog also boasts Ma’aden Mining, Marafiq and Saudi Aramco Joint ventures such as YASREF and KJO among its customers.
Further PSI recognition came from a SABIC White Paper presented at a technical forum in 2010 where it stated that a $96 million cost saving was realised with initiatives which included the Duplicate Resolution solutions implemented by PSI. PSI is currently forging alliances in the areas of SAP and Oracle implementations.

United Arab Emirates
Established in 2005 under the Middle East region with 96 employees, PiLog has established itself as the leader in master data solution provision for both commercial and government sectors in terms of inventory management, plant maintenance, facility management and master data governance.

Key successes have been the UAE Land Forces project where PiLog organised all the warehousing, full-stock inventory, spares labelling and physical spares cataloguing standardisation. With a strong focus on facility management, PiLog was chosen by Dubai Airports Company (Engineering Services) as the main master data acquisition consultants for Dubai International Airport in 2009 for their physical location structure, asset registry, asset hierarchy, spares and assets acquisition and cataloguing, asset auditing and tagging for terminals, concourses, car parks and such like.

India
PiLog India was established in 2007 in order to support the Middle East market in delivering quality master data in quick time and served as a cost centre for various global projects. In 2010 an increased demand within the Indian market, which included customers such as Vedanta Aluminium and Jindal Steel and Power, saw PiLog India’s expansion, and in 2012 established a Master data Centre. This centre has become the infrastructure platform for all PiLog master data tools and governance software and hosts all cloud-based software for their global clients.

US
Located in the heart of the American oil and gas industry in Houston, Texas, PiLog Americas offers the full PiLog suite of services, and has been servicing not only the oil and gas sector but also the manufacturing industry since 2009.
PiLog Americas was recently awarded a contract to provide full data enhancement services and data governance tools for a global manufacturing organisation, and their ability to provide data quality excellence is enabling their expansion into the Brazilian market significantly.

Russia
With OAO Severstal as their first major client, PiLog launched their Russian and eastern European Regional presence in 2008. Subsequently clients from the steel, oil and gas, power generation and mining utility sectors have been secured.

All of the PiLog software products and methodologies were adapted and translated into the Russian language in order to communicate and operate effectively within this market. An entire Russian speaking team was assembled and trained enabling the company to bring its international knowledge on master data governance to Russia which set PiLog Rus on course to be the market leader in the region. Since then Kazakhstan has been included in this region. Due to its origin in South Africa, PiLog is proud to be part of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group of emerging economies.

The PiLog Academy
The PiLog Group is pleased to announce the establishment of the PiLog Academy which will offer the world’s first globally recognised ISO 8000 part 100 Master Data Quality Solution courses in 2015.

The PiLog Academy will extend the curriculum dimension of the data quality assessment model in terms of the process reference model, measurement framework, measurement requirements, process improvement and organisational maturity model as well as other elements of the ISO 8000 as it becomes published.

De Jager stated “ I have been exploring  the extension of the on-line training course to be integrated into post-graduate courses in collaboration with the Cape Peninsula University of Technology; Hochschule Neu-Ulm, Fach Hochshhule-Kiel and the University of Arkansas Little Rock (UALR) during 2015/2016”.

UALR has endorsed the PiLog training certification and will waive the Graduate Record Examination admission requirement for new international students who have successfully completed the PiLog Academy ISO 8000 course. Negotiations are underway with the European Institute of Data and Information Quality (EIDIQ) to approve and certificate the PiLog Academy ISO 8000 part 100 courses in Europe. The PiLog ISO 8000 training has also been nominated for inclusion in the Life Tile Learning programme of the International Association for Information and Data Quality.

We are the trail Blazers
“If one looks at ISO 8000 part 100, it clearly states that if you want quality master data, then a company must develop an ontology manager. PiLog has created an innovative clean ontology manager, and developed what we call the PiLog Preferred Ontology, which has a set of templates describing everything in the industries within which we work. The sheer knowledge-and-inventory breadth and applications for our solutions is what makes us the innovators, across the globe, of master data and master data cleansing software solutions. We are at the forefront in this field, we are the trail blazers,” concluded de Jager.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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