If you
have an interest in improving the quality of your master
data or your descriptions, joining ECCMA will give you access
to invaluable information and personal assistance in your
implementation of the eOTD (ECCMA Open Technical Dictionary),
the eDRR (ECCMA Data Requirement Registry), ISO 22745 and
ISO 8000. You will be entitled to discounts on your ISO
8000 Master Data Quality training and certification as well
as your participation in the ECCMA annual conference.
ECCMA was created over ten years ago to solve two very specific
and interrelated problems. The first was how to improve
the quality of product descriptions buyers were receiving
from their suppliers and the second was how to make suppliers
and their products and services more visible to potential
customers.
We started with the UNSPSC, this has often been portrayed
as the merger of two existing classifications, the UNDP
United Nations Common Codification System (UNCCS) and the
Dun and Bradstreet Standard Product and Services Classification
(SPSC) but in fact it was a totally new classification.
What differentiated the UNSPSC from other classifications
was an open code management system developed by ECCMA which
allowed users to submit and vote on new code requests over
the internet. The rapid success of the UNSPSC was largely
due to the fact that its development coincided with the
development of electronic commerce and the need for an easy
way to find items in electronic catalogs. The development
of excellent text search engines embedded in every browser
rapidly made the UNSPSC obsolete in electronic commerce
although it still remains in use as one of the default classification
for spend analysis. The key to the success of the UNSPSC
was the willingness of suppliers to add it to their catalogs.
As text search engines have become more widely spread, more
sophisticated and essentially free, suppliers are no longer
prepared to invest in adding the UNSPSC to their catalogs
as they see no benefit to it.
With evermore sophisticated text search engines, what is
needed is better descriptions and this is where the eOTD
and the eDRR came about. The eOTD is a very large dictionary
and the eDRR is a registry of data requirements. Data requirements
are cataloging templates that include the properties or
attributes needed to identify and describe goods and services
as well as individuals and organizations. The eOTD and the
eDRR combined with a classification create an ontology,
the foundation of the semantic web and the basis of the
next generation of high speed search engines that can not
only find things using literal text but also logic text.
Using the eOTD and the eDRR companies can create manage
and enforce their Corporate Business Language and their
corporate ontology. They use these to create and maintain
high quality standardized descriptions that can be localized
in any language.
