Read What Your Supplier Data Is Telling You

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Describe the use cases for each report type in Supplier 360.
  
• Identify the right report type for a given business scenario.
  
• Interpret data quality signals from predefined reports.
  

From Import to Insight

When your organization’s master data grows through imports, sourcing events, and record updates, it gets harder to know what your data is telling you. Validation errors accumulate, merge results go unchecked, and you can't easily review how your suppliers are distributed until it's time to prepare a report. Reports in Supplier 360 SaaS solve that problem—they surface what’s already in your data so you can answer business questions quickly.

The Coral Cloud Resorts procurement team just completed a major data effort. The team imported a full vendor list, linked new supplier contacts, and added new suppliers from a regional sourcing event as trusted master records in Informatica Master Data Management (MDM) Supplier 360 SaaS. The data is in, but the procurement director has questions before the quarterly review.

• Are supplier records passing validation?
  
• How many supplier and contact records are currently in the system?
  
• How are the resort’s suppliers distributed across the United States?
  

For example, Alex, the procurement analyst who led the import, has handed off to Sam, the team’s data analyst. Sam’s job is to find answers—not by scrolling through individual records, but by using reports. This unit covers what each report type is built to answer and how to read what your supplier data is already telling you.

Focus on Supplier 360

Informatica Master Data Management (MDM) SaaS provides three specialized services to address individual domains: Customer 360, Product 360, and Supplier 360. While this badge focuses on Supplier 360, these principles apply across all domains.

What Is a Report?

A report is a collection of data from your master records. Reports help you gain meaningful insights into your business data in the system and what it means.

In Supplier 360 SaaS, reports live under the Reports and Dashboards tab in the navigation pane. Every report is either predefined (built into the system) or custom (configured by you or a colleague).

Predefined Reports

Predefined reports are built into Supplier 360 SaaS, no configuration needed. Sam opens the Reports page and reviews three predefined reports that are ready to use.

The three predefined reports each answer a different question about the state of the supplier data at Coral Cloud Resorts. Sam starts with Number of Records by Business Entity, a quick baseline that tells the procurement director exactly how many supplier and contact records are currently in the system. Then, Sam opens Number of Valid Records by Business Entity. The gap between the two is the real insight—how many records are clean versus how many have issues that need attention. There's a spike in validation errors for the Supplier entity that’s worth investigating before the quarterly review.

Predefined reports refresh on admin-created schedules. You can't set your own schedule. For on-demand data, use a standard or drill-down custom report instead. Those refresh instantly.

What Sam Learns

In a couple minutes, Sam gets answers to two of the procurement director's questions—a total record count baseline and a clear picture of validation error distribution with no setup required. The third question about how the resort’s suppliers are distributed across a given region can't be answered with a predefined report. That answer needs a custom report.

Custom Reports

Custom reports let Sam go beyond the predefined views. Same can choose the data, dimensions, measures, and filters. Sam can also add custom reports as dashboard widgets on the Home page.

Reports Based on Master Records

These reports use the business entity fields of active master records. Use them to analyze the supplier records themselves, for example, how many suppliers fall into each contract type, or how they break down by country and region.

Only fields marked as reportable by your administrator appear as dimensions and measures.

• Standard reports: Use a single dimension and one or more measures. Results refresh instantly, no schedule needed.
  
• Drill-down reports: Use up to three dimensions for layered detail, from country to state to city. This report also refreshes instantly.
  

Reports Based on Record Metadata

Instead of field values, these reports use record metadata to present what's happened to your records.

• Validation errors: The validation status by business entity—filter by error type, severity, source system, and more. Use this to review what's wrong with your records and how serious it is.
  
• Merge history activity: This presents how source records were merged. Filter by match outcome (Auto-merged, User Merged, Not Merged), source system, and rule.
  

Choose the Right Report

Here's how Sam maps each of the procurement director's questions to the right report type.

What the Data Means

With the report types mapped to each question, Sam is ready to read the data. The predefined reports require no setup and give you answers in minutes.

Sam opens Number of Records by Business Entity first. The count gives the procurement director a clear baseline, the total supplier and contact records currently in the system. Sam notes the numbers.

Next, Sam opens Number of Valid Records by Business Entity. The gap between the two tells the real story. A significant portion of Supplier entity records have validation errors, and only four supplier records appear to be valid. The regional supplier portal Alex pulled from during the import is the likely cause of these errors. Sam flags it for the admin to review before the quarterly review.

Two predefined reports. Two clear answers. But the third question—how suppliers are distributed across US states—can't be answered with a predefined report. That answer needs a custom report, which Sam builds in the next unit.

Resources

• Informatica Documentation: Supplier 360: Manage Reports (login required)