Presentation at the Gartner Master Data Management Summit by Les Fondy, Vice President Information Technology, Ubisoft

1. Taming the Raving Rabbids:
The Ubisoft MDM Journey
Gartner Master Data Management Summit, May 6, 2011
Les Fondy, Vice President Information Technology, Ubisoft

2. About Ubisoft
Units sold life to date
 Assassin’s Creed – 28M
 Tom Clancy Rainbow 6 – 23M
 Petz – 23M
 Tom Clancy Splinter Cell – 22M
 Prince of Persia – 17M
 Driver – 16M
 Just Dance – 12M
 Rayman Raving Rabbids – 10M
 The Settlers – 8M
 Brothers in Arms – 7M
 Far Cry – 7M
 Anno – 6M
 Shaun White Snowboarding – 4M
 Coach – 4M
 Red Steele – 2M
 Tom Clancy H.A.W.X – 2M
 Online & FB…
 Since 1986
 2nd largest in-house
development staff in the world
 24 studios in 17 countries
 Subsidiaries in 26 countries
 Distribution in 55 countries
 > 6,400 collaborators
worldwide
 > 5,350 dedicated to
production
 Sales FY 9-10 871M€
 Ranked #3 Independent
publisher in Europe
 Ranked #3 Independent
publisher in the US

3. Part 1
MDM Vision & Objectives

4. An old cowboy said…
“Y’all can lead horse to
water, but beforin you do.
Remember what a wet
horse smells like.”
Because MDM sure ain’t
easy!

5. Distributed Organization
Production Distribution Legal
2 zones: NCSA and
EMEA for Ubisoft
games and 3rd
party products
Manages external
IP and royalties
Key issues:
 Business teams in silos, multiple geographies, and
multiple languages
 Each function managed its own master data
 No single view and little formal governance
25 production
studios worldwide
And, that’s
not the way
we do it
here.

6. Core Master Data Hierarchies
Project Product Contracts
Description of projects,
owned by production
 Unique ID
 Description (short
and long)
 Linked to budget
 Type
 Status
All Product
dimensions based
on complex data
models for:
 Franchise
 Brand
 Family
 SKU
 Link to Project
Contracts
description with
sales and legal
attributes:
 Type
 Licensor
 Legal
 Territories
 Link to Royalties
 Link to Product

7. What it was like

8. Data Volumes
Project Product Contracts
~ 20,000
 Project: 5,646
 Budget: 14,685
~ 35,000
 Brands: 1,961
 Installment: 4,098
 Product Dev: 13,808
 IPC: 16,077
~ 2,500
 Contracts: 1,285
 Amendments: 1,285

9. Organization / Data
Governance and Relationships
Production Distribution Legal
Project Product Contracts

10. Basic Business Objectives
Production Distribution Legal
 Improve royalties
reporting
Global
 Establish communication and collaboration between functions
 Establish global governance for all business domains and all countries
 Share common view/definition of core master data
 Establish and streamline Master Data integration with existing IT applications
 Better project
management
 Improve game
profitability
 Improve sales
reporting on all
product dimension

11. Part 2
MDM Implementation

12. Centralized Hub
ERP
NCSA
MDM
ERP
EMEA
ERP
Studios
DAM
Time
reporting
Our Business Users required Proactive Data Governance capabilities
to enable centralized authoring / sharing / collaboration / change management
MDM is the main point of entry for Projects / Products / Contracts
Master Data is synchronized with applications
(some local updates are consolidated back to MDM)
…

13. Key Requirements for Business Users
#1 – “Make it simple.”
MDM is a way of work life for business users to create,
view, update and approve master data
 Used for complex authoring / hierarchy management
 Most users are self trained (too many users, territories)
 They appreciate the web-based architecture and interface
 Embedded workflow enables both stewardship and collaboration

14. Key Requirements for Business Users
#2 – “User friendly [No IT required.]
Model-driven functionality”
MDM must make creation and collaboration of complex
data models and rules
 Enable and track the full product lifecycle
 Create complex attributes and hierarchies
 Invisible validation / quality rules

15. Key Requirements for Business Users
#3 – “Agile like implementation method”
MDM is a business process journey. Implementation is a
consistently coordinated process of short cycle deliveries
with the capabilty to turn on a dime.
 Rapid prototyping results: What you model is the result.
 Efficient global workshops along with ease of use delivered quick-
wins
 Rapid end user adoption

16. Solution: EBX from Orchestra Networks
Standards-based Integration to Applications
One unified Web UI for:
 Data Modeling
 Validation / Quality rules
 Authoring
 Hierarchy Management
 Version control
 Role-based Security
EBX

17. Our Methodology

18. Part 3
MDM Benefits and ROI

19. Business Enhancements
Operational Capabilities, Efficiency & Time to Market
 New attributes (HQ Category, Press and Retailer confidentiality…)
 Management of multiple items (Compilations, Bundles…)
 Management of accessories
 Management of consumer products
 Management of ratings
 Auto object creation saves time (Projects/Budgets/IPC)
Improved Reporting
 New Franchise level in the Product hierarchy
 EMEA, NCSA views plus Studio and Group vision
 Object linking provides significantly improved reporting ( Project – Product – Contract)
 History of Installment Names
 Easily enabled Business Objects universe creation

20. Business Enhancements
Finally able to implement Governance & Data Quality processes
 Updated workflow (creation/update/validation/notification)
 Enabled long needed data cleansing effort
 Role based security enabled multiple profiles to allow more participants to take part in the
Master Data creation and update
 The process created a new common nomenclature
Better IT integration
 One central application manages core data with timely updates to key applications

21. www.ubi.com
Merci beaucoup !
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