As you may know, material descriptions in SAP have a direct impact on business operational efficiency. Without accurate and precise material texts, errors and rework are inevitable, affecting critical areas such as logistics, procurement, sales, and production—ultimately creating issues that ripple across the entire supply chain.
If you’re looking to ensure the quality of your master data in your SAP system, stay with us until the end. We will address the most common challenges related to material texts and share key strategies for efficient management. Additionally, we’ll explore how technologies like automation and SAP-complementary tools can significantly optimize the administration of this area.
Common Issues in Material Text Management in SAP
Inconsistent Descriptions
One of the most frequent issues in SAP material texts is inconsistent descriptions. Often, different departments—or even individual users within the same department—enter materials with varying descriptions. These discrepancies may include differences in nomenclature, use of abbreviations, or the sequence of information.
For instance, one user might enter the material as “2” Cross Steel Screw,” while another department might describe the same item as “2” X Steel Screw,” using “X” as an abbreviation for “cross.” This lack of standardization leads to confusion, hampers quick material identification, and lays the groundwork for issues such as material duplication, which we will discuss next.
Material Duplication
Material duplication is one of the most critical problems related to material texts. Continuing with the previous example, two separate records might be created for the same item, leading to:
- Duplicate procurement of the same product
- Loss of stock traceability
- Difficulties in data consolidation
- The need for corrective tasks such as data cleansing
All of this results in increased rework and inefficient resource management.
Human Errors and Lack of Control
Human errors are also quite common when entering material texts in SAP. These include typographical mistakes, spelling errors, or incomplete descriptions. Such errors often go unnoticed during the material creation process and only surface when they cause operational issues, such as incorrect orders or confusion in the warehouse. In the worst cases, they may never surface at all, silently causing a hidden drain on resources.
The absence of validation or verification mechanisms during data entry exacerbates this issue, as there are no effective controls in place to ensure data quality from the outset.
Lack of Translations
Another often-overlooked problem is the lack of translation for material texts. Many companies operate across different countries or have users in multiple regions. Without proper multilingual management, materials are not available in the required languages.
As a result, a user searching for a material in their native language may not find it and, assuming it does not exist, may create a new one—once again leading to duplication. The lack of translations also hinders the user experience and reduces operational efficiency.
Difficulties in Material Search
All of these issues have a direct impact on material searches within the system. The lack of standardized nomenclature and missing translations cause users to waste time entering different name variations in an attempt to locate the correct material—if they find it at all. In many cases, users resort to manually browsing through long lists or, to avoid the hassle, simply create a new record.
This not only increases the risk of duplication but also represents a significant loss of productivity and efficiency.
Key Strategies for Efficient Management of Material Texts in SAP
Now that we’ve explored the common issues and inefficiencies in SAP material text management, let’s look at five essential strategies to ensure your master data quality is both optimal and sustainable.
Standardized Naming Policy
The first step is to establish a clear naming convention policy for material texts—as well as other critical texts such as vendor descriptions. This policy should be well-defined and communicated to all users involved in the creation or modification of materials.
It’s not only about how a material should be described, but also about setting rules for the base language, the order of information, the proper use of uppercase and lowercase letters, and which abbreviations are permitted. Having a shared technical glossary is also highly beneficial.
For example, a policy might stipulate that descriptions must be written in English, entirely in uppercase, without articles or unauthorized abbreviations, and follow a format like: type, head, material, and measurement. Using this logic, the description would read: Phillips head steel screw 2.
Such a policy can range from simple guidelines—like approved abbreviations and formatting rules—to more advanced rules that automatically generate names from specific field values or classification characteristics.
Automated Description Generation
One of the major challenges in managing material texts is human error. Automating description creation significantly reduces this risk and ensures consistency in every new material record. There are currently tools that can automatically generate material descriptions based on predefined business rules, populating fields like product type, dimensions, or units with structured logic.
This eliminates manual entry variability and speeds up the creation of new, correctly formatted material records.
Data Governance: Centralizing the Naming Process
An efficient approach is to decentralize the material request process while centralizing the responsibility for naming within a dedicated master data team. This ensures consistent application of naming policies and allows for expert review and validation. The process can be managed through approval workflows tailored to your organizational structure maintaining material master data governance over text quality.
Automated Multilingual Support
As previously discussed, missing translations can lead to duplication and daily operational errors. For companies operating internationally or with regionally distributed users, manually translating each material is not scalable. Fortunately, there are solutions that can automate or semi-automate material text translation using technical glossaries or predefined dictionaries to ensure descriptions are consistent across required languages.
What matters most is that the tool ensures all texts are available in the necessary languages and that they maintain consistent structure and terminology. This prevents users from failing to find materials due to language mismatch or creating duplicates based on that assumption.
Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Standardization and Quality
Artificial intelligence can also play a vital role in maintaining high-quality material texts in SAP. Beyond generating or translating descriptions, AI can help identify duplicates, detect inconsistencies, and even suggest improvements to existing descriptions.
By comparing existing material texts, an AI system can recognize similar patterns that may go unnoticed by human users, flagging redundant or incorrect entries. While human review remains important, these tools help reduce errors and lead times, reinforcing overall data quality control.
Which Tool Should You Use to Optimize Material Text Management in SAP?
As you’ve seen, the most effective way to optimize material text management in SAP is by using a solution that allows you to control and automate the creation and maintenance of material master data. This includes functionalities such as description standardization, multilingual translation, automatic validation, and duplicate detection.
At Innova, we have thoroughly analyzed the recurring challenges in material management within SAP environments and developed a specialized solution: SiDM Materials.
With SiDM Materials, you can automatically create new materials based on predefined rules, without manual data entry for each field. The system checks in real time whether a material already exists, thus preventing errors and duplicates. Descriptions can also be systematically translated into multiple languages, all within a centralized platform.
This tool ensures the quality of your material master data, guaranteeing that the information is consistent, reliable, and error-free. In other words, SiDM Materials integrates all the key pillars we’ve discussed: standardization, automation, quality control, multilingual support, and traceability.
And you don’t have to take our word for it. You can see it for yourself by booking a personalized demo through the link below, where we’ll show you exactly how SiDM Materials can be tailored to your business needs and help you transform material management in your SAP system.
