where exactly MDM come into picture in business scenario

[Former Member]

Hi ,

I want to know when and where exactly we use MDM.What are the advantages of MDM?

Thanks

Madhu

[Mark63 · Accepted solution]

Master data management generally comes into play when you operate on the basis of a heterogeneous IT landscape. This means, you have several or many application systems running and each of them has its own set of master data records (such as vendor, customer, product etc.). In this case it is very likely that you have redundant data (that is, duplicate records in one system, or identical data dispersed over several systems within the landscape without general knowledge aggregation). In addition to the redundancy problem, dispersed master data is likely to have different quality levels, which again may lead to poor business execution.

With master data management, you can gain overall knowledge of your master data across your IT landscape to enable consolidated reporting, and increase the overall quality of your master data records in your IT landscape through data cleansing, enrichment and de-duplication.

For a functional overview of SAP NetWeaver MDM, see https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/developerareas/mdm.

SAP NetWeaver MDM features the following capabilities:

- Data Extraction: Extract master data on a logical object level from a client system

- Data Transformation: Transform structure and content (values) during import and syndication of master data

- Data Cleansing: Normalize and standardize information

- Data Enrichment: Complement data to achieve complete and meaningful master data (for example, using 3rd party services)

- De-Duplication: Match and merge objects to eliminate ambiguous and redundant data

- Key Mapping: Provide cross-system identification to ensure enterprise-wide data quality

- Data Validation: Ensure compliance according to defined criteria

- Data Modeling: Provide the environment for creating and extending data models for object repositories

- Data Distribution – Distribute centrally consolidated master data on object level to client systems with delta handling

- Publishing: Enable multi-channel publishing (for example, publish product data in printed catalogs or Web catalogs).

Hope this helps,

Markus

[Mark63 · Accepted solution]

See also the MDM Getting Started page on SDN: [original link is broken]

Regards,

Markus

[Former Member]

 When newer systems get added, master data is migrated from the legacy systems in its As Is form, without any modifications. The existing inconsistencies are copied over to the new system.

 The limitation of the applications and the data structures can prevent the uniformity of data; different systems can have same data represented differently.

 Parts of the master data for the same entity might lie in different systems depending upon the purpose & application usage, like some portion of data might lie in masters & some in transactional systems, etc. Querying for this data from multiple systems is often tedious & would require time & effort.

 As the newer systems get introduced, the integration between different systems becomes quite complex and many a times the integration is unidirectional & incomplete. Unless there are proper processes in place this leads to the different parts of the same data getting modified in various systems giving rise to data integrity issues.