Master Data Management

Over years, Enterprises implement customised versions of operational systems, such as:

• Financial Reporting
• Planning
• ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning]
• CRM [Change Request Management]
• PLM [Product Lifecycle Management]
• Business Intelligence

Each of these systems use the same dimensional information to operate, however, they manage this information independently, which directly impacts dimensional synchronization and reconciliation across systems.

Master data management [MDM] software aims to integrate dimensional and master data across BI, data warehouse, financial and operational systems. MDM ensures accurate, consistent and compliant enterprise reporting.

Sarbanes-Oxley requirements and new international accounting standards, has driven many organizations to evaluate their master data management system.

Without Master Data Management, BI solutions lack integrity, and therefore users lack trust in using these systems to support business strategy and decisions.

MDM empowers business users with a best-practice business management process to centralize and directly manage the structure of corporate data.

Ventana Research defines master data management as "the collection of practices and technologies for providing Business and IT the capability to define enterprise-wide master or reference data that is linked to the business".

Master Data Management Warehouse

A master data management warehouse provides a secure environment to store key reference data which can be used to improve data quality and derive critical business information. A key requirement for any such warehouse is that the master data is time stamped to provide an audit trail of which version of the data was used to drive reports and measures.

Master Data Management Requirements

Master data management needs to address:

• Master data ownership
• Data maintenance processes
• Systems to support and facilitate the master data life cycle (create, review, publish, update, retire).

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