What is master data management?

Master Data Management is a process that involves the management of critical data assets to ensure uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency, and accountability across an organization. MDM aims to create a “single source of truth” for important data, such as customer information, product data, and financial data. This definition shifts away from the outdated notion that MDM is a technology, to reflect the reality that master data management is a business capability.

Master data are the objects in a business that provide context for transactions. For example, for a procurement transaction a supplier (person) may provide a service (thing) under the terms of a contract (concept). For a purchase, a customer (person) may buy a product (thing) from a store (place).

Why is data integrity the foundation of master data management?

Data integrity is crucial to the success of MDM because it ensures that the data being managed is of high quality and trustworthy across all systems and departments. If data is inaccurate, inconsistent, or unreliable, it can lead to errors in decision-making, wasted time and resources, and ultimately damage the reputation of the organization.

How does Master Data Management work?

MDM involves a series of processes, enabled by technology, that work together to create a single source of truth for critical data. The process typically involves identifying key data assets, cleansing and standardizing data, and creating a master record that can be used across the organization.

How can we align business and data management?

The alignment of business and data management is critical for an organisation's success. To achieve this alignment, four pillars need to be in place: data strategy, data culture, data monetisation, and data literacy. Data Strategy: A clear data strategy is essential for aligning business and data management. It should outline how data will be collected, stored, managed, and analysed to support business goals. A well-defined data strategy can help identify data gaps, define data standards, and establish a roadmap for data management initiatives. Data Culture: Data culture refers to an organisation's values, beliefs, and behaviours around data. It is essential to foster a data-driven culture that values data as a strategic asset and encourages data-driven decision-making. A data culture can help to promote collaboration, transparency, and accountability around data management. Data Monetisation: Data monetisation is the process of leveraging data to create business value. It involves identifying opportunities to monetise data assets, such as through new revenue streams or cost savings. Data monetisation requires a clear understanding of data value and the ability to extract insights from data to inform business decisions. Data Literacy: Data literacy refers to the ability of individuals to read, understand, and effectively use data. It is essential to build data literacy across an organisation to ensure that employees have the skills and knowledge to leverage data for business purposes. This includes data analysis, visualisation, and interpretation.

Silwood Technology Limited announce support for harvesting SAP MDG metadata with Safyr

Use Safyr to liberate your SAP MDG metadata for data governance, data catalogue, master data management and other data projects.

Master Data Management partner, Silwood Technology Limited has announced the availability of Safyr^® for SAP MDG metadata harvesting. SAP’s Master Data Governance (MDG) application supports customers who need to combine master data from a number of sources and then manage it effectively.

Safyr for SAP MDG

This release of Safyr adds yet further support for customers who need to incorporate metadata from SAP’s array of complex ERP applications with enterprise data transformation programs. Safyr is the leading ERP metadata harvesting, visualization and discovery software product designed specifically for use by data analysts, data architects and data scientists.

Customers use Safyr to exploit the data structures in SAP MDG systems. This is a critical task for accelerating the effective delivery of a wide range of information-led projects such as data catalogues, data governance, data warehouse, data analytics, master data management, and more.

Technically, SAP MDG uses a Data Model paradigm to define the data structures that are to be the subject of its Master Data Governance features. Safyr liberates the metadata for these data models by harvesting the SAP MDG tables that define these models. Safyr is particularly valuable if the customer has significantly extended the set of standard SAP MDG data models or has multiple instances to manage.

Gary Allemann, MD at Master Data Management, said, "The trend towards a composite business architecture means that more and more organisations are seeking to access data within SAP and make it available to external analytics and governance platforms, like Data360. This addition to Safyr makes it easier to access SAP MDG data and is well timed."

Safyr for SAP MDG is delivered as part of Silwood’s Safyr for SAP ERP product at no extra cost. It is available immediately to all Safyr for SAP customers who have an existing subscription or are current on support and maintenance.

About Silwood Technology Limited

Silwood Technology is the leading supplier of self-service metadata harvesting software products for Enterprise Application Packages including SAP, SAP BW, SAP S/4HANA, SAP MDG, SAP SuccessFactors HXM, Salesforce, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, Oracle E-Business Suite, and Microsoft Dynamics.

Silwood Technology’s product, Safyr^® supports customers and partners who need to accelerate the delivery of complex data governance and other critical data and information management transformation projects.

Sample customers include BASF, ATB Financial, Hewlett Packard, VW, Twitter, Henny Penny, Aldi, Centrica and many others in virtually all vertical sectors.

Silwood partners include Collibra, Alation, Informatica, Quest Erwin, Zeenea, Solidatus, Idera and more