Section 13.2. SAP NetWeaver MDM

13.2. SAP NetWeaver MDM

Master data, when properly managed, can be an important model of an enterprise that allows a company to answer different questions about its business, including the following:

• Who are our largest customers?

• Who is our largest supplier?

• What raw materials do we buy the most?

• Are activities for purchasing appropriately consolidated?

There is an old joke about an economist stranded on a desert island with an engineer, a physicist, and a can of food. After the engineer and physicist explain their approaches to opening the can, they turn to the economist for his approach. "First, assume we have a can opener," the economist replies.

In the ESA world, with many systems containing potentially redundant or overlapping information managed by different service providers, it can be dangerous to make any assumptions about the quality, consistency, or understanding of the data landscape. Assuming that all data is clean, consistent, and well-understood is not that useful. But what can be done?

SAP NetWeaver MDM is a solution aimed directly at the problem of managing the quality of master data distributed across many systems. SAP NetWeaver MDM provides tools to analyze and clean data, create maps of the data in each repository, construct a centralized model that resolves inconsistencies, and transport and synchronize data as needed.

When you can understand what data resides where and move it around as needed, the task of developing composite applications becomes much easier. And while someday all master data may be created and maintained perfectly across all potential service providers, for the foreseeable future SAP NetWeaver MDM will be an important function in most large-scale corporate computing environments. This section will explain the basics of SAP NetWeaver MDM and will discuss why it is important to composite applications development.

13.2.1. What is master data?

Master data is data that lasts from one transaction to another in a business. If you are a customer of an online bookseller, your name, address, email, and any other data used each time you buy a book is master data. The list of the specific books that you are buying is transactional datadata that is specific to that order or transaction.

13.2.2. What is SAP NetWeaver MDM?

A clear view of master data is crucial to understanding a business. For example, if a business has five systems that are used to track sales and customer records stored in each, how does the business determine, for instance, which customers give it the most business? The business can determine the right answer to that question if the records that identify each customer in each database are mapped to a master record that provides a consolidated view of the information about a customer and an index of where all the data is located. In this way, when information about a specific customer is needed, the right records in each system can be looked up and the answer determined. The master record and index have to take into account the different ways information is looked up in each distributed database. One system might use the customer's Social Security number and another system might use the customer's credit card number, phone number, or some other identifier. The index has to map all of these different identifiers to a specific system.

What happens, though, if some of the data is bad, incorrect, or duplicated? For example, what happens if several records exist in one system for the same customer with different identifiers or misspellings? It would be impossible to get a comprehensive view of that customer until that data was cleaned. Once the data was cleaned and mapped to a central index, wouldn't it be nice if the business could access the data as if it were consolidated into a central repository? And wouldn't it be nice if the business could distribute clean subsets of the data to different applications? The answer to these questions is yes, and SAP NetWeaver MDM helps all of this to happen, as we will explain.

The first way SAP NetWeaver MDM helps is by providing a rich client interface for browsing and cleaning all the master data in the various enterprise applications in use at a company. From the ESA perspective, these enterprise applications can be thought of as service providers, but from the SAP NetWeaver MDM perspective, they are systems containing transactional and master data. SAP NetWeaver MDM allows the master data from each system to be transferred to SAP NetWeaver MDM, where it can be checked for duplicates, analyzed, mapped, and modeled. If the enterprise applications have facilities for providing access to the master data, it may be possible to correct errors from SAP NetWeaver MDM, but frequently it is necessary to use the master data management facilities of the enterprise applications to make corrections.

The second way SAP NetWeaver MDM helps is through a flexible modeling environment that allows a master record to be created to consolidate all of the information for a customer, supplier, or other element of the master data. It is in constructing this master record that the differences in indexes to the records are resolved, as well as the differences in values used in each database. For example, if one system uses A,B,C for certain values and another uses 1, 2, 3, the mapping to the master record puts these on the same scale.

The collection of all the master records for all customers becomes a powerful central repository that service providers and composite applications can use for analysis. Enterprise applications that are service providers can look in the central repository when a new customer is being created to see if that customer is already known to the company; if so, all of the information collected about that customer can be accessed and utilized. Composite applications can use a central repository to access in one place all that is known about a customer. Central repositories of master records can be created for not only customers, but also suppliers, materials, parts, and anything else kept in all of the enterprise applications.

The third way SAP NetWeaver MDM helps is by moving data back and forth between the central SAP NetWeaver MDM repository of master records and the systems of record corresponding to the enterprise applications. It can then move master records from the central database in SAP NetWeaver MDM back to the enterprise applications or to other locations that may need it. For example, a supplier may need to maintain information about parts to help fulfill orders.

Clean and consolidated master data has tremendous business value. At General Electric, whose consumer and industrial appliances division already uses SAP NetWeaver MDM, all of the product data has been loaded into the system. When one of the executives there sat down and began playing with the SAP NetWeaver MDM client, he found the system to be so intuitive that a light bulb above his head appeared almost immediately. He said, "I just found every single product we make that is stainless steel. I've never been able to do that before." The executive did that by clicking a mouse. In the past, he would have had to call the IT department; the IT department would have had to run some analytics, and eventually a report would have been created. This is but one example of the value that is created by having your data accessible and in one place. Other examples include being able to analyze global spending across all suppliers, and being able to populate public repositories of master data used for global data synchronization in the consumer products industry.

One way to categorize the value SAP NetWeaver MDM provides is to think of two related concepts: information quality and information synchronization. Information quality covers all the functionality provided to analyze and clean data and to keep errors from creeping back in. Information synchronization covers all of the functionality related to moving data back and forth from a central repository and synchronizing data across many systems.

13.2.3. What are the key capabilities of SAP NetWeaver MDM for information quality?

Preserving information quality through SAP NetWeaver MDM is an operational process that requires constant attention. Challenges include managing data spread across multiple systems and functions, and improving the quality of the data as it spreads, instead of having it deteriorate slowly over time. The solution is to have an organized process for inspecting data and finding the places where there are mismatches, determining where changes are required, and finally, approving those changes.

The data management task falls not on the occasional user who wants to look up, say, a particular SKU, but on a data management specialist. This person's job is to ensure that the consolidation process is occurring correctly (this should not be the job of the IT department because that arm of the organization is not familiar with the data). But imagine that you have one million customer records and 10 master data management specialists. Are they going to check addresses one record at a time? These specialists must be able to make decisions about 100 records or 1,000 records at a time, and that means they need to be able to find those 1,000 records.

Realizing the importance of the data specialist's role, SAP NetWeaver MDM includes rich client tools for managing data. This environment provides a powerful interface capable of looking at tens of thousands of records simultaneously, thus allowing for volume data maintenance. At the same time, SAP NetWeaver MDM includes thin-client portal components for remote data specialists who are doing data entry on an occasional basis.

The key idea to understanding SAP NetWeaver MDM's capabilities for information quality is that they excel at end-user productivity with an ease of use corresponding to desktop applications such as Word and Excel, unlike traditional technical programs for information maintenance. The master records in SAP NetWeaver MDM's central repository reside in memory so that access to them is virtually instantaneous. This makes SAP NetWeaver MDM's rich client able to sift through thousands of records at once. Algorithms for locating duplicate records and performing other cleaning and analysis functions execute immediately.

SAP NetWeaver MDM has several features that are unique among data management solutions. It uses highly flexible object models for data management that allow for:

• Predefined object models for customer, product, employee, and supplier

• An infinitely configurable schema for user-defined object models

• A rich repository for handling simple to complicated data taxonomy and hierarchies

These capabilities mean that the model of the central master records is flexible enough to handle the steady flow of new data sources that is common in most heterogeneous computing environments.

SAP NetWeaver MDM also provides, for the benefit of external composite applications, a duplicate check service for when a new item is being created. SAP NetWeaver MDM will automatically suggest that the user run a routine to check for duplicates in other systems that may contain the same item under a slightly different designation. This service checks whether an item is new or already exists in the master data.

There are other ways to use SAP NetWeaver MDM beyond operational data cleansing. Say you are looking for a subset of customers that fit the profile for an acquisition campaign you want to run. You run a query, but the results don't bring back enough customers that fit the initial parameter. With SAP NetWeaver MDM, you can look for the next best match based on demographics or other types of information that fit your search. In fact, sophisticated search capabilities allow users to search for and even find the proverbial needle in a haystack. These search capabilities allow users to find information that may have been miscategorized, entered in a different dimension or unit of measure, and so on.

This capability illustrates why SAP NetWeaver MDM is useful to the world of composite applications. It provides services that allow business applications to access data as well as to search and identify master data. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) needs a catalog; Supply Chain Management (SCM) needs one, and Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) needs one, too. SAP NetWeaver MDM can drive the management of those catalogs, and composite applications such as analytics leverage the services within SAP NetWeaver MDM to help find and visualize that master data.

Moving forward, SAP NetWeaver MDM will perform more sophisticated tasks, starting with create, read, update, and delete functions. This will allow for composite applications that store and read data directly from SAP NetWeaver MDM instead of replicating it into another repository. Future versions will also include functionality for using SAP NetWeaver MDM's quality management capabilities (validations, duplicate checks) through enterprise services.

13.2.4. What are the key capabilities of SAP NetWeaver MDM for information synchronization?

Information synchronization means moving information around a system landscape efficiently and effectively to achieve a business purpose. SAP NetWeaver MDM has facilities for handling several different types of information synchronization scenarios that are common in enterprise computing.

Master data consolidation is the process of bringing master data from a distributed set of systems into a central repository where it can be analyzed and cleaned. Master data consolidation uses cleansing, de-duplication, normalization, and taxonomy management functions for information quality as the data arrives in the central repository of master records. As part of the consolidation, all of the interactive capabilities for consolidation and quality analysis are brought to bear.

Master data harmonization is the automatic synchronization and distribution of globally relevant master data. SAP NetWeaver MDM has both automated and interactive distribution capabilities that ensure that as data changes in one application, other business applications that depend on that data are updated with a consistent view of key data as it changes in real time. This enables decision making based on the most accurate data. Master data harmonization takes advantage of SAP NetWeaver MDM's capabilities for matching and merging, tracking changes, ID mapping, and staging information.

Central MDM is a scenario in which master data for all participating enterprise applications is managed in one central repository. The ability to create master data is effectively turned off in each application. When new master datasay, for a customermust be created, an interface to the central repository is used and the master record is distributed to the enterprise applications that need it. This form of MDM can help ensure that all systems are always updated with clean and consistent reference data.

Global data synchronization is a comprehensive solution for distributing master data for use by partners that is an important part of the consumer product industry. Using global data synchronization, consumer product companies can publish enriched trade item data for exchange with retailers via data hubs (e.g., 1SYNC, which was formed from a merger of UCCnet and Transora). This allows business partners to use this information to communicate with the company that publishes the information and with each other, which enables seamless and error-free integration with backend ERP systems. SAP NetWeaver MDM's implementation of global data synchronization is certified by 1SYNC, the leading data pool for the consumer products industry.

The content management capabilities of SAP NetWeaver MDM include tools for intelligent image management, print publishing including layout and production design, product taxonomy and hierarchy management, staging, and data analysis.

With these capabilities, you can move data to where it needs to be and be sure that its quality is maintained.

13.2.5. How does SAP NetWeaver MDM help development of composite applications?

Now that our tour of SAP NetWeaver MDM's capabilities is complete, a clearer picture emerges of how SAP NetWeaver MDM enables both the development of composite applications and the core value of ESA.

What value can be provided from an inventory of services if the data that they are managing is incorrect or inconsistent? How can analytics have any meaning without high-quality data? How can you build a composite application if you cannot find the data that you need? How can you create interfaces for mobile devices if you cannot stage and synchronize data and move it back and forth with precision?

SAP NetWeaver MDM, in essence, helps restore the consistency and data quality that existed when an entire enterprise could be run from a single database. SAP NetWeaver MDM helps create and maintain a consistent view of normalized, harmonized master data that then can be used within a composite application. SAP NetWeaver MDM also provides the centralized services for maintaining and managing master data.

Eventually, much of SAP NetWeaver MDM's functionality will be available to composite applications as enterprise services. The first such service will be the unified key mapping service that allows the index of master records to be consulted so that master data can be located wherever it resides. Composite applications will be able to use the unified key mapping service to navigate all available master data. In future releases of SAP NetWeaver MDM, services for finding duplicate data, controlling distribution and synchronization, and performing other functions will become available.

SAP NetWeaver MDM will play a key role in supporting information composition, the process of finding the information needed and consolidating access to it in a single service for use in a composite. In the future, it is likely that SAP NetWeaver MDM's capabilities will be put to use in creating a distributed network of data in which ownership of each portion of data is clearly assigned to one service provider that manages the data and distributes it to other service providers that may need it.