Master data forms the core of any Enterprise data that is referenced in day-to-day business processes. It ensures smooth operation of business processes and helps in making well-informed decisions. Over longer time periods, master data hardly changes as compared to business transactional data. Master data objects for any organization primarily comprises of the following:
Product master
Customer master
Supplier master
Employee master
Master data within a company might be available in several different views. This leads to different departments or areas in a company to create different versions of a master data record that is further multiplied by the trading partners along the value chain.
Master Data Management seeks to ensure consistent and high-quality master data in a heterogeneous system environment. This makes MDM an Enterprise-wide task comprising of policies and responsibilities for managing the master data of a company, involving cooperation from the business units.
MDM provides access to consistent data that forms the basis of dynamic services fuelling business processes. These business processes need to know how the translating and interpreting key master data go beyond the application boundaries. MDM is the pre-requisite for organizations to cleanse their master data and step up to the next milestone of service-oriented architecture.
SAP NetWeaver MDM provides the solution for previously described scenarios and ensures business processes run smoothly and efficiently.
For more information and examples of business processes that benefit from SAP NetWeaver MDM, see the online SAP documentation: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwmdm71/helpdata/en/47/1c5928cd0412b8e10000000a1553f7/content.htm.