Enterprise SOA

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 ...