Master Data Management: Extracting Value from Your Most Important Intangible Asset.

SAP InsightIT Directions
MASTER DATA
MANAGEMENT::EXTRACTING VALUE FROM YOUR MOST IMPORTANT INTANGIBLE ASSETTable of Contents
Executive Agenda 1
The Next Level of Business Excellence 2
Overcoming Barriers to Master Data Management Excellence 4
Benefiting from Superior Master Data Management 5
The Case for Master Data Management 9
About the Author 10MASTER DATA
MANAGEMENT:
EXTRACTING VALUE FROM
YOUR MOST IMPORTANT
INTANGIBLE ASSET
Seth HalpernEXECUTIVE AGENDA
The vast majority (93%) of respondents in a 2006 task. True integration at the business process level ASUG/SAP Best Practices survey of the Americas' - where the real value lies - is not easy to attain.SAP Users' Group (ASUG) experienced data A number of issues have escalated the importance management issues during their most recent of master data management. For one, the amount projects. Data management was also identified of data in a typical organization has escalated as the root cause of problems in process dramatically in recent years. Another reason is improvement projects. the growing variety and geographic diversity of The best way to manage data depends on the an average company's business partners. Global unique characteristics of the data. For instance, sourcing, extended enterprises, and more frequent master data is reference data about key entities outsourcing increase the need to reconcile and within the organization, such as customers, centrally store data. A third incentive is mergers products, employees, and so on. Unlike and acquisitions (M&A). Nearly a trillion dollars in transactional data - for example, a sales order M&A deals were consummated in the United States - master data does not change frequently and in 2005 alone. Clearly, there's a strong need for typically involves a relatively small number of key companies to quickly and accurately integrate their attributes. Master data management - developing acquired data.a central corporate repository of standardized Intuitively, it's not difficult to recognize MDM's information - can be a vital contributor to business importance. But you may find it difficult to performance. Think of master data management articulate the actual business benefits associated (MDM) as a single source of truth: the home of with managing and leveraging high-quality master accurate data concerning everything that is vital to data. As a result, you might be less inclined or the company. less able to develop the kind of powerful business Many organizations operate under the belief case that master data management merits. This that they are using master data, but the truth SAP Insight explores the importance of master is that they are relying on data that is dispersed data and the barriers to achieving sound master and trapped in information silos throughout data, describes the ideal master data management the enterprise. This data - often inaccurate and solution, and explains the value and benefits of inconsistent - is propagated throughout the effective management of master data.organization and beyond. Organizations that attempt to achieve master data consistency across their distributed IT environment face an unenviable
Think of master data management (MDM) as a single source of truth: the home of accurate data concerning everything that is vital to the company.
SAP Insight| 1THE NEXT LEVEL OF BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
If your organization is like others, you are probably Volume of Entitieslooking to the quality of master data as the next best way to optimize business processes. Master data, As noted earlier, your organization's primary which refers to the key data entities (or categories) data entities generally are customers, products, that reside in your organization, includes employees, and suppliers. As the volume of data information about products, customers, employees, in any or all of these grows, the importance and and suppliers. This information is one of your complexity of managing the data increase. For company's most valuable intangible assets, which example, wholesale distribution companies may sell is why master data management is so important. hundreds of thousands or even millions of different SAP defines master data as the reliable, authoritative products. Maintaining accurate data on each of foundation of data used across many systems an... [download for more]