Can we use SAP MDM for Central master data management?

Can we use SAP MDM for Central master data management?

SAP MDM for CMDM-

The prerequisite for CMDM is that other two scenarios has already been implemented which are COnsolidation of Master data and Harmonization to target systems. In a central hub MDM implementation any creation, Update, deletion of a master record has to be performed in SAP MDM first and then syndicated to remote systems-ECC. While implementing CMDM we come across following limitations in SAP MDM:

1. Global Vs Contextual Data- One of the key challeneges in MDM project is to decide which attributes will be part of MDM data model. As suggested by SAP only global attributes should be in MDM. The limitations can be further categorized as following-

• Nested Qualified/Tuples not supported.
• Validations/Assignments/Matching strategies not supported for Qualifiers.
• CHange tracking not supported for Qualified fields.

    2.   User Interface for CRUD operations- MDM GUIs are not very user friendly and has following limitations-

• Use of Constraints/Masks very limited required for controlling access.
• COntrolling display of sensitive fields to users.
• Controlling access for modifications in matching strategy in Data manager.
• ...........

Above limitations require development of Portal UI which further requires gretaer time/efforts. Portal acts as a thin client for managing the CRUD operations on MDM database for specific repositories.
3. Processes around Master data- Implementing CMDM implies also mapping the processes existing around master data, like governance rules, Approval workflow. This can be achieved via MDM native workflow which have following limitations-

• Fixed roles and Users for tasks
• Parallel steps not supported
• Limited workflow history and performance
• Limited features in Notification Steps, sending customized information is not possible.

4. Deriving the number ranges
MDM supports numbering for master records either based on Auto ID(calculated fields) or by defining remote systems with Key generation. Neither of the two methods supports external number generation which is pretty much used for some of the Customer and Vendor account groups.
Suggestion- Seeing the limitations above we can opt to use MDM for CMDM only when the Data model, Processes, Governance etc are kept simple and restricted to mostly Global attributes. A very feasible design is use CMDM for the global attributes only and for the local attributes( Sales data, Purchasing Org data etc) develop governance processes in the local systems like ECC.