Let me start my blog, first by thanking Markus Ganser for coming with intuitive and informational blogs, Wiki, and articles on EIM and particularly on Enterprise and Embedded Master Data Management
All the views provided here are my personal opinions and based out of my experience with MDM and do not necessarily reflect my employer’s. Please treat the inputs in this blog as just opinions and you should definitely seek professional expertise and opinion before making your business decisions.
Before proceeding further let me talk about what is Enterprise and Embedded MDM?
Enterprise MDM:
• Incorporates and complements embedded MDM by extending the overall MDM footprint from SAP Business Suite to full enterprise usages.
• In-breadth MDM usage
• Typically, enterprise MDM comprises of SAP Master Data Governance and SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management, featuring ready-to-run or prepackaged solutions based on a technology foundation for data quality, Workflow, UI etc.
• Enterprise MDM is application and system agnostic and supports all domains for master data consolidation, harmonization and governance.
• This scenario supports business initiatives such as mergers & acquisitions, divestitures, supply chain optimization, or data governance
Embedded MDM:
• Central MDM on top of the SAP Business Suite (embedded MDM) while also covering application-agnostic contexts supporting all domains and MDM use cases in the enterprise (enterprise MDM).
• In-depth MDM usage
• Ready-to-run master data governance for specific SAP master data domains, tailored for central data maintenance on top of the SAP Business Suite. Embedded MDM comprises of SAP Master Data Governance applications.
• Embedded MDM provides centralized master data creation, maintenance and governance for SAP Business Suite for selected data domains, such as financials, material, and supplier.
• Embedded MDM is a natural extension of the business processes running in SAP Business Suite by adding pre-built master data creation, change, and distribution processes and stewardship.
Key product offerings that address the above mentioned needs are:
SAP Master Data Governance provides ready-to-run governance applications for specific SAP master data domains. SAP Master Data Governance applications are tailored for central data maintenance in SAP Business Suite environments, and cover the needs of embedded MDM.
SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management is the proven multi-domain solution for master data management in application-agnostic contexts and heterogeneous environments. The combination of SAP NetWeaver MDM and SAP MDG will typically cover all requirements of enterprise MDM.
SAP BusinessObjects Data Services is SAP’s strategic go-forward data integration and data quality solution. With its capabilities to access, transform, cleanse, and enrich any type of data and its data profiling, impact analysis and data lineage features SAP BusinessObjects Data Services is perfectly suited as a data integration and data quality layer with in an embedded or enterprise MDM initiative.
Aim is to provide high quality data, measure and improve data quality for all business processes using
• SAP BusinessObjects Data Quality Management : to profile, cleanse and improve data
• SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management: to harmonize and centrally manage master data. Deliver a Single View of Business Information
• SAP Master Data Governance for Financials to consolidate chart of accounts across the enterprise. Eliminate manual maintenance of financial master data in multiple systems
• SAP Data Migration : provides proven methodologies to reduce risk in migration projects
One scenario which I can think of in future is, customers who are currently in MDM platform, would like to upgrade to Enterprise MDM, and for that huge volume of Master data which is cleansed and maintained centrally has to be migrated to MDG boxes.
Not to forget the global data synchronization (GDS) option of SAP NetWeaver MDM which helps companies standardize and synchronize supply chain data with trading partners is still intact until SAP comes with some new options, if a Customer wants to go with Enterprise MDM and still wants to use the option of GDS.
Apart from the core data management techniques and awareness of ETL tools, I feel a technical consultant should be focusing on the below mentioned technologies to build expertise and capabilities, if they want to be on the top of these new service offerings and provide true value to customers:
• Obviously the first and foremost is functional expertise about the Master data like Finance master data, Material, Supplier etc.
• Data Migration to SAP Business Suite using the new service offering, SAP Data Migration Services.
• Need of the hour is to focus on SAP BusinessObjects Data Services Integration, the underlying data quality engine across all use cases particularly for data enrichment and other features it has.
• SAP NetWeaver BPM critical.
• Since SAP Master Data Governance is developed and delivered on same technical platform as the Business Suite expertise in BADI’s, ABAP, SAP Business Workflow etc is essential.
• MDG data models per domain.
• PI, for integration with different systems.
• Enterprise Portal and Web Dynpro, as SAP has provided lot of pre-configured content and is going to come with a lot in future.
• BRFplus is the key for building the decision trees and tables for integrating BPM , MDM and MDG.
• Data Replication Framework (DRF).
• SAP Extended ECM by Open Text and Information Lifecycle Management.
• Last but not the least, best pick of the User Interfaces which fits the requirement.
Please refer to Markus Wiki for additional insights and information:
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SAPMDM/Integrating+SAP+NetWeaver+MDM+with+SAP+BusinessObjects+Data+ServicesSAP MDM Tutorials | SAP MDM Training | SAP MDM Interview Questions |SAP MDM Books
