Managing Master Data

8/12/2019 Managing Master Data

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Managing Master Data with

KalidoMaster Data ManagementA Technical Overview

White Paper


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White Paper: Managing Master Data with Kalido Master Data Management

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Executive summary

Master data management (MDM) is a discipline that continues to gain momentum in organizations globally.

This is due to the need for accurate data used in both operational and analytical operations of the business.

Use cases where MDM is critical include data harmonization for analytics, data harmonization for operations,

hierarchy management for business intelligence (BI), operational data governance, systems migration and

consolidation, and enterprise-wide MDM.

To optimize and gain insight into corporate performance, companies make major investments in operational

systems to manage their business processes, and in analytical systems to analyze business transactions

in aggregate. The context for these processes and transactionsmaster dataincludes information about

products, customers, suppliers, regions, employees, charts of accounts, key performance indicators, brands

and more. Organizations could literally have hundreds of different types, or domains, of master data used to run

and manage the business.

Master data is often duplicated and managed in multiple systems. Poor master data used in operational

business processes can lead to unfavorable business operating results and performance. Poor master data in

business intelligence results in inaccurate views of corporate performance leading to millions of dollars in lost

sales and cost savings opportunities annually. These problems are most acute in enterprises which regularly

undergo mergers and acquisitions; which introduce, retire, buy and sell product lines; that open and close

locations; and that operate under different and changing regulatory environments across corporate divisions or

geographic regions. This can make it nearly impossible to gain consolidated views of enterprise performance.

The issue of managing master data is getting greater visibility due to pressure to increase corporate

transparency, data governance, accountability, and performance on an enterprise-wide basis.

This white paper describes implementing a master data management solution using Kalido Master DataManagement, an MDM application which is available standalone and as part of the Kalido Information Engine.

Kalido MDM is a workow-driven, web-based application that enables business people to collaboratively dene,

consolidate, authorize, publish, and maintain master data. Once you have developed a repository of clean and

accurate master data, you can use that data to make business processes more consistent, and analytics more

accurate, and make it available to business users across your organization so they have access to the clean

information they need to do their jobs.


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Table of Contents

Master Data Management Overview 4

Master Data Management Challenges 6

Kalido Master Data Management Key Capabilities 7

What is Kalido Master Data Management 7 Kalido Master Data Management Architecture 13

Kalido Master Data Management Application 13

Kalido Master Data Management Users 14

Master Data Modeling 14

Integrating Kalido Master Data Management with a Data Warehouse 15

Managing Master Data in Operational Systems 15

Summary 16

About Kalido Master Data Management 17

About Kalido 17


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Master Data Management Overview

Master data (or reference data) represents a companys business vocabularythe business entities,

terminology, denitions and classications used to describe business information. Master data provides the

context for recording transaction datafacts about events in the business.

Consider the following transaction:

Sales rep Laurie Murphy sold 100 8-foot cherry dining tables to Rochester Furniture on May 29 for $45,000 at

a prot of $15,000.

Data collected from this transaction description has many different uses:

Heres how this translates into a requirements breakdown by a business analyst:

The context for this transaction the master data includes who made the sale, what was sold, when it was

sold and to whom. For accuracy in the business process of collecting this order, it is important to get the

information about the product correct for inventory management reasons and accurate address information

for shipping reasons, etc. And, if you lack an accurate list of sales reps, products, time periods and customers

it is impossible to accurately analyze sales performance and protability by customer, by product and by sales

territory.

This is a hierarchical representation as seen by an architect:


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Further, there are a number of other considerations related to the master data: what system or systems is

this data stored in? What business rule determines prot? How is this data used in other downstream systems

such as data warehouses, data marts and business intelligence tools?

Master data inconsistencies can cause other problems:

Operational silos where divisions within an enterprise have different nomenclature, denitions and visibility

into the business. This results in misunderstandings, operational inefciencies, weaker customer service,

channel conict and other margin- and agility-lowering effects

Inconsistent customer, supplier and product IDs across operational systems make it impossible to get a

single view of customer and supplier relations or product performance on a global basis

As a result, your organization could lose millions annually due to lost cross-sell and upsell opportunities to a

single customer, or repeatedly manufacturing and selling unprotable products. The real benet of master data

management is better data to improve business outcomes.

50% of enterprises surveyed maintain master data separately in 11 or more source

systems

50% of enterprises surveyed consider master data management to be a high or top

priority

Over 80% of enterprises surveyed plan on centralizing master data management

Source: Tower Group


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Master Data Management Challenges

Managing enterprise master data is challenging. Consider the following scenario:

A global producer of consumer food products wants to analyze protability trends over the last two years by

product, channel, customer, brand and region.

Challenge #1: Master data required for this analysis (products, customers) is duplicated in multiple operational

systems (CRM, ERP, etc.) that run independently in each region. It must be consolidated and inconsistencies

must be eliminated.

Challenge #2:Some of the master data is outside the scope of operational systemslists of brands and

channels are supplied by business users, or necessary information comes from third party external systems

not under your control. Extending operational systems to support this data enterprise-wide can be prohibitively

expensive or simply not possible due to the inherent restrictions in how some operational systems are

constructed or in how the external data is delivered.

Challenge #3: Denitions for some master data exist in programming logic (such as spreadsheet functions and

data transformation routines) and are therefore inaccessible to users and systemsthis needs to be available

and controlled by business people.

Challenge #4: The accuracy of this companys prot analysis depends on associations between customers

and channels, channels and regions, products and brands, etc. being correct. Master data is inter-related and

hierarchical; referential integrity must be validated.

Challenge #5:Business users must be integrated into the master data management processthey are best

equipped to reconcile data inconsistencies, contribute missing data, ensure the validity of the data, authorize its

use and maintain its validity throughout its lifecycle.

Challenge #6:Analyzing historic trends is difcultcustomers merge, products are discontinued, etc., but the

operational systems from which master data is sourced reect the present. Historic master data views must be

maintained to support trend analysis and audits.

Challenge #7:Different views of master data must co-exist to support different business functions. A solution

must capture and map between the different master data views.

Customer Success StoryA consumer packaged goods company is managing hundreds of thousands of customer,

supplier, nancial, product and other master data items in Kalido MDM. Business data

experts at the head ofce author and dene central views of the data (including business

denitions), and co-workers in other countries map their domestic views of the data into

Kalido MDM to facilitate BI reporting and information exchange across divisions. The

information is accessible to employees via a corporate intranet to help everyone gain

greater visibility into the business.


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Challenge #8: Once master data is prepared, it must be transferable, in whole or in part, to support the

organizations necessary business processes. These processes can include facilitating business analyses

via a data warehouse and in transaction systems for greater operational consistency across all facets of the

business: supply chain, nancial, human resources, customer relationship management and others.

Challenge #9: Master data is as important to people as to systemsit should be accessible throughout

the enterprise to increase corporate transparency and help everyone understand far-reaching customer

relationship implications and market presence of brands, etc. for efcient operational execution and reporting.

Based on common scenarios and challenges like those above, Global 2000 companies are discovering that an

ideal master data management solution must deliver the following capabilities:

Manage all types/domains of master data

Ensure relationships between master data domains can be created and managed

Provide environment for central authoring and managing custom master data domains and entities

Manage master data through its life stages and all validation processes

Match and harmonize incoming master data from multiple sources Model and maintain simple and complex hierarchies for reporting and analysis

Provide a simple interface for business users to use clean master data

Automate and drive the data stewardship process when people need to make decisions

Handle changes in structure with changing requirements, keeping an historical record

Provide a secure environment with an audit trail for the full lifecycle of data

Kalido MDM meets these requirements, enabling companies to create a central master data repository where

business and technical users collaboratively control, enrich and authorize master data to ensure consistency

and semantic validity.

Kalido Master Data Management Key Capabilities

What is Kalido Master Data Management?

Kalido Master Data Management (MDM) is an agile software application for harmonizing, storing, managing

and governing master data over time. It increases the consistency and accuracy of business processes and

corporate performance reporting by enabling business people to collaboratively manage, author and control

master data in a workow-driven environment. It produces a master data repository from which golden copy

master data can be distributed to enterprise applications and business people throughout the organization.

Customer Success Story

An international brewing company increased business transparency and operational

efciency across its brand companies by publishing 3,000 business policy and metric

denitions, along with customer, product and market master data to employees via

Kalido MDM.


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Kalido Master Data Managements unique capabilities include:

Multiple MDM Domain Support

A large enterprise typically has hundreds of masterdata categories and Kalido MDM can manage all of

themfrom products, customers, brands, markets

and territories to suppliers, nancial data, key

performance indicators and more. Therefore, a key

objective which customers have come to expect

when evaluating MDM tools is to manage all types/

domains of master data. Many competing MDM

solutions excel at managing a single domain, such

as customer or product, but struggle to handle other

domains. This is often due to the hard-coded nature

of those tools data model. Kalidos generic data

model means there is no inherent bias to overcome when supporting the many different master data types

needed to drive better information in business processes.

Benefts:

A exible model allows a business to grow without code or software boundaries preventing change, while

maintaining a full audit trail of events and history

A single tool can be used for all master data types

Consistency as domains are added

Easier for IT to support and maintain, instead of different tools used for each different domain

Sophisticated Modeling

As master data domains are added to an MDM

repository, the number and complexity of relationships

between the data grow exponentially. A key objective is

to ensure relationships between master data domains

can be created and managed. Kalido supports complex

modeling concepts such as supertyping and subtyping

which makes it possible to support inheritance of

attributes of a supertype among its subtypes. Kalidos

business information model allows IT and business

users to dene and manage the business rules and

validation rules to ensure that master data is t for use

in the business processes it supports. Additionally, the

model is easily accessible, and understandable, by

both IT and non-technical business users.

Benefts:

Easily handles the many complex data relationships and entities

Common understanding between IT and line of business end users

Manage all master data domains from day one.

Ensure relationships between master data domains canbe created and managed


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Data Authoring

Unfortunately, not all data that is required for some business

processes can be authored in an operational system.

Additionally, it is often desirable to provide a central place

to author new master data new customer records, new

products, etc. and distribute it to operational systems,

especially in a heterogeneous systems landscape with

different elds for each piece of master data used across

systems. The objective of data authoring is to provide an

environment for managing custom master data domains and

entities. Kalido offers a model-driven, automatically generated

user interface for authoring data. Instead of custom screen

coding and development, Kalido MDM populates screens

based on the context of the task, and validation of authored

data is driven by the model, so you can be sure that the new

master data elements match the requirements.

Benefts:

Enhanced data integrity when creating new master data records with data matching to ensure quality

Increased exibility and fully exposed API

Support for user-specic requirements

Data Matching

It would be ideal if master data was the same across

all your systems that run your business processes,

but unfortunately it is not. Master data comes from

multiple sources, some of which may not be internal

to your organization. Therefore a critical requirement

is to match and harmonize incoming master data

from multiple data sources. Kalido meets this need by

allowing customers to dene, test, save and execute

complex data matching and mapping rules without

writing any code. This capability allows you to match

different data values across multiple sources to the

central master data repository. The matching engine

in Kalido MDM accurately nds matches between

attributes, even for incomplete or partial similarity.

Kalido offers an intuitive user interface for creating

and previewing match results so stewards can conrm in real t ime if the match rules are appropriate. Combined

with Kalido MDMs workow approval with human and system decision thresholds, true matches are automated

and manual review is only required for potential matches. Additionally, Kalido can match any type of data, not

just name & address (which is often the case in other matching engines) and offers error-tolerant lookup.

Benefts:

Easily manage increasing master data volumes and complexity

Vastly reduced manual effort saves costs

Provide environment for managing custom masterdata domains and entities

Match and harmonize incoming master data frommultiple sources


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browsing, a web search result display for nding customer records, product records, et al, and an ability to raise

a change request when they see something that needs to be updated.

Benefts: Gives business users direct access to the most accurate information they need to do their jobs

Better engagement with MDM consumers in the stewardship process

Workow

Workow in MDM is perhaps the most important capability

in ensuring a smooth data stewardship process. Some MDM

tools dont support workow, relying instead on the customer

to integrate the MDM tool with an existing workow engine. In

addition to requiring on-site integration by the customer, this

adds unnecessary expense and adds a new point of failureto an MDM implementation. Kalido MDM offers embedded

workow to automate and drive and guide the data stewardship

process when people need to make decisions. Its exible,

robust built-in workow routes master data validation actions to

specic users or groups for human resolution and approval. It is

event-driven and allows you to build exible and comprehensive

state transition steps. While external workow integration is

not required, sometimes it is desirable to include external

processing before moving to the next step in a workow and

integration into operation systems for enrichment. Kalido

supports user exits via an API to external code modulesto support these complex workows. Taken together, the

capabilities of Kalido MDM easily manage increasingly complex governance and stewardship processes for

delivering accurate and consistent master data to your business processes.

Benefts:

Automated data stewardship process saves time and effort

Focuses data stewards on only resolving exceptions

Worklists

Worklists in Kalido MDM are used in combination with workow when you want to process a set of master data

subjects as a group. The subjects are validated, approved, authorized and published as a unit. This is used

extensively to process multiple subjects which gather information from various sources and must be complete

before publication. The worklist feature allows multiple subjects to move through an enrichment approval

process before becoming master data, instead of having to be handled and processed individually.

Benefts:

Working on multiple subjects as a group reduces processing time

Fewer workow tasks required for handling like processes

Automate and drive the data stewardship process

when people need to make decisions


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Change Management

As your business and business processes evolve, so

will your master data. A key requirement is therefore to

handle changes in master data structure with changingrequirements, keeping an historical record for cases

where you need historical views. Because Kalido MDM

is model-driven, it can easily change design denition

as your business evolves. It supports time-variant

capture and management of master data values by

category, and supports full logging of changes to not

only the model, but also to actual master data values.

Benefts:

Master data is always up to date with how the

business is run and managed Reduced effort and cost to maintain timely data

Easily audit historical states for more informed

changes

Security & Audit

Security and audit are of course key requirements of any MDM implementation. For many use cases, a secure

environment with an audit trail is a critical capability, particularly for any regulatory or statutory complianceuse. Kalido supports role-based security, and the role can be assigned at any level in the data. Users can be

managed in LDAP and Active Directory. For data security, Kalido supports object and data-level security using

ACLs. For data values, Kalido keeps track of who changed the model and the data, and when it was changed, as

well as history tracking of prior master data values. With this capability, customers have a corporate memory of

master data as it was at any point in time.

Benefts:

Bullet-proof audit trail for compliance tracking

Recreate prior model and master data views for easy historical comparison analysis.

Handle changes in structure with changing requirements,keeping an historical record

Time-variance is critically important to companies who need to recreate

historic views of master data to support trend analysis or audits.

Customer Success StoryA nancial services company governs changes to nancial master data such as chart of

account codes to ensure accurate statutory reporting and to increase visibility into data

lineage. Changes to nancial master data are made by users within Kalido MDM (rather

than within their various nancial systems), and via workow, the information is passed

to others for review and is used to drive automatic updates in nancial applications.

Central governance gets fast, accurate views of nancial performance with less

manpower spent on consolidated reporting and without the cost and delay of

standardizing accounting nomenclature across the company.


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Kalido Master Data Management Architecture

The Kalido Master Data Management architecture consists of three layers:

The Data layer, where the data sources reside

The Application layer, where the Kalido Master Data Management application is installed and where tasks

are run

The Presentation layer, which includes the Web Server, J2EE container and the browser

Kalido Master Data Management Application

Kalido MDM comprises three layers:

MDM Consumer a Web application designed for all users who need reliable, up-to-date business

information to execute their tasks and projects. It provides read-only access to all published master data.

Consumers can easily raise change requests against the data and monitor the progress of the changes.

Kalido MDM the main Web application where models are dened and deployed and all in-progress master

data is stored. Two Contexts facilitate the rapid ow of large volumes of data from source systems through

publication to the wide consumer audience. The Contexts represent data that has been published and is

visible in the MDM Consumer (Master Context) and data that requires more work (Working Context).

Data Matching Module a fully integrated module that allows data managers to dene, test, save and

execute complex data matching and mapping rules. It complements MDMs workow-driven data cleansing

system with powerful lookup technology that allows data stewards to overcome content errors and data

inconsistencies that impair data quality and slow down typical deployments

The Kalido MDM Technical Architecture


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Kalido Master Data Management Users

Kalido Master Data Management has three types of user:

Administrators Often IT workers, they dene master data models, security,workows, worklists, templates and the user interface.

Providers Business users who collaboratively control, edit, authorize and

publish master data within the context of models, workows and worklists

created by an Administrator.

Consumers Business users who browse, search, and raise issues or

change requests on published master data to gain greater visibility into and

understanding of the business.

Master Data Modeling

Master data models dene master data structure, denitions and relationships.

Models can be highly conceptual and communicate rich business meaning

(which is why master data can be readily browsed by Consumers).

Data can be rapidly loaded into the model from disparate IT systems, even if

the incoming data does not rigidly conform to the model. As the data becomesconformant, it can be incrementally published to the Master Context where it is

immediately visible to all consumers.

Data that does conform to the model is loaded and published directly into the

Master Context

Models can be changed without reloading or reformatting published or in-

progress master data already stored in the master data repository. Users are

notied of the number of subjects that will become invalid if the modied model

is deployed. Upon deployment, invalid subjects are automatically brought back

into the Working Context to be enhanced until they are ready for re-publication.

Master data models

dene master data

structure, denitions

and relationships.

Models can be highly

conceptual and

communicate rich

business meaning,which is why master

data can be readily

browsed by

Consumers.

Kalido MDM Users and Roles


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Models can be created within Kalido MDM or they can be generated based on

models dened within an existing Kalido Information Engine structure, which

is in turn generated from a business model dened with Kalido Business

Information Modeler. The data model can be changed at any time. You can alsodene advanced data models directly via XML and the Kalido MDM Services

Application Programming Interface (API), which allows you to customize and

extend the Kalido MDM solution using .Net, JAVA, and Web Services.

Integrating Kalido Master Data Management with a Data Warehouse

The Kalido Information Engine includes a capability to build and operate

enterprise data warehouses. Driven by business models developed in Kalido

Business Information Modeler, it automates tasks such as data warehouse

schema design and generation, data loading, query denition, data mart

generation and more. Thus data warehouses meet new business needs

iteratively in days or weeks, not months.

Kalido MDM can import model denitions and data created in a Kalido data

warehouse, and export data back to it typically after the master data has been

authorized and published.

Kalido MDM helps assure consistent, accurate and trustworthy data is available

in the Kalido Information Engine for use in business intelligence applications.

For non-Kalido warehouses, Kalido MDM can be accessed in many ways to

fuel the analytical process through its API which is exposed as web services,

and directly from relational tables. Depending on the business requirement for

reporting and ad hoc analysis, master data in Kalido MDM can be mined and

supplied to meet any analytical questions. Kalido MDM can act as a central place

to manage and serve analytical requests for such things as multiple different

views on hierarchical roll ups or time-based MDM data reporting.

Managing Master Data in Operational Systems

In addition to supporting master data for downstream analytical uses, Kalido

MDM can be used to fuel upstream operational systems. With its robust

sophisticated modeling, it can handle multiple different business needs and

systems.

Once master data is accurate and consistent, Kalido MDM can export master

data in CSV, xed format, or XML for batch update or entry into operationalsystems. Kalido offers a Web services-based API that can be called in real-time

from or to operational systems for checking records against the golden copy

held in the Kalido MDM repository or to trickle feed a system with new authored

records of master data, also mentioned earlier in this paper.

A number of forms based tools such as MS InfoPath, Adobe LifeCycle, and BPM

tools are frequently used as part of this operational master data management

entry. To support this activity, Kalido MDM exposes real time matching

capabilities to aid in elevating duplicate entry into the operational system using

their internal Master Data as the golden standard for incoming records.

In addition to

supporting master

data for

downstreamanalytical uses,

Kalido MDM can

be used to fuel

upstream

operational

systems.


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SummaryKalido Master Data Management is a key data management component of

the Kalido Information Engine, and it uniquely enables business people tocollaboratively dene, consolidate, manage, authorize and publish master data

in a workow-driven, web-based environment without needing to modify

operational IT systems.

The benets of managing master data with Kalido MDM and distributing it to

enterprise data warehouses and employee information portals include:

Highly accurate and consistent business performance reporting

Greater visibility into the business for more efcient operations

The benets are achieved through the unique capabilities of Kalido MDM, which

include:

Manages any type of master data a large enterprise typically has hundreds

of master data categories and Kalido MDM can manage all of them from

products and customers to brands, markets, territories and more

Allows business users easy access to published master data so they can raise

issues or change requests as necessary

Facilitates data governance puts business people in control of master data

quality in a collaborative, workow-driven environment

Offers agile and exible master data modeling featuring powerful cataloging,

segmenting, merging and mapping facilities

Loads non-conformant master data instead of rejecting invalid master data,

all master data is loaded even if it doesnt conform to the master data model.

Valid data is published directly to the Master Context while other data is sent to

the Working Context for further manipulation. Workows ensure that the data,

or the model, is revised accordingly

Maintains master data history historic views can be recreated to support

audits and historical analysis as master data adapts to business changes over

time

Handles time-variance multiple date values are allowed over time

Allows publication of a set of data as a version preventing further editing byusers

Exchanges master data with other systems such as data warehouses, ERP

and other systems

Kalido MDM uniquely

enables business

people to

collaboratively dene,

consolidate, manage,

authorize and publish

master data in a

workow-driven,web-based

environment

without needing to

modify operational IT

systems.


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About Kalido Master Data Management

Kalido delivers the only business-centric MDM solution that supports data governance across the enterprise

With Kalido MDM, business users and decision makers can begin to trust their data and nally unlock the real

value of the true intelligence within their systems. To accomplish this, Kalido MDM offers mid-market and large

enterprises the core capabilities to model, manage and govern master data. The result? Better data that feeds

business processes to lead to better business outcomes.

About KalidoKalido is the leading provider of business-driven data governance software. Kalido enables companies to manage

data as a shared enterprise asset by supporting the business process of data management. Kalido software

has been deployed at more than 300 locations in over 100 countries, including 20 percent of the worlds most

protable companies as determined by Fortune Magazine. More information about Kalido can be found at: http://

www.kalido.com.
http://www.kalido.com/http://www.kalido.com/http://www.kalido.com/http://www.kalido.com/http://www.kalido.com/


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Contact Information

US Tel: +1 781 202 3200Eur Tel: +44 (0)845 224 1236

Email: [email protected]

or visit our website at

www.kalido.com

WP-TMDM10114

Copyright 2008-2011 Kalido. All rights reserved. Kalido, the Kalido logo and Kalidos product names are trademarks of Kalido.References to other companies and their products use trademarks owned by the respective companies and are for reference purpose only.

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