Data Integration Solutions for Master Data Management

Integrating Master Data Across Disparate Systems

Master data is data that drives a business—customer data, product data, supplier data. Jane Griffin, a columnist for DMReview, defines master data as “...the information required to create and maintain an enterprise-wide ‘system of record’ for core business entities, in order to capture business transactions and measure results for these entities.”

Spanning all organizational business functions, master data is spread across multiple disparate systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Intelligence (BI) systems; legacy and mainframe systems; partner and supplier systems; and individual spreadsheets, documents, .pdf files, and desktop databases.

For businesses to harness the full potential of their master data housed in these disparate systems, they need to:

• Access all systems where master data is stored
• Manage system performance for simultaneous bulk volume and real-time processing
• Maintain adequate data quality while both the volume of data—and a company’s dependence on that data to run the business—increases

How is your business responding to these challenges? Consider the following questions:

• In how many different places does your company store data about your customers? Or data about your products? Or about your suppliers?
• How often does your company have to manually reconcile data between business systems?
• How long does it take for your company to introduce a new product?
• How long before your sales organization is aware of product changes?
• Does your company have the data needed for the latest compliance initiative, such as Basel II, Sarbanes-Oxley, or RFID?
• How much of the data inside your business is actually used or even usable by key decision makers?

Master Data Management Applications and Systems

Software vendors like SAP, IBM, i2, Oracle, and Siebel Systems offer Master Data Management (MDM) applications and systems. An MDM system is a software application with predefined data models, prebuilt workflows and business processes, and prepackaged user interfaces to manage master data elements like customer data, product data, supplier/vendor data, etc. Some of these offerings are specific to one master data type—customer data, for example—while others are generic and can be customized to manage any kind of master data.

While these MDM applications give master data a home base for command and control, organizations must still integrate their master data with their various business systems and the MDM application, and vice versa.

Getting Maximum ROI from MDM Applications

This is where Informatica can help. While Informatica does not make a MDM application, we provide the enterprise data integration foundation that enables the MDM application to integrate with the existing business systems, delivering maximum value from a company's MDM application and its master data.

Informatica provides a single enterprise data integration platform to help organizations access, transform, and integrate master data from a large variety of systems and deliver that information to their MDM applications. The Informatica enterprise data integration platform offers the key capabilities that businesses need to access, integrate, migrate, and consolidate master data, which reduces complexity, ensures consistency, and empowers the business.

Key capabilities enable the Informatica platform to tackle the challenges that businesses face when integrating their MDM applications with the rest of their existing enterprise systems:

• Enterprise Data Access. Business systems may have complex interfaces. Accessing, extracting, and loading master data can be error-prone and time-consuming. The Informatica platform’s unparalleled access to a variety of enterprise systems—including packaged applications, mainframes, enterprise application integration (EAI) tools, databases—enables the MDM application to integrate easily with the rest of the enterprise, and Informatica’s ability to capture changes as they occur supports low-latency synchronization of master data wherever needed. The Informatica platform also provides access to a variety of structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data formats—including Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and PDF files—creating a powerful tool for delivering holistic master data to the business.
• Data Analysis and Profiling. To understand how master data housed in existing disparate systems relates to each other and to the MDM application, there is a need to analyze and profile the master data in all systems—often starting with the MDM application and the desired results and working back to the existing systems. The data analysis and data profiling capabilities of the Informatica data integration platform help IT departments understand the current state of their company’s master data in existing systems and plan MDM application implementations accordingly.
• Data Correction and Cleansing. Master data is often of questionable or poor quality. Therefore, master data needs to be corrected and cleansed before integration with an MDM application. The Informatica platform’s data correction and cleansing capability enables MDM application implementations to meet business needs by delivering high quality data to the MDM application.
• Data Transformation. Master data is likely to be stored in various systems in different formats, all of which are likely to be different from the format inside the MDM application. The master data needs to be transformed from each system format to the MDM application’s format and vice versa. The Informatica platform’s robust data transformation capabilities accelerate MDM application implementations by providing the right master data in the right format.