Master Data Management: An Oracle White Paper June 2010
Master Data Management: An Oracle White Paper June 2010
Master Data Management: An Oracle White Paper June 2010
Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1
Overview............................................................................................................. 2
Enterprise data ................................................................................................... 4
Transactional Data ........................................................................................ 4
Operational MDM .................................................................................... 5
Analytical Data .............................................................................................. 5
Analytical MDM ........................................................................................ 5
Master Data ................................................................................................... 5
Enterprise MDM ....................................................................................... 6
Information Architecture ................................................................................. 6
Operational Applications ............................................................................. 6
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) ............................................. 7
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) .................................................... 7
The Data Quality Problem....................................................................... 7
Analytical Systems......................................................................................... 8
Enterprise Data Warehousing (EDW) and Data Marts ...................... 8
Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL)................................. 9
Business Intelligence (BI)......................................................................... 9
The Data Quality Problem....................................................................... 9
Ideal Information Architecture ................................................................. 10
Oracle Information Architecture .............................................................. 11
Master Data Management Processes ............................................................ 13
Profile ........................................................................................................... 14
Consolidate .................................................................................................. 15
Govern ......................................................................................................... 15
Share ............................................................................................................. 15
Leverage ....................................................................................................... 16
Oracle MDM High Level Architecture ........................................................ 16
MDM Platform Layer ................................................................................ 17
Application Integration Services ........................................................... 17
Enterprise Service Bus ...................................................................... 17
Business Process Orchestration Services ....................................... 17
Business Rules .................................................................................... 18
Event-Driven Services ...................................................................... 19
Identity Management......................................................................... 19
Web Services Management............................................................... 19
Analytic Services ...................................................................................... 20
Enterprise Performance Management ............................................ 20
Data Warehousing ............................................................................. 20
Business Intelligence ......................................................................... 21
INTRODUCTION
Fragmented inconsistent Product data slows time-to-market, creates supply chain
inefficiencies, results in weaker than expected market penetration, and drives up the
Many organizations are not realizing the
cost of compliance. Fragmented inconsistent Customer data hides revenue
anticipated ROI in their existing recognition, introduces risk, creates sales inefficiencies, and results in misguided
applications. marketing campaigns and lost customer loyalty 1 . Fragmented and inconsistent
Supplier data reduces supply chain efficiencies, negatively impacts spend control
initiatives, and increases the risk of supplier exceptions. “Product”, “Customer”,
and “Supplier” are only three of a large number of key business entities we refer to
as Master Data.
Master Data is the critical business information supporting the transactional and
analytical operations of the enterprise. Master Data Management (MDM) is a
Oracle MDM helps organizations realize combination of applications and technologies that consolidates, cleans, and
the return on existing and new application augments this corporate master data, and synchronizes it with all applications,
investments.
business processes, and analytical tools. This results in significant improvements in
operational efficiency, reporting, and fact based decision-making.
Over the last several decades, IT landscapes have grown into complex arrays of
different systems, applications, and technologies. This fragmented environment has
created significant data problems. These data problems are breaking business
processes; impeding Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP), and Supply Chain Management (SCM) initiatives;
corrupting analytics; and costing corporations billions of dollars a year. MDM
attacks the enterprise data quality problem at its source on the operational side of
the business. This is done in a coordinated fashion with the data warehousing /
analytical side of the business. The combined approach is proving itself to be very
successful in leading companies around the world.
This paper will discuss what it means to ‘manage’ master data and outlines Oracle’s
“Through 2010, 70 percent of Fortune 1000 MDM solution 2 . Oracle’s technology components are ideal for building master data
organizations will apply MDM programs to management systems, and Oracle’s pre-built MDM solutions for key master data
ensure the accuracy and integrity of
objects such as Product, Customer, Supplier, Site, and Financial data can bring real
commonly shared business information for
compliance, operational efficiency and business value in a fraction of the time it takes to build from scratch. Oracle’s
competitive differentiation purposes (0.7 MDM portfolio also includes tools that directly support data governance within the
probability).”
master data stores. What’s more, Oracle MDM utilizes Oracle’s Application
Gartner Integration Architecture to create MDM Aware Applications 3 and integrate the
high quality authoritative master data into the IT landscape. This fusion of
1 Customer Data Integration – Reaching a Single Version of the Truth, Jill Dyche, Evan Levy Wiley & Sons,
2006
2 Oracle Master Data Management, an Oracle Data Sheet, URL
3 MDM Aware Applications, an Oracle Whitepaper, URL
applications and technology creates a solution superior to other MDM offerings on
the market.
OVERVIEW
How do you get from a thousand points of data entry to a single view of the
business? This is the challenge that has faced companies for many years. Service
High quality customer information was
Oriented Architecture (SOA) is helping to automate business processes across
critically important for Areva’s deployment disparate applications, but the data fragmentation remains. Modern business
of major new application suites, including
SCM and CRM. Oracle Customer Hub analytics on top of terabyte sized data warehouses are producing ever more relevant
provided the unique customer database
that can be shared by all applications
and actionable information for decision makers, but the data sources remain
managing customer data and the critical fragmented and inconsistent. These data quality problems continue to impact
data quality tools needed to increase our
customer knowledge. With Oracle operational efficiency and reporting accuracy. Master Data Management is the key.
Customer Hub at the center of the Areva IT
landscape, customer data is collected from It fixes the data quality problem on the operational side of the business and
all relevant applications, harmonized, augments and operationalizes the data warehouse on the analytical side of the
merged, enriched with D&B data, and
published to operational and analytical business. In this paper, we will explore the central role of MDM as part of a
systems. ROI has been measured at 38%
over 4 years with a 37 month payback. complete information management solution.
Florence Legacy, Project Manager Master Data Management has two architectural components:
Bruno Billy, Data Manager
Areva T&D
• The technology to profile, consolidate and synchronize the master data
across the enterprise
• The applications to manage, cleanse, and enrich the structured and
unstructured master data
MDM must seamlessly integrate with modern Service Oriented Architectures in
order to manage the master data across the many systems that are responsible for
data entry, and bring the clean corporate master data to the applications and
processes that run the business.
MDM becomes the central source for accurate fully cross-referenced real time
master data. It must seamlessly integrate with data warehouses, Enterprise
Performance Management (EPM) applications, and all Business Intelligence (BI)
“The master data management system
gave us a single, integrated view of our systems, designed to bring the right information in the right form to the right
customers, partners, and suppliers. The person at the right time.
information helps us run our business
more effectively and ensures we make In addition to supporting and augmenting SOA and BI systems, the MDM
sound decisions.”
applications must support data governance. Data Governance is a business process
Kim Hyoung-soo, Section Chief
Process Innovation Team, MDM Section
for defining the data definitions, standards, access rights, quality rules. MDM
Hanjin Shipping executes these rules. MDM enables strong data controls across the enterprise.
In order to successfully manage the master data, support corporate governance, and
augment SOA and BI systems, the MDM applications must have the following
characteristics:
• A flexible, extensible and open data model to hold the master data and all
needed attributes (both structured and unstructured). In addition, the data
model must be application neutral, yet support OLTP workloads and
directly connected applications.
• A metadata management capability for items such as business entity
matrixed relationships and hierarchies.
ENTERPRISE DATA
An enterprise has three kinds of actual business data: Transactional, Analytical, and
Master. Transactional data supports the applications. Analytical data supports
decision-making. Master data represents the business objects upon which
transactions are done and the dimensions around which analysis is accomplished.
Master
Data • Describes an Enterprise’s
Enterprise
Business Entities
Data
Analytical
Data
• Describes an Enterprise’s
Performance
As data is moved and manipulated, information about where it came from, what
changes it went through, etc. represents a fourth kind of enterprise data called
metadata (data about the data). Though not a prime focus of this paper, the key
role metadata plays in the broader information management space and how it
relates directly to MDM is described.
Transactional Data
A company’s operations are supported by applications that automate key business
processes. These include areas such as sales, service, order management,
manufacturing, purchasing, billing, accounts receivable and accounts payable. These
applications require significant amounts of data to function correctly. This includes
data about the objects that are involved in transactions, as well as the transaction
data itself. For example, when a customer buys a product, the transaction is
managed by a sales application. The objects of the transaction are the Customer
and the Product. The transactional data is the time, place, price, discount, payment
methods, etc. used at the point of sale. The transactional data is stored in OnLine
Transaction Processing (OLTP) tables that are designed to support high volume
low latency access and update.
Analytical Data
Analytical data is used to support a company’s decision making. Customer buying
patterns are analyzed to identify churn, profitability, and marketing segmentation.
Suppliers are categorized, based on performance characteristics over time, for
better supply chain decisions. Product behavior is scrutinized over long periods to
identify failure patterns. This data is stored in large Data Warehouses and possibly
smaller data marts with table structures designed to support heavy aggregation, ad
hoc queries, and data mining. Typically the data is stored in large fact tables
surrounded by key dimensions such as customer, product, supplier, account, and
location.
Analytical MDM
Solutions that focus on managing analytical master data are called Analytical MDM.
They focus on providing high quality dimensions with their multiple simultaneous
hierarchies to data warehousing and BI technologies. They also bring real value to
the enterprise, but lack the ability to influence operational systems. Any data
cleansing done inside an Analytical MDM solution is invisible to the transactional
applications and transactional application knowledge is not available to the
cleansing process. Because Analytical MDM systems can do nothing to improve the
quality of the data under the heterogeneous application landscape, poor quality
inconsistent domain data finds its way into the BI systems and drives less than
optimum results for reporting and decision making.
Master Data
Master Data represents the business objects that are shared across more than one
transactional application. This data represents the business objects around which
the transactions are executed. This data also represents the key dimensions around
which analytics are done. Master data creates a single version of the truth about
these objects across the operational IT landscape.
An MDM solution should to be able to manage all master data objects. These
usually include Customer, Supplier, Site, Account, Asset, and Product. But other
objects such as Invoices, Campaigns, or Service Requests can also cross
applications and need consolidation, standardization, cleansing, and distribution.
Different industries will have additional objects that are critical to the smooth
functioning of the business.
It is also important to note that since MDM supports transactional applications, it
must support high volume transaction rates. Therefore, Master Data must reside in
data models designed for OLTP environments. Operational Data Stores (ODS) do
not fulfill this key architectural requirement.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
The best way to understand the role that MDM plays in an enterprise is to
understand the typical IT landscape. The best place to start is with the applications.
Almost all companies have a heterogeneous set of applications. Some are home
grown, others are bought from vendors, and still others are inherited during
corporate mergers and acquisitions.
Operational Applications
The figure on the right illustrates the
Heterogeneous Application Landscape
typical heterogeneous operational
application situation. Transactional Applications
Supply Chain
processes that cross these application
Order M anagement
boundaries, the data needs to be
synchronized.
OM
The implication for MDM is that it
EAI must not only support application to
application (A2A) integration, it must
also expose the master data to
the business process orchestration layer as well. This is discussed in more depth in
a later section.
Analytical Systems
Many companies turned to data warehousing to create a single view of the truth.
Since the 1980s, data models have been deployed to relational databases with
business intelligence features holding large amounts of historical data in schema
designed for complex queries, heavy aggregation, and multiple table joins.
This analytical space has three key components:
1. The Data Warehouse and subsidiary Data Marts
2. Tools to Extract data from the operational systems, Transform it for the
data warehouse, and Load it into the data warehouse (ETL)
3. Business Intelligence tools to analyze the data in the data warehouse
The following sections discuss these areas, and identify their MDM implications.
4
June 2006, Best Practices “Eleven Entry Points To SOA For Packaged Applications”
5
The Essential Building Blocks for EIM, Gartner 2005
Business Intelligence
EDW
EAI ETL
6 It's really (almost) all about the data: Optimizing loyalty initiatives, Michael Lowenstein, CPCM, Managing
Director, Customer Retention Associates, 07 Feb 2003
Master Data Management 9
of the problem. Fragmented dirty data being fed into the DW produces faulty
reporting and misleading analytics. Garbage-in producing garbage-out still holds.
What’s more, any data cleansing that is accomplished through ETL to the DW is
invisible to the operational applications that also need the clean data for efficient
business operations. In fact, all the segmentation and data mining results remain
on the analytical side of the business. Key results such as customer profitability are
not available via web services for real time high volume business processes.
EAI
Business Intelligence
enterprise, the operational and analytical Master
aspects of the master data must work Data
together. DW
DW ETL
DW
EDW
EAI ETL
Clean and accurate attribution for each master data business object is also
maintained in the MDM system. The MDM system can supply these attributes
back to connected systems and/or business processes.
Ideally, appropriate master data attributes would be transferred to the applications
to support real-time efficient business operations. But if (as is often the case with
legacy applications) the quality attributes must remain federated in the MDM data
store, then the business processes must retrieve the needed information from the
MDM system at the lowest possible overhead.
ETL is used to connect the Master Data to the Data Warehouse. The full cross-
reference maintained in the MDM system is made available to the DW via the ETL
tools. This enables accurate aggregation across the key business objects. In
addition, the master data represents many of the major dimensions supported in
Data Mining, ..
Oracle MDM is the glue between
B
EPM, Intelligence
operational and analytical systems. It = DRM
P MDM Data
enables a single view of the business for E Hubs = BI P
the first time since applications and BI L
Business
were separated in the 1970s. P
ETL = ODI EE
BI EE,
Oracle
DW
Each and every one of these plays a role in Oracle’s MDM architecture. Once we
outline the key MDM processes that any master data solution must support, we will
overview this architecture and discuss its key components. We will then focus on
the supporting capabilities in the Oracle MDM Hub applications themselves.
7 Leveraging Oracle Identity Management and Customer Data Hub, April 2006, URL
Master Data Management 13
These are the key processes for any MDM system.
• Profile the master data. Understand all possible sources and the current
state of data quality in each source.
• Consolidate the master data into a central repository and link it to all
participating applications.
• Govern the master data. Clean it up, deduplicate it, and enrich it with
information from 3rd party systems. Manage it according to business rules.
• Share it. Synchronize the central master data with enterprise business
processes and the connected applications. Insure that data stays in sync
across the IT landscape.
• Leverage the fact that a single version of the truth exists for all master data
objects by supporting business intelligence systems and reporting.
Profile
The first step in any MDM implementation is to profile the data. This means that
for each master data business entity to be managed centrally in a master data
repository, all existing systems that create or update the master data
must be assessed as to their data quality. Deviations from a desired data quality goal
must be analyzed. Examples include: the completeness of the data; the distribution
of occurrence of values; the acceptable rang of values; etc. Once implemented, the
MDM solution will provide the ongoing data quality assurance, however, a
thorough understanding of overall data quality in each contributing source system
before deploying MDM will focus resources and efforts on the highest value data
quality issues in the subsequent steps of the MDM implementation.
The Data Profiling and Correction option in Oracle Data Integration Suite (ODI)
provides a systematic analysis of data sources chosen by the user for the purpose of
gaining an understanding of and confidence in the data. It is a critical first step
in the data integration process to ensure that the best possible set of baseline data
quality rules are included in the initial MDM Hub.
Govern
Master data is consolidated so that it can be cleansed and governed. Specific
business objects require specific management tools. Managing unstructured
A sound data governance strategy not only
product data is very different than managing structured customer data. This is why
aligns business and IT to address data Oracle provides Data Quality servers for customer/party data and product/item
issues; but also, defines data ownership
and policies, data quality processes, data that are easily extended to suppliers, materials and assets. Data Governance
decision rights and escalation
procedures 9 .
refers to the operating discipline for managing data and information as a key
enterprise asset. This operating discipline includes organization, processes and tools
for establishing and exercising decision rights regarding valuation and management
of data. Data governance is essential to ensuring that data is accurate, appropriately
shared, and protected. Oracle MDM applications provide significant data quality
and data governance capabilities.
Share
Clean augmented quality master data in its own silo does not bring the potential
advantages to the organization. For MDM to be most effective, a modern SOA
layer is needed to propagate the master data to the applications and expose the
master data to the business processes. SOA and MDM need each other if the full
potential of their respective capabilities are to be realized.
Oracle MDM maintains an integration repository to facilitate web service discovery,
utilization, and management. What’s more, Oracle MDM Hubs leverage Oracle
Application Integration Architecture (AIA) to provide pre-built comprehensive
application integration with the MDM data and MDM data quality services. AIA
delivers a composite application framework utilizing Foundation Packs and Process
Leverage
MDM creates a single version of the truth about every master data entity. This data
feeds all operational and analytical systems across the enterprise. But more than
this, key insights can be gleamed from the master data store itself. 360o views can
be made available for the first time since operational and analytical systems split in
the 1980s. Alternate hierarchies and what-if analysis can be performed directly on
the master data.
Oracle MDM Hubs leverage Oracle BI tools such as OBI EE and BI Publisher to
produce 360o views and cross-reference data to the Data Warehouse and maintain
master dimensions in the master data store. Data quality and segmentation can be
viewed directly from the master data repository. Out-of-the-box reports are
provided and BI Publisher has full access to all master data attributes within
constrains set up by the data security rules. Oracle’s Analytical MDM can create an
enterprise view of analytical dimensions, reporting structures, performance
measures and their related attributes and hierarchies using Hyperion DRM's 10 data
model-agnostic foundation.
Business Rules
The Oracle Business Rules is a business rules engine for making decisions about
aggregating federated information in real time; resolving sourcing system conflicts;
and coordinating data visibility with the data quality rules incorporated into MDM
Applications. Privacy policies, regulatory policies, corporate policies, and data
policies can be enforced. Policies can be as simple as: Every patient can read their
own records, or as complex as: A “gold” customer has total assets under
management > $100k and average monthly transaction volume > $10k and is in
good standing.
Oracle Business Rules allow business analysts to manage rules by defining and
maintaining those rules in a separate repository, with an intuitive web-based
interface. It can be executed from within an application via Java code, the Oracle
Business Rules API, or a web services interface. This integration is especially
attractive for MDM Hubs.
Master
Data Hub Master
Data Hub
Coordinating the data quality rules configured in the data quality engine inside
MDM Hubs with the rules configured in the integration layer allows the Oracle
solution to manage master data updates from spoke systems and the MDM
application.
This is a key feature. Many master data management systems require that the
MDM application be the only System of Entry. While having one System of Entry
may simplify maters, most companies cannot shut down data entry in major
Event-Driven Services
Oracle Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) is comprised of best-in-class
technologies for event-enabling a business. It allows applications to register events,
The Oracle EDA Suite enables
associate payload packages and trigger designated business processes and
organizations to b e more responsive to workflows.
their business events. Best of breed tools
provide industry-leading functionality in
each component 14 .
All changes to master data in the Oracle MDM Hubs can be exposed to the EDA
engine. This enables the real time enterprise and keeps master data in sync with all
constituents across the IT landscape.
Human workflow services such as notification management are provided as built-in
BPEL and OSB services that enable the integration of people and manual tasks into
business processes. Payload packages identified by EDA accompany the workflow
messages. Oracle MDM can automatically trigger EDA events and deliver
predefined XML payload packages appropriate for the event. These packages are
easily modified.
Identity Management
Oracle Identity Management (OIM) is an integrated system of business processes,
policies and technologies that enable organizations to facilitate and control their
users' access to critical online applications and resources — while protecting
confidential personal and business information from unauthorized users 15 .
Gartner has positioned Oracle Identity
Management in the leaders quadrant
It supports user authentication,
based on "completeness of vision" and authorization and provisioning. OIM
"ability to execute".
uses MDM as source of truth for
Gartner external identities (e.g. non-staff);
insures that accounts for external Create Person
15 Leveraging Oracle Identity Management and Customer Data Hub, April 2006, URL
Analytic Services
The Analytics Server is key to leveraging the master data to gain insights into the
business. This includes improved real time decision making and quality reporting.
Corporate governance is enhanced and financial risk is reduced. Key components
of the Analytics Server include Enterprise Performance Management, Data
Warehousing, ETL, and Business Intelligence tools. The following sections
identify the Oracle Analytic Server products used by and/or with MDM
Applications.
Data Warehousing
MDM supplies critically important dimensions, hierarchies and cross reference
information to the Oracle Data Warehouse. With all the master data in the MDM
Hubs, only one pipe is needed into the data warehouse for key dimensions such as
Customer, Supplier, Account, Site, and Product. The “Star Schema” illustrated on
the left from the Oracle whitepaper on Data Warehousing Best Practices 16 shows
all dimensions except Time are managed by Oracle MDM. Not only that, Oracle
MDM maintains master cross-references for every master business object and every
attached system. This cross-reference is available regardless of data warehousing
deployment style. For example, an enterprise data warehouses or data mart can
seamlessly combine historic data retrieved from those operational systems and
placed into a Fact table, with real-time dimensions form the MDM Hub. This way
the business intelligence derived from the warehouse is based on the same data that
is used to run the business on the operational side.
BI EE Dashboarding
Publishing Services
Oracle BI Publisher provides the ability to rapidly create high fidelity reports and
forms using common desktop authoring tools. BI Publisher is included in the
Oracle BI EE Suite and can be used to author reports around data produced in
queries submitted by Answers. For example, one might use BI Publisher to build
reports that include master data, transaction data, and warehouse data. Oracle
MDM uses BI Publisher with out-of-the-box report generation capabilities.
Mixed Workloads
Oracle’s ability to run mixed workloads across RAC nodes is unique in the industry
and adds another significant dimension to Oracle’s MDM solution. OLTP
workloads are routed to a subset of clustered servers accessing the MDM tables
while Data Warehousing workloads are routed to other nodes in the same cluster.
With world class transaction processing and record data warehousing performance,
on a single instance becomes possible. The data warehousing tables and MDM
tables reside in an environment all managed through a single Oracle Enterprise
Manager console. This lower cost, more easily managed environment provides
dramatic savings and puts a company on the path to a more rational IT
infrastructure.
Exadata
With the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle has become a Software-
Hardware-Complete vendor. No software-hardware application illustrates the
In Oracle Exadata V2, Oracle has delivered a
benefits of this combination better than Master Data Management running on the
purpose-built machine for a wide variety of Exadata database computer 20 . The OLTP MDM tables can coexist with the Data
enterprise needs: data warehousing, OLTP
and mixed workloads 19 . Warehouse star schemas moving data around a disk array, creating summarized
Merv Adrian, Principal tables and utilizing materialized views without offloading terabytes of data through
IT Market Strategy costly networks to multiple hardware platforms. Availability and scalability are
maximized even as the total cost of ownership is reduced. Only Oracle offers a full
suite of business applications, state of the art middleware, a world class clustered
database, and a low cost high performance hardware platform. MDM takes full
advantage of this combination to the significant benefit of our customers.
AIA Layers
AIA delivers the following components deployed at the various levels of the SOA
stack.
1) Industry reference models cover the
best practice business processes for key
industries.
2) This layer is supported by Enterprise
Business Objects (EBOs).
3) These objects are orchestrated into
process & task flows with data
transformations.
4) Flows utilize Enterprise Web Services.
5) These services are provided by the
underlying Oracle Applications and
MDM Hubs.
Oracle is utilizing its MDM and SOA capabilities, along with the AIA EBOs and
associated structures, to pre-build application integrations in the context of key
industry specific business processes. The EBOs are deployed as part of a common
object methodology that uses the EBOs to define all transformation from target
and source applications included in the business process.
As data flows from source systems, it is transformed via provided maps into a
common object model. Once the appropriate business logic is executed for a
particular business process, the data is again transformed via provided maps from
the common object model to the format needed by target systems.
Oracle has leveraged its ability to fuse applications and technology to incorporate
MDM applications as a foundation component for its SOA Suite. Delivering more
than just connectors and templates, Oracle’s MDM-SOA combination delivers out-
of-the-box, fully tested and extensible, pre-built SOA enterprise business processes
that synchronize MDM data stores with applications. Deploying the MDM Hubs
and connecting them to the common object model in the AIA integrations,
provides the consolidated, cleansed, deduplicated, augmented authoritative ‘Golden
Record’ to every application and business process in the delivered pre-built SOA
integration.
23 Oracle Application Integration Architecture – Foundation Pack 2.3: Release Notes, April, 2009
24 Process Integration Pack for Oracle Customer Hub, an Oracle Data Sheet, URL
25 Process Integration Pack for Oracle Product Hub, and Oracle Data Sheet, URL
26 MDM Aware Applications, an Oracle Whitepaper, July 2009, URL
This is relatively structured error-prone data that is subject to country specific rules.
It must be cleansed in order to find matches. Pattern matching tools are best for
cleansing this kind of data.
Item data includes Products, Services, Materials, Assets, and the full range of
attributes that describe what an item is.
But DQ technology that stops there is still letting poor quality data enter the IT
landscape. Potentially thousands of people are entering customer data into a wide
variety of operational applications. In fact, data errors are entering the system at a
significant rate. Data quality tools that clean things up after the fact and try undo
any damage caused by poor quality data are certainly performing a beneficial
service. But a DQ technology that can prevent the data entry errors in the first
place would be far superior. This is exactly what Oracle has been able to do
because of its fusion of MDM and SOA.
The right hand side of the above picture illustrates how Oracle, using AIA PIPs,
can trap data entry in real time and perform key DQ functions such as Fetch,
match, Enhance, and Synchronize for MDM Aware Applications. This is the final
Data Quality answer. It fixes the DQ problem at its source.
MDM Pillars
The MDM Applications are organized around five key pillars. The following figure
illustrates these pillars of every MDM Application.
These pillars utilize generic services from the MDM Foundation layer and extend
them with business entity specific services and vertical extensions as described in
the MDM High Level Architecture covered in an earlier section of this paper.
The following sections describe Oracle’s MDM Applications for customer,
product, supplier, site, and financial master data as well as a section on the very
important role played by data governance.
29Oracle Customer Hub includes both Oracle EBS Customer Data Hub (CDH) and Siebel CDI Universal
Customer Master (UCM).
Govern
Data governance is a framework that specifies decision rights and accountability on
the data and all data-related processes. In other words, this framework determines
who can do what with which data fields, at what stage and under what
circumstances. The “Govern” pillar in OCH enables users to “govern” master data
across the enterprise using key capabilities including:
Product Hub
Oracle Product Hub (aka Product Information Management (PIM)) is an enterprise
data management solution that enables companies to centralize all product
information from heterogeneous systems, creating a single view of product
information that can be leveraged across all functional departments. The Oracle
Product Hub helps customers eliminate product data fragmentation, a problem that
often results when companies rely on nonintegrated legacy and best-of-breed
applications, participate in a merger or acquisition, or extend their business
McGraw Hill Education, a division of
McGraw Hill Companies had a problem
globally 30 .
with its intellectual property products. The
data was in silos, the metadata was
missing, data flows were custom point-to-
point, and in many cases, the ownership of
the data was unknown. This made aligning
Business and IT very difficult. To fix the
problem, McGraw Hill established a Data
Quality Framework and deployed Oracle
Product Hub as the execution engine for
change. The Product Hub created a
cleansed high quality up to date
harmonized version of the key product
data elements, and made them available as
a service to Publishing, Business
Operations, Web Catalogs, External
Bookstores, etc. in a completely secure
manor. The business benefits have
included increased automation, improved
customer service, better cross-selling,
reduced risk, streamlined mergers,
improved forecasting, better management
of customer privacy, and improved
regulatory reporting.
Import Workbench
The Oracle Product Hub provides capabilities to consolidate product data from
heterogeneous systems, securely access and retrieve information, manage product
data quality, and synchronize and publish product information to other formats for
print catalogs, data sheets, etc.
The Import Workbench for Item import management uses configurable match
“Oracle MDM has helped GGB to reduce rules to identify equivalent products that take the different versions of a particular
the Business Execution Gap and create a
single source of truth for Customer and
product record and blends them into a single enterprise version. Data quality tools
Product related information. “ ensure that equivalent / duplicate parts are identified, quality is verified, and source
system cross-references are maintained as data enters the PIM hub environment.
Matthias Kenngott
IT Director Where a match is identified, and the source system item attribute and structure
GGB
details are denoted as the source of truth (SST) for the record, this information is
used to update the SST record to maintain a best-of-breed, blended product record.
If the change policy of the SST item demands a change order, one is automatically
created on import. This change order may then be routed for approval before the
changes are applied to the SST item. Similarly, if a record is identified as a new item
and the catalog category requires a new item request, one is automatically created
on import. The new item request may then be routed for further definition and
approval before the new item is created.
31 Oracle Product Data Synchronization for GDSN and UCCnet Services, an Oracle Data Sheet, URL
Application Integration
Out of the box, Oracle Site Hub comes integrated with Oracle Property Manager,
Oracle Inventory, Oracle Install Base, and hence Oracle Enterprise Asset
Feed downstream applications with
consistent data for market planning, Management. This gives the ability to create and manage site-specific properties in
competitive analysis, site selection,
project management, location Property Manager, site-specific inventory in Oracle Inventory and site-specific
management, facilities management etc. assets in Enterprise Asset Management. Use of TCA provides further integration
points into the 14 other E-Business Suite applications that directly leverage TCA.
Consolidate
Oracle Supplier Hub leverages the Customer Data Hub data model called the
Trading Community Architecture (TCA). It adds advanced procurement
capabilities to provide a rich data model that includes attribute categories like
organizational details, products and services, business classifications, purchasing &
invoicing terms and controls, tax details, and more. Furthermore, the offering
captures hierarchy information that exposes relationships between suppliers that
would have otherwise remained undiscovered.
Oracle Supplier Hub source system management captures all supplier attributes and
relationships into TCA. It creates a universal ID for each supplier and builds a
cross reference to each connected system. It can import data through multiple
33 A Business-Driven, Holistic Approach to Supplier Management, An Oracle and Patni White Paper,
May 2010, Basier Aziz, Oracle Product Strategy Manager, Vinod Badami, Patni AVP BI
34 Oracle Supplier Management Data Sheet, URL
Cleanse
In addition to the data quality capabilities outlined earlier in the End-to-End Data
Quality section of this document, Oracle Supplier hub can enrich the supplier
profile using pre-built integration with external content providers such as D&B.
Govern
Share
Supplier Hub synchronizes the creation and updates of supplier records to all
applications and analytical systems. Supplier data is made available through web
services to fully support service-oriented architectures (SOA). In addition, fast and
flexible supplier searches that can be templatized with results that provide quick
report generation.
Business Benefits
The complexities of global supply chains, extended supplier networks, and geo-
political risks are forcing organizations to gain more control and to better manage
their supplier data. Moreover, companies today are hard-pressed to govern and to
maintain their supplier data in a way that helps them sufficiently understand it.
From process-related issues like on-boarding, assessment and maintenance, to data-
related issues like completeness and de-duplication of information, there has been
no trusted solution in the market to address these two sides of the supplier
information management problem 35 until the arrival of the Oracle Supplier Hub
and Oracle Supplier Lifecycle Management combination.
35 A Business-Driven, Holistic Approach to Supplier Management, An Oracle and Patni White Paper,
May 2010, Basier Aziz, Oracle Product Strategy Manager, Vinod Badami, Patni AVP BI
36
An Economic Dream: Supplier Information Technology’s Massive Cost-Saving Opportunity. May 2009,
Mickey North Rizza , AMR Research
37 Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management, an Oracle Data Sheet, URL
Data Governance
Data Governance (DG) refers to the operating discipline for managing data as a
“Data quality software without data
governance wastes valuable time and
key enterprise asset. This operating discipline includes organization, processes and
resources, and is destined to deliver tools for establishing and exercising decision rights regarding valuation and
results below expectations.”
management of data. Data governance is essential to ensuring that data is accurate,
Information Managers: Deliver Trusted
Data With a Focus On Data Quality, appropriately shared, and protected 40 . Good corporate governance requires strong
data controls. DG identifies what the controls ought to be in order to satisfy
Rob Karel, Forrester Research 39 .
business objectives.
Data Governance and Master Data Management are joined at the hip. They need
each other for the full potential if either to be realized. Data Governance
methodologies have been with us for a long time. Over the years, significant
progress has been made on the organizational front, but tools to actually implement
the information policies developed by data governance committees were not
available. MDM on the other hand, incorporates the tools to enforce data
standards, but lacks the ability to know what those standards should be. Together,
they complete the link between corporate policy and strong data controls.
An example helps illustrate this point. Consider the following business policy
statement.
“This company will not sell its products to anyone 13 years old or younger
without parental permission.”
A Data Governance committee would take this business policy and create the
following information policies:
The data stewards in IT execute the rules, • All customer information will include family relationships whenever
but it is the data governors from the children are included.
business units who define the rules.
• All customer profiles will include a full “data of birth” in the form
dd/mm/yyyy.
The MDM Data Steward would then execute the following data rules:
• Define all family relationships in the customer data model.
• Insure that the DOB field was in the format dd/mm/yyyy.
39 How Technology Enables Data Governance, An Oracle and First San Francisco Partners Whitepaper,
December 2009, URL
40 Data Governance – Managing Information As An Enterprise Asset Part I – An Introduction, Eric Sweden,
41 How Technology Enables Data Governance, An Oracle and First San Francisco Partners Whitepaper,
December 2009, URL
42 Oracle Data Watch and Repair for Master Data Management, an Oracle Data Sheet, URL
43 Source: D&B, US Census Bureau, US Department of Health and Human Services, Administrative Office of
the US Courts, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Gartner, A.T Kearney, GMA Invoice Accuracy Study
44 Oracle Data Watch and Repair for Master Data Management User Guide, April 2008, URL
Build vs Buy
Oracle has the full set of components for building an MDM solution: Oracle 11g
with RAC for the Database; ODI-EE for E-LT, bulk data movement, real-time
“In less than 60 days, Home Depot was
convinced that Siebel's CDI solution was
updates, and data services; Master entity data models; SOA Suite for integration;
the only solution that could give them a BPEL PM for orchestration; Portal for the user interface; IDM for managing users;
single view of their customers. We showed
them that we could implement in one year WS Manager for managing services; BI EE for analytics; and JDeveloper for
a solution that they could possibly build in
five, at five times the cost we proposed.”
creating or extending the MDM management application. Oracle utilizes these
technologies to build its MDM Hubs. Customers who want to build their own
Home Depot
MDM solution should use these components as well.
But, even with a full stack of open flexible MDM technologies, creating a robust
MDM application at the heart of this integrated infrastructure can be a daunting
task. For example, to successfully manage customer data, the following
functionality is minimally required: data import management; a source system
management subsystem with full controls over attributes sourced by multiple
applications; a relationship management subsystem that can handle unlimited
numbers of all possible combinations of matrixed and hierarchical relationships;
interaction history subsystem; location management with address correction
capabilities; a robust configurable data quality engine for smart searching and
duplicate elimination and prevention; workbench assistance for data quality
engineers; data augmentation interfaces to third party vendors such as D&B; data
security mechanisms down to the attribute; and triggering methodology for
propagating data change.
Oracle’s pre-built MDM Hub solutions are full-featured 3-tier Internet applications
Svilluppo implemented Oracle Customer designed to participate in the full Oracle technology stack (as outlined in this paper)
Data Hub along with 10g Application
Server Integration. The implementation or to run independently in other open IT SOA environments. Building MDM
only took four months including the
integration of 8 different systems. solutions from scratch can take years. Oracle’s pre-built MDM solutions can bring
quality data to the enterprise in a matter of months.
Svilluppo, Italy
Oracle Corporation
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Redwood Shores, CA 94065
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