Introduction

This is part 2 with the first part of my MDG cloud blog post here in which I discussed setting up your Trial account and managing a busines partner import. To complete this blog series, we will now cover off the manage Consolidation of Business partners.

Background

With MDG cloud edition, there is a provision for governing your Master data. Whilst this is based on the SAP One domain Model. Enabling you to govern your application agnostic attributes. SAP MDG Cloud currently allows de-centralised management of business partner master data.

This is ideal in a situation where several ERP systems are used across your landscape be it cloud or on premise systems. In such a scenario we can now establish the base of your business partners to utilise across your systems with application specific updates being made.

Enabling a consistent and solid base for your business to approach. Consideration to this decentralised approach should be considered when looking to consolidate your business data. This could be the ideal place for you to start.

Consolidation is the focus of this blog, and following our previous import of data from the first blog we will now dive into the functionalities provided in the trial edition to test the consolidation.

Consolidation tile

Step 1 – Onwards to consistent master data

So you have loaded your template for the master data import. Now we head into the consolidation process. Once we enter the Consolidation process tile we are met with the chance to create a process, when creating we can chose which import we want to take through the consolidation process.

In this instance I am taking our Consolidation of BP case.

Opening screen of Consolidation

Step 2 – Consolidate – Initial Check

We kick off our process on the consolidation journey, and we can see once created our screen has a clear show of the process your consolidation will take it’s a clear piece of UI that really helps to visualise our process.

Opening page of the Consolidation

We hit start and wait for our process to complete. Although this is the first stage we instantly have a clear view of our data and its cleanliness.

Initial check stage complete.

Here I have deliberately given a load with limited variation and duplication to highlight as much of the capabilities as I can. Already providing clear information to see we have 1 error and 1 warning within this data set imported.

Initial check showing the error message in more detail

At any point if you want to check the errors or warnings you can click onto the numbers on the left-hand side and it gives a handy internal popup to provide details on the error / warning provided.

If you want to go a step further you can go for the Show details just above the bar chart on the right and look at each record individually. In this instance we know that our last record does not have an email address entered. Lets progress and see what Matches if any we get.

Step 3 – Consolidate – Matching

At this stage you would have already defined your matching rules. Unfortunately in the trial we can’t do this, but when you approach consolidation having the ability to clearly define your requirements for matching is excellent. Some standards should be considered, Name1, DUNS number etc, but even address details or emails you can look to add to your data quality rules.

In our instance here we are showing 0 matches. So we are good and we can continue to the next stage

0 issues with the Matching of the import to source data

Step 4 – Consolidate – Best Record Calculation

If we had any matching data, here we would see the best records, this gives a % complete. I’ll come back to this, as I re import the same file to see what data gets brought through and how it changes.. For now our track is looking pretty good.

Best record calculation

Step 5 – Consolidate – Validation

We continue to the Validate Stage, our penultimate step. Here we can see the same issues as presented in the initial check. Here we are going to add the email address.

Our before shot shows the same issues as before

The Validation step

Going into Show details as before, going to the email tab and we will edit the last record to add in the email.

Email list of consolidation records

For this we select the last record, go to Mass edit, and use Selected items.

email updated in the last record

Now we have added the email, lets complete this consolidation get our Master data in and see what happens on the 2^nd run through.

Validation now shows no Records outstanding

Our data is activated.

I’m going to skip ahead, re import the data and perform another consolidation process. Below I’ll highlight the changes without taking you through the  whole process again..

Matching Groups

So we have hit the Matching section of consolidation and now we are seeing some definite matching groups.

Here is where Consolidation really comes into its own.

Matching records now within a group

We get a breakdown of the records that are matching and the groups across which they are matching. If you go into the Review match groups link we open up to a new tab

Looking at the Matching groups

When you go into the consolidation rules you can see what Rule they have matched on. In this instance the rule we have is looking at organisation address, as we have these records already here we can see these matches and we can consider this data and if there is indeed any impacts. We could reject a match, If there is more than 4 records we can split the groups.

As we pushed through this, we can see that actually as there was a clear match we have in what most would consider a merge, have updated the MDG source record (active record in MDG)

Merging of records

Finally I want to show the created records in the Manage Business partner tile. Here we will see that the records have been created there are no duplicates of the records despite loading a file twice. And the very top we can see an additional in process consolidation.

There we have it! Imported and consolidated master data, Although this is a very simple use case I hope it provides the necessary kindling to start your consolidation and cleansing journey with MDG.

Manage Business partner – Partner details

For the previous blog please check here

Creating a Mass import on SAP MDG Cloud

To get started on your own journey using MDG Cloud Trial use the SAP provided getting started guide here

Getting started on MDG

I am excited to see the continuation of MDG in the cloud. Thank you