The Stack, Episode 3: Master Data: Let’s Talk Governance!

Episode 3 of The Stack was all about master data management. Our experts, Christian Geiseler & Markus Kuppe walked us through the importance of proper master data governance within an organization to help businesses run as smoothly as possible. The importance of clean, reliable data is sometimes overlooked; however, it is key if you want to be operationally efficient, gain actionable insights, run analytics, or just understand how a process is running. Especially today, where companies and their processes run in hybrid, heterogeneous landscapes, it’s important to make sure your master data stays in-sync and up to date.

We learned how master data that is incorrectly maintained or not governed appropriately can lead to operational issues or process disruptions. For example, if the commercial details of a supplier are inaccurate this could lead to an unpaid invoice. Nobody wants that…

We also learned how companies are reacting to their issues with master data. There are some companies that want to take a centralized approach; others need a decentralized approach. SAP Master Data Governance can support both scenarios. In a decentralized approach, SAP MDG would consolidate the master data, remove the duplicates (thanks to key mapping features) and then the data can be used centrally, for example, in analytics.

While SAP Master Data Governance for on-premise and private cloud deployments was built on SAP ECC and on SAP S/4HANA, the MDG cloud edition is built on SAP Business Technology Platform. It’s implemented as a standalone Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, which also means that implementing or onboarding is much less complicated than in an on-premise scenario.

By expanding our master data governance portfolio to the cloud, customers will also benefit from a modular implementation approach. For example, they can choose to federate the master data management across different business units, which means you maintain:

• Core master data attributes which are shared across multiple cloud applications in a central place (like customer name) –> SAP MDG, cloud edition
• Application–specific master data attributes locally in the relevant application –> example SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA

This could reduce TCO and accelerate master data governance implementations as customers would not need to harmonize their business across units or regions before implementing our solutions.

Q&A

As always, the live Q&A part was my favorite. And I really would like to thank everyone for their engagement and for submitting such interesting questions. There were a few we were not able to cover live:

Q: What are the ETL tool recommendations from sap to extract full data load / cdc to data lake in azure and data bricks?

A: You can find more information in this blog series (parts 1-5).

Q: How stibo plays with MDG/MDM? Is it front end workflow replacement of MDG UI/UX?

A: Stibo is often used as PIM tool, while MDG focuses on governance of multi domain master data for an enterprise-wide application landscape. It is not a frontend replacement or addition to MDG.

Q: What are the long term implications when choosing between MDG Cloud edition STE or MTE vs migrating on Prem MDG to private cloud eg. Azure Private cloud?

A: MDG deployments on S/4HANA Cloud in Private cloud edition (PCE) or Extended edition comprise many services beyond hosting/operating the software. See some information here.

Q: How many customers are onboarded on public MDG-Cloud so far?

A: SAP doesn’t publish such details on application level

Q: What forms does SAP’s MDG exist in? SaaS on BTP is one, is it also on STE, on-prem, on CX?

A: MDG on S/4HANA is available on premise, in S/4HANA private cloud edition and extended edition, and MDG cloud edition on BTP in the public cloud. Find more here.

Q: Is there content available for the software selection context?

A: Public material is available on the product page and in the SAP Community.

Q: Do you need to consume MDI services next to SAP MDG, cloud edition in a hybrid landscape? (example: SalesForce, Ariba and S/4HANA combined)

A: MDI is the strategic integration service on BTP. Today, MDI enables the Recruit2Retire use case in the Intelligent Enterprise Suite, and more and more integration scenarios are planned to be onboarded to use MDI. MDG cloud edition uses MDI today for the outbound integration. In future, MDI is planned to serve as standard integration for the federated MDG scenarios as well.

Q: We have SAP MDM & MDG S/4 and have a fairly mature master data governance centralized team. Is there any way to connect with SAP (versus SAP Incidents, creating IDEAs) about future releases to give input about potential future functionality/improvements/increased scope?

A: The SAP channel for functional enhancement suggestions is the Customer Connection Program, in which MDG usually has an annual cycle. Find the current influence project here. The MDG influence project is collecting input until Oct 09, 2021.

Another option for peer exchange are the regional User Groups.

What’s Next?

• If you missed the session, please check out the replay here:
• Ready to try SAP Master Data Governance, cloud edition? Check out our trial
• Interested in future innovations? The Road Map Explorer has all the information you need.
• Want to stay up to date? Follow the MDGupdates2021 tag on SAP Community

That’s all for now! Remember to follow us on LinkedIn & Twitter so you don’t miss the next episode.