The time for SAP Master Data Governance on S/4HANA

[Mark63]

Quite some time has passed since I wrote an SAP Community blog about the question whether to run SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA or SAP MDG as an add-on to SAP ERP. I already marked the direction then, but I think it's time to take a fresh look at this now.

When I wrote the blog, I stated (regarding the software versions that were current at the time of writing) that "the functional scope of the SAP ERP-based MDG 9.0 release is comparable with SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 1610."
But the functional gap has widened in the meantime and will increase going forward:
For instance, SAP MDG on S/4HANA 1809 brings along brand-new master data quality management capabilities to collaboratively manage business rules and analyze product data quality for subsequent and seamless remediation, and these come exclusively on the S/4 version. There are architectural reasons for having this only on S/4HANA and, of course, this is in sync with the SAP strategy that puts S/4HANA at the digital core.

Features that come only with the S/4HANA version include, for example:

Area	Feature
Consolidation of master data	Support for multiple vendor and customer assignments of business partners
Central Governance of master data	MDG for Material Data: Data model and UI enhancements for Shelf Life Advance Planning Data model and UI enhancements for Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) Data model and UI enhancements for Advanced Planning (SCM) Data model and UI enhancements for Unique Item Identifier Additional S/4HANA simplifications SAP HANA-based search as default for Material search Global search variants MDG for Business Partner, Customer, Supplier: Create BP with multiple assignments and Partner Functions in one Change Request Global search variants MDG for Financials: Replicate internal orders via SOA from MDG system Adoption of the universal journal for SAP S/4HANA with general ledger accounts as the basis for cost-element data
Process Analytics	Summary dashboard pages based on CDS views displaying relevant process information at a glance Analytical list pages based on CDS views displaying enabling users to drill down and start completing the processes
Data Quality Management	Repository to catalog and define data-quality rules for product master data Comprehensive description of rules, including business aspects, ownership, and rule implementations Collaboration and status handling during the lifecycle of rules, from creation to sunset Evaluation of product master data using data-quality rules Analysis of incorrect product data Correction of identified issues in product data Definition of data-quality scores as key-performance indicators (KPIs) for master data management Reporting and analysis of data-quality scores

For an overview of how MDG on S/4HANA and MDG on ERP have evolved, see the release comparison since MDG on S/4HANA 1610/MDG 8.0.

In a nutshell, it is clear that "in order to be on the competitive edge in the digital age, SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA is clearly the way to go for new installations" (as pointed out in my earlier blog), but now is also the time to consider the benefits of converting from ERP-based MDG implementations to SAP MDG on S/4HANA.

Best,
Markus