Master Data Management

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Master Data Management (MDM), also known as Reference Data Management, is a discipline in Information Technology (IT) that focuses on the management of reference or master data that is shared by several disparate IT systems and groups. MDM is required to warrant consistent computing between diverse system architectures and business functions.

Large companies often have IT systems that are used by diverse business functions (e.g., finance, sales, R&D, etc.) and span across multiple countries. These diverse systems usually need to share key data that is relevant to the parent company (e.g., products, customers, and suppliers). It is critical for the company to consistently use these shared data elements through various IT systems.

MDM also becomes important when two or more companies want to share data across corporate boundaries. In this case, MDM becomes an industry issue such as is the case with the Finance industry and the required STP (Straight Through Processing) or T+1.

In the Y computing model, MDM is one of three computing types (OLTP transactional computing (typically ERP), DSS (Decision Support Systems) and MDM). These types range from operational reporting to EIS (Executive Information Systems). Master data management is not only required to coordinate different ERP systems, but also necessary to supply meta-data for aggregating and integrating transactional data. This use of MDM is necessary for Data Warehouse projects typically incorporated in Decision Support Systems. For this reason, MDM systems sometimes provide a meta-data abstraction layer.

[edit] See also

[edit] Portals

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../m/a/s/Master_Data_Management_370d.html"