MDM as a legacy system migration tool ?

[former_member208390]

Hi everyone,

I wondered if some of you had some information whether MDM can be used as a tool in a data migration process. Let's say that I have several legacy systems and I want to switch to SAP (i.e. ERP, CRM, APO). As my master data need to be harmonized, I want to use MDM as a harmonization/cleansing tool as the first step in the process. Then feed my other systems with clean master data.

Is this realistic ? Has is already been done ?

Thanks,

Emmanuel

[Former Member]

MDM is NOT supposed to be a Data Migration Tool.

MDM is the Master Data Management Tool.

It is true that the Import Manager of MDM offers a lot of features to do data cleansing on the fly.

There is nothing stopping you from using it to cleanse data. However I would say that the tool is not intended to be a Data Migration Tool.

You could use LSMW in R/3 to do the data migration. This way you could use Idocs, BAPI to post the data.

If you use MDM, to JUST cleanse the data, then you have to have mapping for XML to IDOC to do the posting. You may have to use XI for that.

I would suggest NOT to use MDM for Data Migration.

MDM is a powerful Master Data Management Tool.

[former_member208390]

Thanks ! I know what MDM is about and I agree with you on all counts. Also, I know that all migration best practices concentrate on moving master data from legacies to ERP.

But given what MDM can do (data cleasing, data harmonization, matching, merging, replication to others systems), then the idea of using MDM in a migration process does not seem so stupid...

[thomas_jung]

I agree with you Emmanuel. If you wre starting a new project today and you were going to use MDM within your business anyway - why would you not start there. If you are going to harmonize and syndicate material master for instance on an on going basis - you will already have all the pieces in place to get the data out of MDM and into your SAP landscape. Why not just build the logic to get the data from legacy into MDM and then reuse all the other funtionality to syndicate it forward.

On the other hand, I probably wouldn't want to try and use MDM for all your migration. If you had to load sales orders for instance - this would make more sense to just use LSMW to get those into ERP.

[Former Member]

I respectfully disagree with you.

MDM is not to DUPLICATE WHAT YOU HAVE IN SAP R/3.

The MDM repository is probably a superset of all the legacy system needs as well.

Using MDM as the Data Migration tool, means you have to have the check tables loaded into repository before you can bring in the other data. This needs more time and effort than LSMW.

So, its up to you to choose...

[Former Member]

Hi,

I think using a MDM package, like this one from SAP, is the right choice. MDM is build for consolidation and will give the foundation for futher exploring MDM.

Regards

Dirk