MSM Full Step by Step Guide

[Former Member]

Is there a full step by step guide for using MDM for data consolidation/harmonisation?

So far There are reference guides, which shows you each component of the various MDM applications but nothing that gives a full start to end scenario.

For example If I have Master data source from few different sources (tables), How can I compare the (records) values from the 3 sources and produce one output file by using MDM?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Ray:

That greatly depends on which scenario we are talking about. Let's say we use <b>Employees</b>, so you can compare and de-duplicate using MDM Import Manager and the employee's security number for instance.

In other scenarios, this relationship might not be that transparent. It comes to my mind the case of <b>Materials</b>, where each material has its own ID, and you don't even know if they are dups, because the Material ID was autogenerated by the legacy system.

In this case, a common approach would be to divide all the materials into smaller groups, let's say, all the Office Supplies, then the Raw Materials, and so on.... Later, people with business knowledge of these materials can look up them and check for inconsistencies/duplicates.

Manual searching and consolidation might not be very appealing, but remember that this is sometimes the only way. However, after the technical guys manage to group the 100,000 materials into let's say 100 big categories, then the division can be further analized by 100 guys, each with 1000 records. This helps to make the transition faster and way more accurate.

Anyway, you can find some how-to's on http://service.sap.com/nw-howtoguides -> Master Data Management

Alternativly you can visit SAP RKT's or e-learning here on SDN.

I hope that helps

Kind Regards

Alejandro

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Alejandro,

Thanks for your response,

I understand what you are saying, what I am after is an ability to present to the user 3 versions of the same record from different systems in a very effective way. For example if Material 12345678 came from three different sources, and each record has 3 different descriptions. I would like to present the difference to the user for that material, then allowing user to either choose the accurate description for the material or even possibility entering a new description. The "fixed-up" version of that record should then be pushed into any other system.

As for presenting the data to the user, a GUI approach would be more appropriate.

In something like MS Access this will hardly take me any effort to produce, ofcourse I want to do this via MDM.

regards

Ray

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Ray:

That's one main feature of MDM. Please consider checking the MDM Data Manager Reference Guide, where you can compare some records and if you want, merge them, on a field basis, that is, as you say, pick which fields should survive, but one thing that MDM does is to keep the old key, so each legacy system can keep it's own primary key while having all the other attributes standarized

I hope that helps

Alejandro

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

The correction of the data is performed by the Business Users, who ofcourse aren't trained in MDM. So is it possible to provide this feature to compare records and do the data correction by producing the result in an environment where Business Users can fix their data. Again in a more user friendly way. At the moment I am unable to use the Netweaver Portal but I am assuming that this would be possible to do via the Portal.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Ray:

I don't quite understand your scenario. SAP MDM is for Central data management. Of course, that management must be performed by someone (i.e. Business Users)

On the projects I've participated, training users and power users is always a main task that must be performed. I can hardly think on something friendlier than MDM. Have you tried to clean data on transactional systems? it's way harder.

BTW, merging and data cleansing can't be done on the portal, as far as I know

I hope that helps!

Regards

Alejandro