MDM Implementation Styles: An Exclusive Guide

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By: Sagar Sharma

MDM Implementation Styles: Selecting the Right Approach for Your Organization

Master Data Management implementation offers a multitude of benefits ranging from data accuracy and operational efficiency to regulatory compliance and support for innovation. By investing in MDM, organizations can unlock the full potential of their data assets and gain a competitive edge in today’s data-driven world.

But amidst the range of options available out there, how do you choose the right implementation style for your organization’s unique needs?

Master Data Management (MDM) Implementation Styles play a pivotal role in streamlining data governance and ensuring data consistency across an organization. In today’s data-driven world, where businesses are inundated with vast volumes of information, MDM implementation styles serve as guiding frameworks to manage and leverage master data effectively.

The Essence of Master Data Management

Master data comprises critical information that defines the core entities of an organization, such as customers, products, employees, and suppliers. It serves as the foundation for various business operations and decision-making processes. However, managing master data can be complex, especially in large enterprises with disparate systems and data sources.

The Need for MDM Implementation Styles

Implementing MDM is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Different organizations have unique requirements, infrastructure, and business processes. MDM implementation styles offer a structured approach to address these diverse needs. They provide guidelines, methodologies, and best practices for implementing MDM solutions tailored to specific organizational contexts.

Key Benefits

1. Standardization: MDM implementation styles promote data standardization by establishing consistent definitions, formats, and structures for master data elements. This consistency ensures accuracy and reliability across systems and departments.

2. Interoperability: By adopting standardized MDM implementation styles, organizations can enhance interoperability between disparate systems and applications. This interoperability facilitates seamless data exchange and integration, enabling smoother business processes and collaboration.

3. Data Quality: One of the primary objectives of MDM is to improve data quality by eliminating duplicates, errors, and inconsistencies within master data. Implementation styles incorporate data quality management techniques and tools to ensure that master data meets predefined standards of accuracy, completeness, and timeliness.

4. Regulatory Compliance: Many industries are subject to stringent regulatory requirements regarding data management and governance. MDM implementation styles help organizations comply with these regulations by establishing robust data governance frameworks and enforcing data privacy and security measures.

4 Common Master Data Management Styles

For all organizations maintaining a single version of the truth of data alongside meeting regulatory obligations and compliance would be the foremost thing to focus on. In addition, enterprises would be given priority to improve their data quality, workflow process, and meeting the guidelines for data governance. Also, the primary goal of an organization would be ensuring their high-quality data is easily managed by the team and can be accessed promptly by various departments across the business.

Well, the above-mentioned factors can be easily achieved with the proper implementation of MDM by using common implementation styles. The type of MDM deployment determines how the system will impact your business core, and structure and assist the business to achieve goals.

1. MDM Implementation Style #1: Registry

This registry MDM implementation style works perfectly for an organization having large or multiple data sources, its own set of rules, and a structure for its business operation. The implementation of MDM using registry style is mainly used to identify the data duplicates by running data cleansing and various data matching algorithms.

The registry style of MDM implementation uses global identifiers for data using which they match records and identify the single version of the truth. This leads to the elimination of data duplicity. This registry style of MDM implementation makes changes to the existing data source and manages the data quality on its own. It offers an up-to-date view of the products by indexing the master data in real-time.

Benefits of Registry MDM Implementation Style 

Take a look over the benefits an organization can get by using the registry-style implementation of the MDM system.

  • The data analysis process carried out in the registry-style approach eliminates the risk of overwriting the information in the data source.
  • As the data source is unchanged in the registry style implementation, organizations can avoid compliance failure and other regulatory repercussions that may differ from country to country.
  • The read-only view of data provided by the registry style helps businesses remove data duplicity and gain consistent access to data.
  • The cost of using registry-style MDM implementation is low and helps businesses to do rapid data integrations with minimal interruption of the application system.

2. MDM Implementation Style #2: Consolidation

When it comes to the consolidated style of MDM implementation, it is almost similar to the previous registry style except for the addition of data stewardship. In consolidation style, the source systems feed the data directly to the centralized data repository in a consolidated form. This creates a single version of the truth, also known as the golden record.

A golden record created by the consolidation style stores data in the central hub. The data stored in the hub is mainly used for report generation and reference. One thing you should note is that in consolidation style if any changes or updates are made to the master data, it will reflect the source systems. In most cases, this style of implementation is used for analytical MDM and it helps organizations clean, match, and integrate data in a centralized hub.

Benefits of Consolidation MDM Implementation Style 

Take a look over the benefits an organization can get by using the consolidation style implementation of the MDM system.

  • Allows the organization to gather master data from various sources and centralize it within a master data hub.
  • Offers a budget-friendly solution with straightforward implementation procedures.
  • Streamlines the generation of comprehensive reports, facilitating data analysis and informed decision-making across the organization.

3. MDM Implementation Style #3: Co-Existence

In the Co-Existence style, the MDM hub and the data sources are available and accessed at the same time. This style creates a consolidated master data hub and feeds the updated or upgraded master data back to its source systems.

If you look closely, you can understand the work operation of this Co-Existence style is almost similar to the consolidation style of creating a golden data record. However, the only difference is here the master data stored in the centralized master data hub gets updated in its source systems. This leads the data changes happening in both MDM and the application systems.

If you already have a consolidation style of MDM implementation for your organization, you can easily evolve the style into co-existence by simply adding the loop back to the original data source systems.

Benefits of Co-Existence MDM Implementation Style

Take a look over the benefits an organization can get by using the Co-Existence style implementation of the MDM system.

  • Master data managed within source systems before synchronization with centralized MDM hub.
  • With master data residing closer to its source systems, accessing data becomes faster and more efficient, leading to higher overall data quality.
  • By consolidating all master data attributes in a single location, the coexistence style facilitates quicker and easier generation of reports.

4. MDM Implementation Style #4: Transaction or Centralized

Transaction or Centralized MDM implementation style is the last style that several large enterprises prefer to use. When compared with all other implementation styles, this transaction or centralized implementation style stands to be more important. In this implementation style, the master data hub becomes the single provider of the master data to an organization.

With this style, all the existing master data moves to the centralized data hub, and the remaining systems outside the data hub are not allowed to create or link with the master data. A business that is keen to have high control, and makes a lot of changes to its application infrastructure prefers this type of implementation style.

Utilizing this type of style for implementing an MDM system will enable businesses to create efficient workflows and to improve the essential validation capabilities for updating the ERP or other vital business systems that require accurate master data. This centralized style of MDM implementation often evolves from the consolidation or co-existence styles.

Benefits of Transaction or Centralized MDM Implementation Style

Take a look over the benefits an organization can get by using the transaction or centralized style implementation of the MDM system.

  • Maintains completeness and accuracy of master data.
  • Implements desired security measures and visibility policies for master data.
  • Guarantees availability of accurate master data across all domains.
  • Simplifies leveraging MDM’s data governance capabilities with centralized implementation.

Conclusion

Master Data Management (MDM) is a critical process that helps organizations manage their data assets more effectively. By implementing MDM, businesses can improve the quality and consistency of their data, reduce errors and redundancies, and improve decision-making capabilities.

We have explored different MDM implementation styles and their benefits, including centralized, consolidated, registry/Hub-based, and hybrid models. Each approach has its strengths and weaknesses, so it’s important to carefully evaluate your organization’s needs before choosing the right implementation style.

With the right MDM strategy in place, businesses can unlock the full potential of their data assets and gain a competitive edge in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape.

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