5.6    SAP Master Data Governance

So far in this chapter we have primarily discussed the cloud-based solutions that complement the SAP S/4HANA core, but it’s important to switch gears for a moment to cover SAP Master Data Governance (SAP MDG). Beginning with SAP S/4HANA 1610, SAP MDG is embedded into SAP S/4HANA, on top of being available on any database (including the SAP HANA database).

SAP Master Data Governance is an SAP NetWeaver-based product built on top of SAP ERP to help organizations enable governance processes for master data, ensure data quality, and remove data duplication. Master data can be created, changed, and approved centrally in the SAP MDG and distributed to enterprise-wide systems. This product works in conjunction with other products like SAP Information Steward to analyze data quality or with SAP Data Services, which has multiple features for extract-transform-load (ETL) functions, data quality enhancement, and even data consolidation.

SAP MDG 9.0 comes with pre-built master data models for business partners (supplier and customer), materials, FI-related master data like profit center, profit center hierarchy, cost element/hierarchies, cost center, cost center hierarchy, and general ledger accounts, and other master data from partners for enterprise asset management, retail, and fashion management. With every release, SAP is coming up with more contents around the data models.

SAP MDG also allows consolidation of master data in a governed manner. In this scenario, data can be loaded into SAP MDG; duplication checks and data merges are now possible.

The following features make SAP MDG the master data governance tool of choice for SAP-centric landscapes:

• Built-in data models and the possibility of extending standard data models and creating new data models for master data objects
• Improved user experience with Web Dynpro-based user interfaces and more and more SAP Fiori-based UIs
• Requests for master data creation normally undergo approval cycles; with SAP MDG, different types of workflows are easily enabled with validation rules through the BRF+ framework, and ABAP workflows and parallel workflows are also possible
• Once the change request for a master data creation/change gets approved, it gets distributed to the downstream systems using data replication framework via standard ALE technologies, but other integration technologies like web services are also supported; SAP MDG provides out-of-box integration capabilities with SAP S/4HANA, SAP Ariba, and SAP Hybris Commerce
• Analytics for process KPIs are also available for SAP HANA databases
• Data quality enhancements through integration with SAP Data Services or Integration Steward, or for SAP HANA-based SAP MDG using SAP HANA platform services for quality enhancements are possible
• For the same master data, SAP MDG’s key mapping concept maps the unique identifier for a particular system to the unique identifier in SAP MDG

SAP MDG can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. There are a couple things to think about when it comes to SAP MDG and SAP HANA:

• SAP MDG can support co-deployment with SAP S/4HANA and be deployed as a hub model that distributes data to SAP S/4HANA (as shown in Figure 5.6).
  

  Figure 5.6    Sample Landscape with SAP MDG

• The key mapping function of SAP MDG can play an important role in Central Finance deployments to map financials master data from different systems.
• The consolidation scenario works better on SAP HANA, especially for large volumes of data.
• You can use smart data integration service in the SAP HANA platform for connecting to various source systems.
• Smart data quality services in the SAP HANA platform offer evolving data quality enhancement capabilities like address cleansing and records matching.