Master Data and ERP Implementation: The management of Master Data plays an increasingly important role in ERP Implementations throughout the company. It is often the basis for being able to react to business requirements at all.
Master Data - and Master Data Quality: Why is it so Important?
Master Data and ERP Implementation: The management of Master Data plays an increasingly important role in ERP implementations throughout the company. It is often the basis for being able to react to business requirements at all. Regulatory restrictions due to obligations within the framework of data protection requirements or the requirements of business processes, the associated transfer or passing on of master data information to further systems that must apply worldwide are important aspects that you must take into account.
These 2 points alone show how important a solid, high quality of master data must be in order to be able to operate company-wide and worldwide. The acquisition and qualification of Master Data must be backed by a stable process so that the basic prerequisite for smooth cooperation within the company - a high master data quality - can be ensured. An additional article will be published on the acquisition and qualification of master data in the context of an ERP implementation, which will make our experience in independent ERP consulting available to you as best practice.
What Types of Data Constitute Master Data?
In business practice, the two terms Master Data and Information are often mixed up. From our experience in ERP consulting, it is important to strictly separate data and information. Science also describes a strict separation of the two concepts data and information (Tuomi 1999 "Data is more than Knowledge"). Simply put, information is a contextual interpretation of data and is subjective perceptions. Data are objective facts and should be described as such. Information is the basis for business decisions and is therefore purpose-bound. It is also used in the context of business process management to achieve corporate or business goals.
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The Drivers of Master Data Quality and ERP Implementations
Data Description for ERP Master Data Management::
There are Five central terms to describe data at instance and type level:
- Data Object
- Data Element
- Data Object Type
- Data Object Attribute
- Data Object Attribute Type
What is Group Data? (Group Data Class)
- Group Data of a Group Data Class are, for example:
- Customer Data
- Product Data Employee Data
Article Data
Are all data objects that contain business objects, e.g...
- Customers
- Products
- Employees
Articles and operational processes such as e.g...
- Account data changes
- Orders
- Cancellations
- Complaints etc.
- In the Company. They are thus defined and specified by data object types.
This group Master Data, defined at a high level of aggregation, can be defined in four categories based on its properties and frequency of change, as well as its existential independence and volume constancy:
- Change data
- Inventory data
- Transaction data
- Master data
Master Data and ERP Systems:
They are characterised by constant volumes and a low frequency of change. They represent business objects of a company and describe facts such as the size or weight or the colour of an article. This also applies to employee data and their account details or IBAN numbers in customer management.
Transaction Data in the ERP System:
It is data that represents the business processes and their operations based on master data. For example, an order uses the customer's master data as the movement date for further process flows such as provision of the goods or dispatch of the order. This example makes it clear that transaction data rather belongs to the category of short-lived data than master data. When designing an ERP implementation, it is therefore important to calculate the future data volume for storage and archiving. This volume of transaction data will grow permanently with each order.
Inventory Data in the ERP System:
It is the data that depicts a quantity and value structure.
This includes:
- Stocks of materials,
- Finished goods,
- Auxiliary and operating materials,
- Semi-finished products, etc.
Change Data in the ERP System:
Since it can happen from time to time that Master Data changes, such as the account number of an employee or the address of a customer, change data must document the change.
Data Quality Management of Master Data and ERP Implementations
The tasks of data quality management in the context of an ERP implementation include the definition of organisational responsibility and the provision of data in the correct and required quality for the respective user. Here, too, it is important in the context of ERP consulting that a process description and a user role concept are created. The buzzwords for this are: Data Stewarding and Data Governance. We will also publish an article on this for your use!
