Introducing: MDM Governance

With our newest update for our Master Data Management (MDM) module you can easily maintain your data records with updates from different sources. Allowing you to specify the level of authority for the best results.

This blogpost will give a short introduction to this update and it’s benefit.

The Cohelion Multi-domain MDM module is about defining single source of truth. This simple concept is still interpreted in many different ways. The most common use case of MDM is a central place to maintain mappings of different code sets that may be in use within your IT landscape. This is a requirement for system integration or consolidation.

Another interpretation of single source of truth is that it’s a central place where you can maintain relations without your master lists. For example, it allows you to specify what countries are part of what region, or what offices are part of what legal entity.
It’s also valid to assume that MDM is the central place where your Canonical Data Model is defined on each level, so all attributes for each office (or product, or customer or vendor) are known within your entire IT landscape, is stored in one place, thus creating Golden Records.

For each domain (for example: Products, or Customers, or Organisation structure) and for each level within that domain (for example: Office, Country, Region, Legal entity etc) you can add tags or typed attributes (for example; at level Office you may want to maintain it’s VAT number, opening hours, nr of square meters of storage space, number of 5t forklifts etc). The difficulty is that some attributes are best sourced from one application, while other attributes are only available in another application.

This is where our latest update helps out. It’s now possible to specify the level of authority that each application has for a specific attribute. This is ideal for maintaining these Golden Records, as it lets you selectively update your MDM records from your entire application landscape. Generally, this is called data-federation
It even creates an XSD per system, so you can validate before uploading.
Within the PM control center, all master data is accessible for authorized users. Via a user friendly web UI the entire CDM for each item can be reviewed or completed.

With our continuous improvements to the MDM module we make it easier for our business users to be in control of their data.