Teradata

Most companies rely on "master data" that is shared across operational and analytic systems. This data includes information about customers, suppliers, accounts, or organizational units and is used to classify and define transactional data.

The challenge is keeping master data consistent, complete, and controlled across the enterprise. Misaligned and inaccurate master data can cause costly data inaccuracies and misleading analytics, which can negatively impact everything from new product introductions to regulatory compliance.

The answer to these and other related issues is master data management (MDM), a set of processes that creates and maintains an accurate, consistent view of reference data that the entire organization can access for decision making. By standardizing business entity definitions, improving data quality, and aggregating and distributing data across the organization, MDM simplifies and improves business processes, enhances organizational speed and agility, and leads to a consistent, holistic view of the entire enterprise.

Effective master data management is essential for any forward-thinking business. As Henry Morris, senior analyst with IDC, has pointed out, "Reliable master data is critical because it feeds both transactional systems that run business operations as well as reporting and analytics systems that provide information about the business. "Without proper master data management, the very foundation of the business is at risk.

A good MDM solution mitigates that risk by managing data architecture, metadata, data quality, data hierarchies, master data workflow, and data governance. It also synchronizes master data so that changes are propagated across the entire enterprise.

Teradata® Master Data Management meets all of those requirements and more in a complete package that operates seamlessly with existing Teradata system solutions, offering a lower total cost of ownership than other MDM solutions in the market today. Teradata MDM is a natural extension of Teradata's existing active enterprise intelligence strategy, and is key to enabling strategic, tactical, and event-driven decision making through a centralized, mission-critical, and up-to-date version of the enterprise data.

Teradata MDM offers everything required to effectively and economically resolve issues related to master data management. With its core MDM services, product information management capability, fit with Teradata's industry logical data models and Teradata solutions, plus consulting and implementation services – Teradata offers end-to-end master data management capabilities to get you started and keep your business running smoothly.

If you are looking for a solution that gives a clear, concise, and accurate view of your enterprise's master data, look no further. Teradata MDM is a flexible platform that can be configured to your business's exact requirements, and it builds upon Teradata's extensive experience with enterprise data modeling, acquisition, cleansing, and governance.

It's more than a technology. Teradata MDM is a methodology that delivers business intelligence, which allows you to see your organization more clearly than ever before.

Teradata MDM allows a business to model all of its master data – not just the master data in a single business unit or transaction processing system (TPS), but all master data across all business units and trading partners.

Every Teradata MDM solution is based on an enterprise logical data model, which describes the master data and its relationships from a business perspective, independent of the physical constraints of any particular TPS. In addition, the data model resolves any differences that exist among the logical and physical definitions of master data across all of the company's TPSs.

Teradata MDM does not require the application of a specific logical data model; rather, it adapts to the logical representation of data required by a business to ensure that all business-critical data is included, correct, complete, on time, and in sync. In addition, it does this using a single repository of enterprise master data.

Data stewards must be able to view the master data and approve its publication to subscribing information systems. In addition, they must be able to oversee the process by which master data is collected, edited, and stored.

Teradata MDM includes reusable common MDM services and user interfaces that enable data stewards to customize the solution and interact with master data in ways that are familiar and comfortable. These services have been created based on Teradata's extensive experience with the management of enterprise data. The solution also has the ability to grow across different data assets or process domains while leveraging the same platform.

Teradata MDM's workflow tool allows data stewards to define the process by which they want to manage master data and to control its quality to verifiable standards. This workflow/process-based service framework supports both internal and external data services.

A business can create enterprise definitions of master data, but it also can create and use business unit or trading partner definitions of master data as well.

Teradata MDM allows all of these master data definitions to coexist and be used in the context within which they are appropriate. Teradata MDM does this via a powerful business rules engine that allows a business to apply an inventory of preexisting rules that describe the many relationships among master data that have developed over time.

These rules can sort master data by meaning or arrange it into hierarchies. They can also be used to "de-dupe" master records and to identify "orphan" master data that appears to have no relationship with any definition of enterprise master data.

Every commercially available MDM solution on the market today, including Teradata MDM, has insulation from change as its goal. Unfortunately, many solutions fall short of this goal because their underlying infrastructures cannot support the demands users make on the data itself. That is because the centralization of any kind of data can create a single point of failure within a system that is not engineered to satisfy all of the requests for service that may be placed on the central point.

Teradata MDM is the exception because it operates on a centralized database and computing engine that can economically scale to respond to any volume of master data requests. Teradata's MPP architecture is the only production-tested technology that can withstand the demands of modern global business within a classic MDM publisher-subscriber architecture.

Technology alone can't deliver a solution. Teradata Corporation has the knowledge and experience required to deliver an enterprise MDM solution that works.

For more information about how Teradata MDM can help your business make sense of its master data, contact your Teradata representative.