Introduction to Oracle MDM

Modern business analytics on top of terabyte sized data warehouses are producing ever more relevant and actionable information for decision makers, but the data sources remain fragmented and inconsistent. These data quality problems continue to impact operational efficiency and reporting accuracy. Master Data Management(MDM) is the key. It fixes the data quality problem on the operational side of the business and augments the data ware house on the analytical side of the business. In this paper, we will explore the central role of Master Data Management as part of a complete enterprise information management solution.

Enterprise Data

An enterprise has three kinds of actual business data: Transactional, Analytical, and Master.

Transactional data supports the applications. Analytical data supports decision-making. Master data represents the business objects upon which transactions are done and the dimensions around which analysis is accomplished Properly.

Master Data Management has two architectural components:  

• The technology to profile, consolidate and synchronize the master data across the enterprise

• The applications to manage, cleanse, and enrich the structured and unstructured master data

MDM becomes the central source for accurate fully cross-referenced real time master data. It must seamlessly integrate with data warehouses, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) applications, and all Business Intelligence (BI) systems, designed to bring the right information in the right form to the right person at the right time.

In addition to supporting and augmenting SOA and BI systems, the MDM applications must support data governance. Data Governance is a business process for defining the data definitions, standards, access rights, quality rules. MDM executes these rules and enables strong data controls across the enterprise.

Oracle’s market leading MDM solutions have all of these characteristics. With the broadest set of operational and analytical MDM applications in the industry, Oracle MDM is designed to support Governance, Risk mitigation, and Compliance (GRC) by eliminating inconsistencies in the core business data across applications and enabling strong process controls on a centrally managed master data store.