ENTERPRISE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Information is the result of processing, manipulating and organizing data in a way that adds knowledge to the recipient. Enterprise Information Management (EIM) is the collection and management of information from one or more sources and distribution to one or more stakeholders.

Business challenges

The emergence of client-server technology in the early 1990s and the explosion of lower-cost database technology led to the decentralization of data and data management functions. Although this decentralized strategy promoted speed and agility, allowing business units and individual projects to define their own data strategy, most corporations are now struggling with redundant databases and multiple meanings of data. Poor data quality, out-of-sync data models and semantic differences in the data have led decision makers within companies to lose confidence in their data warehouse and business intelligence solutions.

Attevo solutions

Attevo has extensive capability in all aspects of EIM including data migrations, integration, quality, integrity, security and Master Data Management (MDM).

MDM has emerged as a key architecture and strategy in solving the need for managing high quality, consolidated and clearly defined data. Common business problems that MDM addresses include:

• Reporting customer margin and profitability
• Reporting product margin and profitability
• Reporting total expense analysis by supplier/vendor
• Reporting product by sales channel
• Reporting product margin by organization

MDM is the principle of managing an organization's core business entities as a corporate asset. In most large organizations, these core business entities (master data) are not managed centrally, allowing the systems that consume these entities to store different versions of the same data. MDM is also a framework architecture that improves a company's ability to maintain quality and synchronization of master data.

The framework of MDM is designed to operationally manage and publish changes to all the downstream systems that subscribe to the data. MDM becomes the central point to manage and govern enterprise master data, ensuring the quality of the data and managing the data more efficiently and effectively.

Through consolidating core business data in a central fashion and developing business rules that verify and validate disparate data, an MDM implementation is able to ensure the consistency and quality of data.

Benefits

High–quality enterprise reporting
Large organizations rely heavily on business intelligence to make faster and better business decisions, but business intelligence in turn relies completely on clean, high quality data. Effective EIM ensures the accuracy of the reporting and analysis of their operations. MDM encompasses the management of the "dimensional data" that is being related, rolled up and categorized inconsistently and erroneously across the enterprise. The single view of the customer or product may be defined differently by finance, sales or distribution. MDM includes the management of the complex hierarchies to support reporting relationships and allows for the management of alternate hierarchies dependent upon business requirements.

Lower operational costs
EIM ensures master data is dispersed among many formats (tables, files, etc.) and technologies (RDBMS, XML, text, etc.). Repositories frequently store duplicate data and/or unique data that have the same semantic definition. Multiple lines of business, siloed departments and partners (subsidiaries, channels, etc.) create duplication and technology redundancies. An effective EIM solution supports lowering costs of IT support and data quality errors.

Lower risk
Master data exists throughout the enterprise system. Much of the master data is duplicated across multiple departments and applications. Additionally, multiple employees have access to update and edit this master data without communicating or reviewing with other groups that manage the same data. Effective EIM manages data centrally so that it can be updated in a secure method, allowing for validation controls to be implemented and lowering the risk of data errors.

Data transparency
Enterprise information is important to both business and technical groups. Having views into the core business data as well as the metadata and business rules that support the master data is critical. Data lineage of how the master data was consolidated, cleansed and propagated to downstream systems must be recorded and be accessible.

Preserve existing systems
An EIM implementation strengthens the current legacy applications within the enterprise. A heterogeneous IT infrastructure cannot be reconfigured into a single system without years of re-engineering and high cost of investment. MDM acts as a hub between operational systems that originate the master data and consuming analytical systems to ensure high quality and consistency throughout.

Support mergers & acquisitions
A major problem faced by many companies looking to consolidate data after a merger or acquisition arises because few organizations really understand the state of the enterprise information in their operational systems. Master data exists in every system within an enterprise and each system may describe its master data differently. Implementing an MDM solution sets the foundation for successful data integration projects and reduces time and expense associated with mergers and acquisitions.

To speak with an Attevo consultant, please email us or telephone us at one of our office locations.

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