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Master Data Management Software
So what is Master Data Management ?
Master Data Management (MDM), focuses on the management of reference or master data that is shared by several disparate IT systems and groups. MDM is required to enable consistent computing between diverse system architectures and business functions.
Large companies often have IT systems that are used by diverse business functions (e.g., finance, sales, R&D, etc.) and span across multiple countries. These diverse systems usually need to share key data that is relevant to the parent company (e.g., products, customers, and suppliers).When estimating possible product data quality and business data quality solutions, the manual option is the first that comes to mind. However, this is a perfect opportunity to learn from other companies' mistakes which have shown time after time that manual product and business data quality solutions are not sufficient to deal with large amounts of complicated data structures. Even automated product data quality tools would not suffice since, in order to run them properly, one needs to allocate resources and manpower needed to created the rules and dictionaries that will enable the data quality and business quality software to do the automatic part of the work – de-duplication, reclassification and re-standardization of the data. It is critical for the company to consistently use these shared data elements through various IT systems, since they can suffer from considerable business inefficiencies, operational failures and financial loss due to duplicated, inaccurate, inconsistent and mis-classified master data spread across numerous enterprise applications.
Master Data Management also becomes important when two or more companies want to share data across corporate boundaries. In this case, MDM becomes an industry issue such as is the case with the Finance industry and the required STP (Straight Through Processing) or T+1.
The challenge of synchronizing and perfecting product, customer, supplier and financial data originating in multiple source systems is daunting. Some MDM solutions excel at aggregating the data from its various sources, but without much focus on the data itself. Other systems, which place more focus on the data itself, require massive projects to define the "rules" and "dictionaries" that will allow software to automatically de-duplicate, standardize and classify the enterprise’s complex data. Since no set of manually defined rules can address every conceivable situation, accuracy is less than optimal and ongoing manual rule definition efforts are required.
Zoomix Accelerator continues to prove its worth in business arenas considered to be hardest to implement product data quality processes on - complex corporate personnel data and financial data of large corporations, where there is a need for product data classification can be highly variable and hard to manipulate. Its technology is very easy to integrate into existing workflows, thus reducing the "time to benefit" to absolute minimum. Its self learning technology allows the business to minimize the ongoing costs by taking the need for manual rule development out of the equation, thus dramatically reducing the requirement of the "dirty work" by human operators which is so often required for complex data manipulation in large enterprises. Additional advantage of Zoomix Accelerator is the ability to classify challenging product records into one or more taxonomies, including both standard taxonomies (such as UNSPSC classification, eCl@ss classification, ETIM classification and GS1 classification) and custom hieratchies used internally by companies.
The difficult and resource-intensive nature of these solutions prevents many companies from succeeding at – or even attempting – MDM.
This is where Zoomix comes in. Built upon on the company’s patent-pending Self-Learning Technology, Zoomix offers enterprises a fast and highly-automated track to realizing the key business benefits promised by MDM. Their Self-Learning Technology features an integrated set of advanced intelligent algorithms and processes which allow the software to learn, understand, and correct any type of complex master data on the fly.
Other computing paradigms relevant for the core business of large companies are e.g. OLTP transactional computing (used for ERP and other cases where it is vital to make sure that not even a small part of a data set is lost) and DSS (Decision Support Systems, as one of the basic sources for management decisions); their tasks range from operational reporting to EIS (Executive Information Systems). Master data management is not only required to coordinate different ERP systems, but also necessary to supply meta-data for aggregating and integrating transactional data. This use of MDM is necessary for Data Warehouse projects typically incorporated in Decision Support Systems. For this reason, MDM systems sometimes provide a meta-data abstraction layer.
Master Data Management solutions tackle the rapidly escalating issues of dimension coordination, integration and reconciliation that enterprises face with each incremental year of systems evolution.An easy to use, web-based master data management system is the missing link between operational/transactional systems, business intelligence and Performance Management systems.
Databases contain a mixture of user-specific formats, abbreviations, acronyms and, in some cases, multiple languages. As a result, attempts to merge data stored in different databases belonging to an organization can result in costly duplications of data, inaccurate query results, and even loss of data. These problems, as well as others, can seriously reduce the effectiveness of the data as required by the organization's business processes.
Zoomix solves this problem by transforming the company’s data, which may be stored in multiple data sources, into a standardized format, with accurate classifications, and without duplications. The result is a Master Repository which can be referenced and utilized by any number of systems and applications. Redundant and erroneous items are not deleted or modified, but rather represented in their correct form in the Master Repository. The Master Repository also presents a consolidated view of the information that originated from different data sources.
Master data management can go beyond data integration. MDM generally has a data governance component. Data governance means having to define clear data owners and users, having clear business policies regarding what is good master data and what is not. Master data management is also about providing continuous reports and alerts to master data owners and the stewards regarding the health of the master data.
Zoomix's advanced software technology makes it capable of very-high-performance processing. While beneficial for batch operations, in which millions of records can be processed in minutes, this level of performance is critical for the integration of product data quality functions into real-time business processes. Furthermore, the infrastructure is highly scalable making it ideal for large and rapidly growing data processing environments.
Some of the function that Zoomix's Master Data Management Solutions perform:
| Data Cleansing and Analysis | Automated mapping of data attributes and unification of data, including correction of spelling errors, enforcement of consistent terminology, removal of extraneous spaces and punctuation for clean, usable data |
| Matching | Automated identification and cross-linking (de-duplication) of duplicate/redundant records for effective operational tasks and analysis/decision-making |
| Classification | Automated grouping/linking of records into categories based on pattern recognition
for effective operational access to all relevant data and analysis/decision-making |
| Normalization | Makes individual details within fields consistent and builds standardized description fields for effective searching, matching, and readability |
| Enrichment | Automated addition of missing info. to fields and records for a more complete and up-to-date view of existing data |
About Zoomix:
Zoomix develops and markets master data quality management software. The company’s proprietary technology provides a platform for the enterprise to create, maintain, and manage a unified and standardized master data set – spanning all databases and applications – which is free of errors, duplicates, inconsistencies, and redundancies. Zoomix’s products excel with all types of complex corporate data, such as product data, in any number of languages.
Contact Information:
Europe
Nathan Birtle
General Manager, European Operations
Building 3, Chiswick Park
566 Chiswick High Road
Chiswick
London W4 5YA
Tel. +44 (0) 20 8899 6092
Fax +44 (0) 20 8899 6001
Email: nathan.birtle@zoomix.com
Headquarters
Zoomix Data Mastering, Ltd.
Jerusalem Technology Park
Building 9
Jerusalem 96951, Israel
Tel. +972-2-648-3856
Fax +972-2-648-3857
Email: info@zoomix.com
United States
Martin Query
Vice President, US Sales
Zoomix, Inc.
25 Mall Rd.
Burlington, MA 01803-4100
Sales 1-888-8-ZOOMIX (1-888-896-6649)
Tel. 1-781-270-0621
Fax 1-781-270-9318
Email: martin.query@zoomix.com