Page 163 - Building Big Data Applications

162 Building Big Data Applications

learn from successful corporate cultures. Our next segment focuses on another impor-
tant member of the data family, called as the master data.

Master data

Master data management is used by applications to add key business entities (customer,
products, policy, agent, location, and employee) while processing and utilizing data from
the data layers within an organization. The master data is processed and stored in a
master data management database (MDM database).
Why is master data management important? In the traditional world of data and
information management, we used to build data and applications in silos across the
enterprise. The addition of new systems and applications resulted in not only data
volumes and transactions, but also created redundant copies of data, and in many cases
the same data structure contained disparate values. The end state architecture resulted
in systems that did not interface and integrate with each other. The complexity of
processing disparate data into a common reference architecture required hours of
manual effort and did not provide a clean and auditable result set. Each system can give
you a fractured insight into what is happening in the enterprise but you cannot create a
clear and concise view of data as a centralized system.
This is where the need for a centralized master data management system begins.
With a centralized system, the enterprise can create, manage, and share information
between systems and applications seamlessly. The efforts to manage and maintain
such a system is very simple and flexible compared to a decentralized platform.
This approach can save the enterprise time and opportunity costs, while ensuring
data quality and consistency. Master data management is driven to handle
each subject area as its own system within the enterprise. The underlying archi-
tecture of the system allows multiple source systems to be integrated and each
system can alter the attribute values for the subject area. The final approval of the
most accurate value is determined by a Data Steward and a Data Governance team,
post which the business rules are executed to process the data modifications. The
results are then shared back with the source systems, applications, and downstream
analytical applications and databases, and called as the “gold copy” of the data
definition.
Master data management is not about technology, the critical success factors this
initiative are the subject matter experts in data within the business teams, who can
understand and define the processing rules and complex decision-making process
regarding the content and accuracy of the data. Master data management is not
implementing a technology, as the role of any technology platform in this process is that
of a facilitator and an enabler.
Master data management is about defining business processes and rules for man-
aging common data within disparate systems in the enterprise. In implementing these