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Preface xxxiii

discovery of the patrimonial value of data is at the center of
any financial analysis of the MDM approach. The
traceability of reference and master data is strategic to
reinforce the alignment of the company with business
regulations and allows it to better follow its risks.

Business users must take hold of MDM systems in order
to re-appropriate their reference and master data, in a
reliable and secure manner, in collaboration with the IT
department. The technical tools and office automation tools
which are limited to an approximate management of
reference and master data, are replaced by an MDM system,
on the basis of a rich data model shared by the whole
company and an organization which is adapted to it.

IT professionals must assimilate the procedures of data
modeling and help their business users to use them. They
must take into account the essential work of integrating the
MDM system with the rest of the information system, which
changes the way in which the implementation of EAI/ESB
solutions are approached.

We hope that universities and schools, which form the
next generation of managers and IT professionals, will profit
from this book to relaunch the discipline of modeling.
Training courses have put an exaggerated importance on the
techniques of object oriented programming, leaving behind
certain fundamentals of IT, and modeling in particular. It is
essential to return to this; this book has the aim of
demonstrating the reasons why this is so urgent and how to
answer it, in particular for reference and master data.

How to use this book

We have organized the book so that the reader can benefit
from it depending on whether he or she belongs to general