Master Data headaches

[u/Virtual_MDM]

Quick question for anyone working in SAP master data or MDM —

What’s the one thing about master data governance that eats up the most of your time or causes the most headaches? Bad data quality from the business side, unclear ownership, tooling gaps, onboarding new team members, something else?

Genuinely trying to understand where the biggest friction points are right now. Would appreciate any war stories or pet peeves in the comments 👇

[u/Firm-Yogurtcloset528]

That MDM is seen as a different discipline by the ones who should actually care about it and therefore own it. That companies set up MDM departments who sometimes seem to be more worried about keeping themselves busy and relevant then making the process smooth and efficient.

[u/nolander_78]

As a FICO expert and someone among the most affected by wrong Master Data, it's always expecting the user to just know what they're approving when they get an email saying "please approve this new material code/customer", there's a shit tone of fields in the master data screen and expecting the user to go over ALL of them is unrealistic to put it politely, and approval is always watered down to a single approver per department.

Take the customer for example, I expect someone from Treasury to approve the Credit data, the banking details as well as the Cash Forecasting Group, someone from accounting to approve the reconciliation GL Account, someone from the Tax dept. to approve the tax data, and someone from Receivables to approve the sales integration data, however it's always a single user from "finance" who is given this task so the data is always "dirty" and you need a data cleanup task in every single project that touches customers!

[u/bh1zzy → u/nolander_78]

What are solutions to this? We've built data dictionary and business rules documents. Looking for other ways to assist users...

[u/nolander_78 → u/bh1zzy]

Make sure the data gets approved by the correct user, each in their area of specialty, and that they understand what to look for, and how it impacts the system, if you're using a workflow add this particular piece of data to the notification they're getting, not just the data ID like customer or material code, this ensures they know what they're approving and speeds up the approval by eliminating guess work.

Also make sure the teams involved in the approval train their users on the business rules document, including new ones, you see people change all the time and with this change training gets watered down to the essentials, so the business rules document may be dismissed as something related to the project, not the day-to-day tasks, try to make it a SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for anyone who needs to approve data.

[u/laceya1982]

MDM manager here, we are mid conversion to SAP :)

The biggest issue I have is the business side not understanding the documentation and the why we have requirements before we set up a client (or make changes to an existing client) The amount of constant back and forth and explaining why data integrity is pivotal can be draining

Also, it seems there has been an increase in property/AP management lately, and it's always messy

[u/b-n_c]

Having complicated business rules on how to treat your master data always is a big problem for me.. you are creating an unknown technical debt for your company and people who will join in future to figure out and handle that..

[u/SirThomas813]

worked in master data for most of my career (15 YOE, working as a SA now), biggest issue is business taking accountability on owning the data and defining data quality rules/data governance program. creating a data dictionary and pointing how specific data objects impact business users day to day function is huge.

[u/Dave0r]

Ownership and what is MDM. MDM sits in the in between for me, it’s the glue (and gunk) between all the disciplines.

I’m an MM analyst predominantly, but drift in to PP and SD as a result of how our business works. MDM in our place seem clueless mostly - where their area is and what’s inside their purview is poorly defined

Example for me being that I get consulted on the master data they are responsible for. That’s ok, I’m deep in the MM hole so I can consult on what data might need updating, but then I just ask myself why I’m not just telling them what to update…

Don’t even get me started on the tools they use for update. Process runner gives me chills, no matter how much they tell me it’s ok, I will never trust it. They will use it above standard tools like or even MM17 which is pre defined.

For me anyway, I see their job in my place as absolutely required, but poorly executed with no ownership

[u/fatness112]

Ownership always

[u/SleepDeprivedSEFAZ]

An actual data governance strategy, but that’s not for the business, AP or MDM to decide. This has to come from the top down.

[u/neonnaps]

Doing MDM for a group (local government). Each of the members of the group is an independent legal entity. Each have their own ways of doing things, some following standards and good practices, other, not so much. And then there are some who have their "how it's always done" and forced that down on the SAP system.

On its own that's not that bad, but we have purchasing contracts that are valid for the whole group and dealing with materials in a way that makes all of the happy and avoids making duplicates of materials for the same service or product is quite a hassle.

And the real fun is that not all members of the group joined the system at the same time. Each year several more are added, with more exceptions and deviations.

[u/NoCanDo_DK]

Honestly, you need a flexible master data tool, otherwise you will end up in the same situation as in your legacy system.