sap mdg - my top 10 highlights

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SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK scn.sap.com © 2012 SAP AG 1 SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights Applies to: SAP MDG Summary This article highlights the top-10 features of SAP MDG from the experience of the author during customer presentations. Author: Steffen Ulmer Company: SAP (Schweiz) AG Created on: 25 October 2012 Author Bio The author is a principal solution consultant in an SAP environment since 2001. He has an extensive knowledge of reseller and consumer goods producers sectors. The main focus of his SAP consulting lies on software/solution-architecture and business process expertise. Thereby he is an expert for the SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portals, SAP MDG, SAP MDM, SAP GDS and SAP BPM/BRM. Since a long time he also a remarkable expertise in Web Dynpro Java development. Since 2007 he is also a member of various special focus-groups within SAP. This activity includes the building and moderation of e-learning session in the context MDM and BPM, the preparation and development of MDM and MDG demo scenarios with new technologies as well as the support of the SAP sales department and product management.Since 2008 he is working as an enterprise architect for master data for a large enterprise customer in UK and NL. Within this role he attended as well several SAP major events (Sapphire, TechEd) as a speaker and POD representative to share his knowledge and experience with other customers and partners.In 2007 he also completed his certification to act as an official SAP Ramp Up Coach. In the last years he was working in that role in several different customer projects. The consultant was a member of the SAP Development Department for SAP MDG in our headquarters in 2012. During this time he was acting as a fellow for the product owner of the MDG application with a focus on Cross System Workflow Monitoring.

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SAP MDG - My Top 10 Highlights

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SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK scn.sap.com

© 2012 SAP AG 1

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

Applies to:

SAP MDG

Summary

This article highlights the top-10 features of SAP MDG from the experience of the author during customer presentations.

Author: Steffen Ulmer

Company: SAP (Schweiz) AG

Created on: 25 October 2012

Author Bio

The author is a principal solution consultant in an SAP environment since 2001. He has an extensive knowledge of reseller and consumer goods producers sectors. The main focus of his SAP consulting lies on software/solution-architecture and business process expertise. Thereby he is an expert for the SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portals, SAP MDG, SAP MDM, SAP GDS and SAP BPM/BRM. Since a long time he also a remarkable expertise in Web Dynpro Java development. Since 2007 he is also a member of various special focus-groups within SAP. This activity includes the building and moderation of e-learning session in the

context MDM and BPM, the preparation and development of MDM and MDG demo scenarios with new technologies as well as the support of the SAP sales department and product management.Since 2008 he is working as an enterprise architect for master data for a large enterprise customer in UK and NL. Within this role he attended as well several SAP major events (Sapphire, TechEd) as a speaker and POD representative to share his knowledge and experience with other customers and partners.In 2007 he also completed his certification to act as an official SAP Ramp Up Coach. In the last years he was working in that role in several different customer projects. The consultant was a member of the SAP Development Department for SAP MDG in our headquarters in 2012. During this time he was acting as a fellow for the product owner of the MDG application with a focus on Cross System Workflow Monitoring.

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK scn.sap.com

© 2012 SAP AG 2

Table of Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 3

Out of the box content ........................................................................................................................................ 3

Focus on Business User with User Interface features ....................................................................................... 4

Change documents ............................................................................................................................................. 5

Data Quality functions ......................................................................................................................................... 5

Material classification & Hierarchy maintenance ................................................................................................ 6

Robust Data Replication ..................................................................................................................................... 7

Template Creation .............................................................................................................................................. 8

Mass maintenance .............................................................................................................................................. 9

Analytical features for processes ...................................................................................................................... 10

Extensibility & Custom Objects ......................................................................................................................... 11

Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 12

Copyright........................................................................................................................................................... 13

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK scn.sap.com

© 2012 SAP AG 3

Introduction

Recently, I gave a lot of EIM and MDG demos and overview presentations to people and customers who are not so much involved yet into the SAP EIM portfolio directly. In most cases, these people turned out to be real experts in the master data topics itself, knowing the overall advantages of a proper master data strategy including centrally governed creation. In other words: I had the pleasure to demo SAP MDG to people who have a clear understanding of the features and functions needed to achieve a very high data quality of the master data in a master data hub.

In this article I would like to explain 10 highlights of SAP MDG that sparked off the most attention from the audience when I presented the software in action.

Out of the box content

SAP MDG comes with a full set of content such as data models for material, supplier, customer and finance objects. The content also includes ready-to-be-used User Interfaces, validations and workflows. In addition, the replication and integration part is delivered in the standard as well. This means that our customers do not have to build all these things during the implementation project if they plan to integrate SAP MDG to a SAP centric landscape. If customers want to extend or modify the standard content they can do that of course with the SAP MDG extensibility features, but they can use the standard content anyways as a starting point. This will be a real accelerator for the project because it’s always better to start with basic content than to start from scratch.

The following screenshot shows you a SAP MDG landing page. Here you can see some of the out-of-the- box features available in SAP MDG for material data:

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK scn.sap.com

© 2012 SAP AG 4

Focus on Business User with User Interface features

SAP MDG has a real focus on the Business Users. The screens are built in a way that a user is able to find the information at the right place. Features like:

- Printing, - PDF generation or - Export lists into spreadsheets

are available where it makes sense.

The following screenshots shows how the SAP MDG system triggers the generation a PDF document from within a material overview screen. As you can see, it’s not just a screenshot of the web form.

Example for PDF generation in SAP MDG-M

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

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© 2012 SAP AG 5

Change documents

In SAP MDG you will add or modify the attributes of master data objects in a governed way. Later on, business users might want to know Who changed which attribute and how?” These questions can be fully answered in SAP MDG with the “Change Documents” feature. Instead of going to a different User Interface or even into technical log files, the feature is available for business users directly in their user Interface. The button is available in SAP MDG as it makes perfect sense there. The following screenshot explains the feature from a UI perspective: Example for Change Document User interface

Data Quality functions

Because SAP MDG is running on SAP`s ABAP stack on top of SAP ERP, the inherent Data Dictionary is used as well in the data model. This means that the validations (such as field length and data types) are available in SAP MDG as well. Additional validations like postal code length etc. are available out of the box as well. In addition, SAP MDG also provides integration to external services for validations. A standard scenario for customer or supplier data includes for instance the validation of addresses via SAP Data Services. The following screenshots shows the postal code validation and the address cleanse during user input.

Postal Code validation in SAP MDG-S

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

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© 2012 SAP AG 6

Address Cleanse in SAP MDG-S

Material classification & Hierarchy maintenance

SAP MDG for Materials re-uses the SAP ERP classification. You can maintain the classes and hierarchies in transactions CL02 and CLHP. During runtime these definitions will be visible to the users in SAP MDG. End users can also select none-leaf nodes and the characteristics from upper classes in the hierarchy are inherited down to the corresponding classes. The following examples show the User Interface in SAP MDG for selecting a class in a hierarchy based classification: Assign Classification in SAP MDG-M

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK scn.sap.com

© 2012 SAP AG 7

Users can assign “Centrifugal pump” to a material and this level will inherit the attributes from upper classes: Enter classification characteristic values in SAP MDG-M

Robust Data Replication

In SAP MDG you can replicate data to client system in different ways like SOA Services, simple files, RFC, CIF and SAP ALE technology. The SAP Data Replication Framework (DRF) controls the distribution. All these replication mechanisms are long-since proven in SAP ERP and support absolutely a flexible way for transport of the data to SAP and non-SAP systems. You can define filters for the individual connect system to make sure that you replicate only data on which the dedicated system is interested in. Especially the Ad-Hoc replication and the replication monitor are two features which I want to mention: Both are exposed to Business Users in the Web User Interface. The users can search for a specific record and can explicitly replicate that record to a system which he chooses from a list. You can see this in the following screenshot: Ad-Hoc Replication:

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

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© 2012 SAP AG 8

The next screenshot shows the Replication Status Information. As you can see all kind of information regarding the replication is exposed to the user incl.: - Status - The target system - The object type and ID - The message number - Communication Channel: via iDoc or Services

And even a link to the detailed log file.

Template Creation

The function “Template Creation” will speed up the way how your users will be able to create new master data records: Instead of starting each time from scratch they can search for existing (similar) records and use them as templates. You can also create “Dummy-records” in the SAP MDG system as copy-templates. In the newest SAP MDG release this function is also available for segments below the basic data such as for Material: Plant, Distribution Channel and Sales Organization.

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

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© 2012 SAP AG 9

Mass maintenance

SAP MDG supports mass processing: Mass processing in MDG is used for

Processing multiple selected objects of the same entity type in one step

During one transaction the same changes are applied to this selection

You can perform multiple transaction (and selections) using the same change request

Multiple processors can work on the same change request The following screenshot shows the functions available in SAP MDG-M:

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

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© 2012 SAP AG 10

Analytical features for processes

In SAP MDG you can analyse the processing times and statuses of change requests. This involves monitoring business activities, tracking compliance with Service Level Agreements (SLA), optimizing processes, and turning insight into action. For data models and change request types, you can identify:

Average processing time.

Total change requests for a certain time frame.

Total change requests that violated the SLA.

Total change requests with no KPIs defined.

Total change request that exceeded a due date. Analyzing Processing Time of Change requests

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK scn.sap.com

© 2012 SAP AG 11

Extensibility & Custom Objects

This highlight comprises a broader topic: On the one hand ,you can flexibly extend the delivered data models and User Interfaces to your specific needs. In addition, you can create completely new data models for objects that SAP does not deliver out of the box (for example, location data or technical assets)s. On the other hand you can extend the functionality in different ways. One way is the usage of the Side Panel in SAP NetWeaver Business Client. It`s like an additional app on the right-hand side of the screen. There you can display additional information typically in the context of the left-hand side of the screen. I have written a small Web Dynpro application which displays the flow of a Change Request in a graphical visualization. The following screenshots shows that prototype:

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK scn.sap.com

© 2012 SAP AG 12

Related Content

SAP MDG on SDN

SAP MDG on SAP Help

SAP MDG on sap.com

SAP MDG - My TOP-10 Highlights

SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK scn.sap.com

© 2012 SAP AG 13

Copyright

© Copyright 2012 SAP AG. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP AG. The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice.

Some software products marketed by SAP AG and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors.

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These materials are subject to change without notice. These materials are provided by SAP AG and its affiliated companies ("SAP Group") for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP Group shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP Group products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.