(The session recording is linked as a video below.)

At TechEd in Bangalore, I gave a lecture together with my colleague Andreas Seifried. We explained the various deployment options of SAP Master Data Governance (SAP MDG) on SAP S/4HANA and on SAP BTP. We highlighted which role these solutions can play in your organization and how they can help you to manage and store master data efficiently across your landscape.

Most importantly, we gave some insight into the latest innovations in SAP MDG, including new integration options for SAP MDG, cloud edition that allow additional scenarios, federation with SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA as the core data owner, the new optional cloud-ready mode in SAP MDG, as well as increased automation by leveraging external reference data from data providers and others. We also gave demos showing some recent innovations we delivered with the latest SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA release in October 2023.

If you weren’t able to attend the session, or in case you tried but you were one of the many people who couldn’t get into the room because it was full and the door had been closed, first of all: apologies for that. Secondly, I’ve created a video for anyone interested to watch:

Session Recording – please click to view

Federation

One of the innovations we highlighted in the session is the new option to use SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 2023 as the core data owner or as one of the application data owners in a federated MDG landscape.

Federation with SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA as CDO

It provides the benefits of a federated master data management, supporting an enterprise-wide approach to master data management that allows for a decentral management of data where it is best understood – in the context of decentral applications, whilst still providing all the advantages of a centralized approach to master data management. In our session, we discussed how to set up federated MDG in your system landscape.

New Integration Option in the Cloud

We also talked about a new integration option for our SaaS solution on the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP): SAP MDG, cloud edition. In addition to the first option (a REST-based integration via the SAP Master Data Integration service on SAP BTP), we released a second option earlier this year (a message-based integration using the SOAP protocol). Both options can be used in parallel. For example, companies who have systems that are not connected to SAP Master Data Integration yet can easily integrate these systems with SAP MDG, cloud edition using SOA.

SOAP as new integration option for SAP MDG, cloud edition

This broadened option for integration allows you to leverage SAP MDG, cloud edition in additional scenarios. For example, you can deploy the solution in a landscape where creation or change of business partner data happen in several systems in your landscape. As soon as these systems send SOAP messages with these changes to SAP MDG, cloud edition, MDG can detect duplicates across the landscape, merge the core data of these duplicates, and create a key mapping between the duplicates in a highly automated fashion. Only if the system needs a human to decide, it triggers a workflow item to ask a human to approve a potential match group, or to fix an error that was found during validation.

Cloud-Ready Mode in MDG

Another innovation we highlighted is cloud-ready mode in SAP MDG, which is a new option to configure and extend processes and applications in MDG. Cloud-ready mode leverages the latest architecture with Restful ABAP Programming and ABAP Cloud.

Cloud-ready mode in SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 2023

We discussed how to enable the new mode in SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 2023 and what consequences this has for your MDG implementation.

The classic (Web-Dynpro based) central governance, the change request processing, can be used as before, and everything based on the consolidation and mass processing framework will be switched to the new, modern architecture. This provides a completely Fiori-based user experience across all processes including single processing, mass processing, consolidation, and data quality management.

We also demonstrated cloud-ready mode in action, showing the benefits of automation in a mass process with derivations and breakouts into single-object processing by the user.

Demo: cloud-ready mode in SAP MDG (see the session recording to view the demo)

Data Provider Integration

An additional innovation we covered was about leveraging trusted external reference data to remove the need for people to search for this data, key in that data, and maybe even to involve more people and effort to correct data that was typed in incorrectly.

After offering this capability in SAP MDG, cloud edition earlier this year, we now also provide it in SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 2023. You can look up the data from the data provider Corporate Data Quality in Switzerland and use the reference data to create or enrich business partners in SAP MDG.

Data provider integration in SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 2023

We also demoed the new capability by creating a new business partner from scratch and by enriching an existing business partner record within a cloud-ready mode process.

Demo: data provider integration in SAP MDG (see the session recording to view the demo)

After the demo, we explained that we intend to provide more automation in MDG in the future by providing data provider integration in mass processes and by including more data providers, like Dunn & Bradstreet, and to also allow companies to use their own data providers of choice and connect them to MDG processes.

Many More Innovations Provided and Even More to Come

Obviously, one session at TechEd is much too short to discuss all recent innovations in SAP MDG in detail. That is why we brought one more slide to at least briefly outline a few more examples of recent innovations.

As you know, SAP MDG is a key enabler that helps companies to get ready for their future business transformations. Accordingly, during the session, we put all recent innovations into the context of our roadmap for SAP MDG that follows our main themes of automation, and federation to enable our customers’ digital transformation and their path to the cloud.

For a detailed overview of our planned innovations, visit SAP MDG in the SAP Roadmap Explorer.