Talend MDM

Key Capabilities

Active data model

The Active Data Model found in the enterprise edition provides the same flexibility to model and master any domain as the Community Edition.  It is the center of any MDM implementation and with the Enterprise Edition you define advanced business rules and validations, access rights and registry lookups directly on the model.  Each of these features is described in the subsequent sections.

The simple, integrated approach to implementing a model for registry, persistent or hybrid architectures is unique to Talend MDM.

Master data Quality

Along with full profiling capabilities, Talend MDM Enterprise Edition extends complete, yet simple tools to validate, resolve, standardize, cleanse and augment master data. It includes native components for name and address standardization as well as the capabilities to callout to nearly any third party data source or standardization utility.  All of this is orchestrated and controlled by the data model.

• Advanced data validations - with advanced validations one can calculate values based on attribute data and then propagate the data and validation routine to any associated services and the web based front end.
• Match and Merge - numerous algorithm and matching components are included in the Enterprise Edition of Talend MDM.  The components simplify the process of tuning match logic and allow to apply different algorithms at each attribute.  The protocols utilize easy to configure confidence weights to identify duplicate/matching records and direct them into an automatic survivorship routine for example.
• Bucketing - Talend provides a simple to use component that allows you to configure “buckets” of data to perform matching across. This technique allows you to significantly improve the performance of any match process.
• Data standardization - components are provided that allow to make callouts to industry-standard data standardization services.
• Data Enrichment – make callouts to reliable third party data sources for enriching master data or to standardize.  Known connectors are available.

Integrated Data Integration

With Talend MDM, master data drives interactions with external systems. The solution employs a unique event manager to drive when and where data is synchronized, augmented or distributed.

Talend MDM provides a rich data-integration layer with more than 400 components, including JMS, Web Service, FTP, HTTP, and Change Data Capture (CDC) that allow you to connect to virtually any system or database.  pre-packaged connectors for business systems and databases are included.  A list of over 400 connectors can be found at http://www.talendforge.org/components/. 

Data can be trickle fed through various mechanisms: JMS queues, scheduled jobs, automatic load on the arrival of a file etc. When the record arrives into the hub, the event manager may trigger further processing (advanced validation, enrichment, propagation to other systems...)

Data Governance

The Talend MDM collaborative interface  provides appropriate stewardship tools to help manage master data. The Ajax based interface is dynamically driven by Talend's Active Data Model. All validations found on the model instantiate themselves as validations on Web-based forms. Workflow process is easy to define and provides a strong set of tools for a team to collaborate on and create a trusted and reliable set of master data.

Business Process Management - These BPM features allow you to define and track data through a process or series of steps using a task based system. This task-based workflow enables true collaboration to create a consistent and reliable set of master data.  The workflow is defined and managed by the master data and workflow tasks such as approvals of data, etc. are assigned to users or groups of users. Configuration of workflow is accomplished using an intuitive graphical interface. A graphical trail of process steps provides contextual history as tasks are being resolved.

Survivorship and Stewardship

With Talend MDM Enterprise Edition, any data issues can be easily processed and quickly resolved to reach the golden data record that will be used to build the master data hub or will be written in any MDM target application. The solution provides both automated and manual tools to resolve and create a reliable master.

• Survivorship components - dedicated components help define business rules to implement data survivorship rules and automate survivorship of matched records to de-duplicate data. Business rules for most reliable source or most complete attribute can be applied out of the box and custom rules can also be defined.
• Resolution/Survivorship interface - An intuitive record survivorship enables a data steward to coordinate and manage stewardship task assignment and status. The interface presents source candidate records and provides the tools to quickly identify the attributes to survive and then commit a master record to the hub.

Flexible and dynamic master data management

Ultimately, MDM helps organizations meet corporate objectives for increased revenue, decreased costs, risk management and regulatory compliance.  For every organization, MDM will mean something different to them.  Below are some common benefits that MDM provides.

• Improve Analytics
  Business Intelligence applications has always tried to offer “one version of the truth” and a “360 degree view” that provide very valuable insight to the analysts. Data Warehouse and ERPs have failed to provide BI with the right data and Master Data Management is probably the only way to reach those goals.
  
  
• Increase Revenue through effective cross sale, up sale
  A single view of a customer across multiple lines of business provides insight into purchasing behavior that can be mined to find opportunities for cross sale or up sell of products to a customer. This interests most organizations and especially those that have recently merged or acquired another company.
  
  
• Synchronize and align the business
  Many organizations have multiple back end systems that contain partly similar information. ERP vendors push for consolidating that data in a single application but this can be long, inflexible and may not make business sense. The MDM approach is instead to synchronize those systems so that all are working on the same page.
  
  
• Identify and avoid risk
  MDM offers a complete view of data aligned across departments which provides valuable cross system analysis for risk management.  For example an organization can compile a complete picture of a customer or a supplier in order to understand the risk associated with doing business (or not) with them.
  

Regardless of Business purpose, a successful MDM project will employ several functions in order to deliver value over time. The typical set of functions include the following:

Profile Perform a regular quality assessment on any dataset to detect anomalies and understand data models. Provide insight through reports and visual indicators.

Integrate Acquire any data from any source and allow the data to be synchronized and made available in batch or real time and in the right formats to the right systems and users.

Cleanse Cleanse, standardize and augment data as well as a capability to remove duplicates or accurately identify and survive matching data across and within sources.

Model & Master Present intuitive tools to model any data and define relationships among master data. Secure and provision data by user, group or system. Enable any MDM architectural style.

Collaborate Enable a group of users to collaborate on, agree and publish a set of accepted master data. Supply intuitive audit tools for manual resolution of data tasks.

The comparaison matrix

MDM for Product Data

The process of developing, producing, distributing and supporting products are tremendously complicated when there's no one place you can go to see the entire product catalog for the whole enterprise. Creation of a single product information hub reduces complexity and brings huge value.

MDM for Customer Data and CRM

Customer data is the lifeblood of any organization; however, it is often wrought with data quality issues and resides in disparate formats in disparate systems.  Reconciliation of this data and a single view across systems can provide huge value for an organization. These are core use cases for master data management.

MDM for ERP

Companies using ERP suites quickly realize that data quality is essential to proper system operation and the generation of business value. ERP systems with duplicate data. They are good at processing transactions, but not so good at managing master data, data quality, hierarchy management, enrichment with third-party content, data governance, matching, cleansing and duplicate resolution. MDM is used to aid with these functions and synchronize data within multiple ERPs or to other systems.

MDM for Employee Data

Human Resources deploy a wide range of systems to provide value to the organization. Further, the onboard and termination processes can be complex. Effective employee master data can help HR deploy services quicker, onboard employees more efficiently, eliminate risk associated with terminated employees, and process mergers and acquisitions more quickly.