Identify and describe a case for implementation of SAP Master Data Management at a four year university - Essay Example

And Section table contains fields for Place, Time, Student ID, etc. whereas the Department table contains DeptID, Head, CourseID, etc. Also, the Pre-requisites table contains ID, CourseID, DeptID, etc. The University having different departments has a set of similar tables along with other tables, in each department’s database system. Although the data in it may vary, it is observed that there is some data across the departments that is the same for most of the time and does not change frequently, like the DeptID, Semester, Dept, CourseID, etc.

Hence, it is created once and used many times over a period of time. Wikipedia defines “master data as the data used by different organizational components or by different systems that support an organization” (2009). Hence, DeptID, Semester, Dept, CourseID, etc. in the University database system constitute the master data and this data is common across all departments. However, as the different departments have their own database systems and tools, the format of the data may vary according to the department specific transactions and the master data referring to the transactional data thereby is contained in a different data record format in each database.

This leads to multiple records for a single entity and creates excess data and data redundancy. To change the redundant data, multiple fields in the databases have to be changed which is time-consuming. Also, there is scope for human error and is difficult to maintain. Hence, maintaining the database in the different departments is time-consuming and costly. With more redundant data and accessing and changing it becoming time-consuming, entering transactions, data retrieval for analysis and reporting, and communication between the different departments becomes more difficult and confusing.

Problems in data entry due to difficulty in