Solution Selection for Financial Master Data Manag...

udo_werner · ‎2023 Oct 10

Summary

In this article we describe alternative options of SAP solutions to cover Financial Master Data Management.

Business Requirements

As Financial master data we consider objects like cost centers, profit centers, accounts and their groupings and hierarchies. The requirement is usually to have a (central) place to create and maintain this kind of master data, following agreed rules and make sure that these objects are available and unique throughout the system environment of the company.

Solution Options

There are mainly two solution options out of the SAP solution portfolio.

SAP S/4HANA with its application areas in Finance
SAP Master Data Governance

Characterization of the Solution Options

SAP S/4HANA Finance

Financial Master Data is created and maintained through transactions or Fiori User Interfaces in the different areas of Finance such as Accounting and Financial Close, which cares about GL accounts, Profit Centers, Segments, Financial Statement versions and Global Hierarchies.

Other process areas of finance have their own location to create and maintain master data, like cost centers and their hierarchies.

No built-in mechanisms are given in S/4HANA to distribute financial master data to other systems or receive them from there, but there is a multitude of APIs available to achieve that, e.g., via BTP integration.

SAP Master Data Governance for Financial Data

Master Data Governance Financials Overview

Master Data Governance for Financials (MDG-F) is an application to centrally govern the maintenance of financial master data.

MDG-F provides central steering and control mechanisms independently of local or centralized execution.

In MDG-F, master data records can be created, completed or changed in a staging area, following a distributed step-by-step way, before making the record available to connected business applications.

Master Data Governance is a part of the SAP Master Data Governance product and is licensed together with it. It can be deployed standalone, embedded into an S/4HANA system or in the cloud.

Criteria to determine the most suitable target solution

1. Is financial data used in more than one system?

If the answer is no, just using S/4HANA is probably good enough.

2 Are duplicates and non-consistent data across systems currently a pain point?

Preventing this is the main benefit of having MDG-F.

3. Is a Master Data Governance system already planned for other master data like materials or business partners?

If logistical business units are already using MDG or planning for it in the new environment, it makes a lot of sense to extend the use also for financial master data.

4. Are you willing to pay additional license fees?

MDG requires extra licenses, but It may be checked it that is not already licensed, or comes with the package.

5. Are you willing to manage an additional system or connections in the landscape?

Depending on the deployment option additional system or interface maintenance might be required for MDG,

Conclusion

Master Data Governance is an effective solution to improve the data quality of financial master data in multi-system environments. In environments mostly consisting of only one S/4HANA system it might not be required.