Centralized vs decentralized

[adietz]

SAP offers the choice for business to centralize master data management or to decentralize it permitting business users to build and maintain their own data.

In what industries has decentralized management actually worked?

In surveys SAP conducted what is the split between the 2 approaches?

[Mark63 · Accepted solution]

Generally, the good thing is that SAP Master Data Governance with its key capabilities central governance (proactive) and consolidation (reactive) accommodates for various implementation styles incl. centralized and decentralized approaches.

In addition, the evolving concept of federated MDG brings modularization and flexibility in the question of central vs. de-central governance: Imagine a landscape and system set-up where core master data attributes are managed centrally while application-specific data is goverend de-centrally by the applications where this data is best understood. See, for example, this whitepaper for conceptual information.

[adietz]

Thank you. It appears from the white paper "Federated Master Data Management" that a centralized approach is favoured to achieve a uniform set of data