We are trying to get the cloud solution of SAP Master Data Governance for multiple clients, which requires more improvement. Bill of materials (BOM) creation in manufacturing needs to be enhanced in SAP Master Data Governance. Clients have also suggested improvements in managing a hierarchy and ensuring that you maintain and work on the hierarchy side.
SAP is a closed tool. Integrating with it requires a lot of effort and money. It is also very expensive and not flexible. If you want to make a change, it takes 30-60 working days compared to others, where you can do things in one hour.
Instead of ABAP coding for some workflows, it would be helpful to have alternative solutions. Many people are not proficient in ABAP. If there were easy, configurable options or templates, it would be beneficial. So, any user has to understand the coding process to work with the product. We need technical support to understand the coding. There is a lack of resources who have this knowledge. If one resource is handling the product and needs to hand it over, it is difficult for a new resource to understand the coding. It would be great if there were more straightforward configurations, like in other SAP modules, such as sales and distribution or materials management. These are configurable without much technical understanding. If there were a data quality tool within the product, or some kind of consolidation with MDG, it would be good. Currently, data quality management and consolidation are separate tools. There is a lack of clarity on how to create Bills of Materials (BOMs) and routings. There is some standard solution for that, but it needs improvement.
There were challenges with handling multiple values within a single input field at the screen level. Think of a typical e-commerce website where you manually provide values. SAP MDG is designed for single values, so we sometimes need to multiply values within a specific input field. We've addressed this by using a custom enhancement or an add-on application (I'd need to confirm the correct technical term for "EAP application"). Forms can also be tricky. We sometimes need to use input tokenizers, especially when there's a potential for conflicts at runtime. Dynamically managing the appearance of these elements has been a challenge that we've successfully resolved.
The profiling feature, especially for materials, needs improvement. We faced challenges maintaining specific details for a single material from multiple vendors.
Associate Director, IT Business Partner, Strategic Business Solutions at a consumer goods company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 10
2023-10-25T07:10:16Z
Oct 25, 2023
It is difficult to expand the product with new functionalities. It takes time and specific knowledge. We require a specialist with experience in it. Integration with other tools like Salesforce and SAP Ariba is not stable. The product is not user-friendly. It takes time to work with the tool. The tool is not flexible.
Module Lead at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-09-27T12:34:06Z
Sep 27, 2023
As per my knowledge, I have not faced any issues with the product till now. Looking at the market today, I can say that the main competitor for SAP Master Data Governance is artificial intelligence. In SAP Master Data Governance, a user needs to select where a file should be uploaded or downloaded from in some of the cases in SAP Master Data Governance. It would be better to integrate artificial intelligence into SAP Master Data Governance so that a user does not need to track file locations. For example, be it files in formats like PDF, CSV, and XML, the artificial intelligence technology will help users pull the files automatically and help with the uploading or downloading part, which, in turn, will take less time. In general, I want artificial intelligence added to SAP Master Data Governance since I feel it is one of the areas where the solution has certain shortcomings.
They should integrate the solution with different domains. Also, they should include features for product planning, QM master data, etc. Its pricing needs improvement too. In addition, they should make it more user-friendly.
Although changes are currently being made to fix it, the product can be improved by ensuring data matches when upgrading to a new system because every system does not use SAP. Furthermore, the product has five different solutions with varying data models so stability is vital to SAP. Every time there is a connection with a new system, customization needs to be redone to ensure both layers can communicate seamlessly and data models need to be set.
In terms of bringing out the data and resource performance, we're looking for a more enhanced version. MDG doesn't work for all material types of activities that I think it should be dealing with. If that were to change, this solution would be a step above other ERP systems. I'd like to see some planning-related activities included in the product.
One thing that could be improved is the documentation provided for the MDG extensions by Utopia. I'd also like to see increased maturity around reference data solutions. The solution already has some key master data domains but it would be helpful to have a few more that are not out of the box.
Master Data Governance at a non-tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
2021-10-13T08:46:20Z
Oct 13, 2021
I'd like to see more flexibility which is currently lacking. They need to add a cloud option as well as multiple creations. We're looking for a better mass upload.
SAP MDG Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Consultant
2021-02-04T07:30:38Z
Feb 4, 2021
The implementation could be easier. The governance of master data is difficult, and consolidating the old data is really hard. MDG projects tend to last a minimum of six months, and this is largely due to the fact that there are too many rules. The biggest problem in MDG is that you have to make rules and you have to set your rules very strictly and you need to prepare your data for your rules. If you don't, your old data is kaput. The marketing of the product outside of Europe should be better. While it might be well known in places like Germany or England, it doesn't have the same recognition in Turkey. Our first MDG project was only two or three years ago. It's pretty new to the scene. The solution is lacking configuration in one system. For example, there's a lack of country definitions, country tax category definitions in MDG, and in all ERPs. When MM projects are done, they configure everything. For example, my customer only does business with European Union countries. They don't define European Union country's tax number categories, however, when they deal with Israel, they don't define it in the old ERP system. It's a problem. You need to have a conversation with all seven ERP consultants and tell them to redefine this tax number category. It could be better, maybe, or easier.
The tools have been improved quite a lot over a period of time with data mining rules. The UI could improve by being more neat and clean. Sometimes users find it difficult to use it. When using the solutions I feel the performance could improve.
Data Lead at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2020-10-11T08:58:19Z
Oct 11, 2020
The workflow works well, however, there's not a lot of options in defining roles. There are roles that are very specific within the MDG and we had to adapt our process to the roles that are in the workflow. I'm talking about the workflow in the roles, not access rights or things of that nature (such as access or identity management). I'm talking about how the flow works in the different types of roles. It's not very flexible. Overall, they just a little bit more flexibility in terms of assigning roles or adding new roles. We have a longer approval process, so we need to break it down into more roles than what is typically available and we need to hard-code it.
Head of IT Asia at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2020-09-13T07:02:24Z
Sep 13, 2020
What SAP needs to do for this product is to improve the user-friendliness of the dashboard to make sure they are going to have a more user-friendly product in the future. Another task for SAP is to accommodate China's local requirements because this product is still a global one. Sometimes what the module does will not fit so well for Chinese user requirements. It needs to be more global-aware.
Your company wants accurate, complete, and trusted data to master your digital business processes and business models. The SAP® Master Data Governance application provides ready-to-run, domain-specific master data governance, enabling you to decentrally own and consolidate and to centrally create, change, and distribute master data across your enterprise system landscape. Tight integration with other SAP solutions supports the reuse of data models, business logic, and validation frameworks...
We are trying to get the cloud solution of SAP Master Data Governance for multiple clients, which requires more improvement. Bill of materials (BOM) creation in manufacturing needs to be enhanced in SAP Master Data Governance. Clients have also suggested improvements in managing a hierarchy and ensuring that you maintain and work on the hierarchy side.
SAP is a closed tool. Integrating with it requires a lot of effort and money. It is also very expensive and not flexible. If you want to make a change, it takes 30-60 working days compared to others, where you can do things in one hour.
Instead of ABAP coding for some workflows, it would be helpful to have alternative solutions. Many people are not proficient in ABAP. If there were easy, configurable options or templates, it would be beneficial. So, any user has to understand the coding process to work with the product. We need technical support to understand the coding. There is a lack of resources who have this knowledge. If one resource is handling the product and needs to hand it over, it is difficult for a new resource to understand the coding. It would be great if there were more straightforward configurations, like in other SAP modules, such as sales and distribution or materials management. These are configurable without much technical understanding. If there were a data quality tool within the product, or some kind of consolidation with MDG, it would be good. Currently, data quality management and consolidation are separate tools. There is a lack of clarity on how to create Bills of Materials (BOMs) and routings. There is some standard solution for that, but it needs improvement.
The technical support should be improved.
There were challenges with handling multiple values within a single input field at the screen level. Think of a typical e-commerce website where you manually provide values. SAP MDG is designed for single values, so we sometimes need to multiply values within a specific input field. We've addressed this by using a custom enhancement or an add-on application (I'd need to confirm the correct technical term for "EAP application"). Forms can also be tricky. We sometimes need to use input tokenizers, especially when there's a potential for conflicts at runtime. Dynamically managing the appearance of these elements has been a challenge that we've successfully resolved.
The platform's pricing needs improvement.
The profiling feature, especially for materials, needs improvement. We faced challenges maintaining specific details for a single material from multiple vendors.
It is difficult to expand the product with new functionalities. It takes time and specific knowledge. We require a specialist with experience in it. Integration with other tools like Salesforce and SAP Ariba is not stable. The product is not user-friendly. It takes time to work with the tool. The tool is not flexible.
As per my knowledge, I have not faced any issues with the product till now. Looking at the market today, I can say that the main competitor for SAP Master Data Governance is artificial intelligence. In SAP Master Data Governance, a user needs to select where a file should be uploaded or downloaded from in some of the cases in SAP Master Data Governance. It would be better to integrate artificial intelligence into SAP Master Data Governance so that a user does not need to track file locations. For example, be it files in formats like PDF, CSV, and XML, the artificial intelligence technology will help users pull the files automatically and help with the uploading or downloading part, which, in turn, will take less time. In general, I want artificial intelligence added to SAP Master Data Governance since I feel it is one of the areas where the solution has certain shortcomings.
They should integrate the solution with different domains. Also, they should include features for product planning, QM master data, etc. Its pricing needs improvement too. In addition, they should make it more user-friendly.
They should improve the solution's performance as sometimes the process consumes much time.
The multidomain MDM feature is based on EIP systems, which may not be a good model for all master data.
Although changes are currently being made to fix it, the product can be improved by ensuring data matches when upgrading to a new system because every system does not use SAP. Furthermore, the product has five different solutions with varying data models so stability is vital to SAP. Every time there is a connection with a new system, customization needs to be redone to ensure both layers can communicate seamlessly and data models need to be set.
In terms of bringing out the data and resource performance, we're looking for a more enhanced version. MDG doesn't work for all material types of activities that I think it should be dealing with. If that were to change, this solution would be a step above other ERP systems. I'd like to see some planning-related activities included in the product.
The user experience can be improved.
One thing that could be improved is the documentation provided for the MDG extensions by Utopia. I'd also like to see increased maturity around reference data solutions. The solution already has some key master data domains but it would be helpful to have a few more that are not out of the box.
I'd like to see more flexibility which is currently lacking. They need to add a cloud option as well as multiple creations. We're looking for a better mass upload.
The implementation could be easier. The governance of master data is difficult, and consolidating the old data is really hard. MDG projects tend to last a minimum of six months, and this is largely due to the fact that there are too many rules. The biggest problem in MDG is that you have to make rules and you have to set your rules very strictly and you need to prepare your data for your rules. If you don't, your old data is kaput. The marketing of the product outside of Europe should be better. While it might be well known in places like Germany or England, it doesn't have the same recognition in Turkey. Our first MDG project was only two or three years ago. It's pretty new to the scene. The solution is lacking configuration in one system. For example, there's a lack of country definitions, country tax category definitions in MDG, and in all ERPs. When MM projects are done, they configure everything. For example, my customer only does business with European Union countries. They don't define European Union country's tax number categories, however, when they deal with Israel, they don't define it in the old ERP system. It's a problem. You need to have a conversation with all seven ERP consultants and tell them to redefine this tax number category. It could be better, maybe, or easier.
The price can be improved.
The tools have been improved quite a lot over a period of time with data mining rules. The UI could improve by being more neat and clean. Sometimes users find it difficult to use it. When using the solutions I feel the performance could improve.
The workflow works well, however, there's not a lot of options in defining roles. There are roles that are very specific within the MDG and we had to adapt our process to the roles that are in the workflow. I'm talking about the workflow in the roles, not access rights or things of that nature (such as access or identity management). I'm talking about how the flow works in the different types of roles. It's not very flexible. Overall, they just a little bit more flexibility in terms of assigning roles or adding new roles. We have a longer approval process, so we need to break it down into more roles than what is typically available and we need to hard-code it.
What SAP needs to do for this product is to improve the user-friendliness of the dashboard to make sure they are going to have a more user-friendly product in the future. Another task for SAP is to accommodate China's local requirements because this product is still a global one. Sometimes what the module does will not fit so well for Chinese user requirements. It needs to be more global-aware.