Enterprise Master Data Architecture: Design Decisions and Options

The enterprise-wide management of master data is a key prerequisite for companies to respond to strategic business drivers such as compliance to regulatory requirements, integrated customer management, and global business process integration. Among others, this demands systematic design of the enterprise master data architecture. The current state-of-the-art, however, falls short of guiding practitioners with regard to the design decisions they have to make and to the design options of which they can choose. This paper aims at contributing to this gap. It reports on the findings of three case studies and uses morphological analysis to structure design decisions and options for the management of an enterprise master data architecture.