April 2 , 2014 - As organizations seek more insight from their data, the ability to organize and manage the data pouring in from an ever-growing list of sources is critical. To help organizations better access, manage and use data from any source, SAS has updated its SAS® Master Data Management and SAS Federation Server software.

The latest version of SAS MDM, now available, includes embedded data quality to ensure clean and accurate data; improved usability to drive business user engagement; and pervasive data governance to improve collaboration between business and IT. This helps organizations to implement MDM in a phased approach, delivering business value while using existing software to reduce integration costs.

Invacare Corp., a manufacturer and distributor of non-acute medical equipment, uses SAS to support its global MDM efforts. With more than 830,000 active products across multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, Invacare wanted a clear picture of what products were available in which global markets.

Before SAS MDM, Invacare found data on identical products duplicated in different ERP systems and classified using different terminology. The resulting confusion led to time-consuming, redundant analysis.

“We are creating master product and supplier data hubs with the SAS MDM and SAS Data Management solutions by integrating disparate product data from 25 ERP systems,” said Greg Rossiter, Director of Global Business Information and Data Management for Invacare. “We’re able to perform de-duplication and data classification – and enhance the data around our vast product set.”

With improved usability and streamlined installation and deployment, SAS MDM delivers faster time-to-value. New features include:

• Enhanced data governance with workflow-based remediation, allowing team members to route and resolve data issues within a common user interface, increasing productivity and reducing data quality errors.
• User interface customization via “MDM Tools” and deep linking to speed decision making, increase collaboration and reduce IT application integration costs.
• Improved multi-domain hierarchy support that visually shows relationships among business entities for improved usability.

Anytime, anywhere data access

SAS Federation Server, shipping this quarter, will include big data virtualization, providing access to Hadoop, SAP HANA, Oracle, DB2, and other data sources, creating visual representations without physically moving data. This data-as-a-service approach provides easily consumable access to shared, secure enterprise data to speed and simplify data preparation. SAS has also beefed up security, data masking and data governance within SAS Federation Server to ensure proper policies, access and restrictions for sensitive data.

SAS is recognized as a leader in data management, including data integration and data quality, by analysts. SAS combines data access, data integration, data federation, data quality, data governance and master data management capabilities in one unified, workflow-driven environment.