Q: What prompted SAP to begin development of SAP MDM?
A: Integration is the key to success in business. And since heterogeneous system landscapes are commonplace today, only companies with continuous processes and optimal access to
consistent information can secure themselves a decisive competitive advantage. The basic principle behind this is the availability of reliable and consistent master data.

Q: Is SAP late to this market?
A: No. There are a few applications announced in the market today, which are addressing parts of the solution. However those solutions are typically limited to business partner information only and do not address the process integration needs to maintain and distribute the harmonized master data. SAP is the only provider that offers a broad and diverse connectivity and business content
developed by SAP and its partner network, based on SAP’s intimate, longstanding knowledge of comprehensive business processes in more than 20 industries. This business content shortens the
development cycle for customers and drives down the cost of integration projects.

Q: SAP has been talking about integration and its ability to provide integrated business solutions for some time now. However, now you are saying that this will be the first truly integrated solution available on the market. Are you saying that your other solutions were not integrated?
A: We are talking about process and data integration in heterogeneous environments here. So far everybody has been speaking about the integration of platforms and applications. The
compatibility of data has been implied always. But as efforts and costs to replace legacy systems are increasing, and companies are paying more attention as to whether IT solutions offer them
additional value and fast return on investments, SAP Master Data Management offers customers new opportunities to gain further benefits from existing implementations and to further secure
their investments. In addition, SAP MDM views consistent information as the key building block for end-to-end business processes to positively affect process execution, costs-of-business, and
total cost-of-ownership for business-class IT systems.

Q: Who are the members of the Customer Advisory Council and how were they selected?
A: Driven by our Industry Business Sectors for Manufacturing and Service Industries, the Customer Advisory Council formation was a process of identifying customers that are leaders in the area, with significant expertise in master data management. Right now customers such as Dow Chemicals, Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector, Nokia, and German Postbank have agreed to participate. More candidates from the consumer products and retail industry are expected.

Q: What is the contribution of these companies to the project and how does SAP collaborate with them to meet future market requirements?
A: SAP is collaborating with those companies in order to verify the implementation concepts and to jointly identify the development priorities. All participating companies have significant
expertise in master data management topics already and are looking for standard solutions to become available on the market. There is not yet a decision from those companies to actually use this new solution, however SAP’s goal is to win those customers to implement and run SAP MDM.

Q: When will SAP MDM become available? How will it be priced?
A: Customer ramp-up is scheduled to begin in September 2003. It will be priced separately as an engine, based on the number of managed data objects in the connected systems.

Q: How will SAP MDM be implemented?
A: Implementation services will be provided by SAP’s Global Professional Services Organization as well as together with selected system integrators.

Q: Will this solution replace the existing master data distribution techniques between mySAP CRM and SAP R/3 (SAP BC, CRM middleware) or SAP R/3 and mySAP SCM (CIF interface)?
A: Those interfaces including ALE will continue to be used in parallel to process operational data. It is not planned to replace those interfaces with SAP MDM.

Q: Will it be possible to use SAP MDM only with SAP Exchange Infrastructure or can a company also use other EAI tools?
A: The use of the SAP Exchange Infrastructure is the foundation for SAP MDM. SAP solutions are powered by the SAP NetWeaver platform with high emphasis on interoperability to :NET and
J2EE/Java.

Q: For which 3rd party products will SAP provide the adaptors?
A: In the first phase the adaptors to 3rd party products will be provided on a project basis. SAP plans to make selected adaptors to 3rd party systems to a part of the standard solution in future.

Q: Will the solution provide the adaptors to all SAP solutions?
A: SAP MDM will provide adaptors for mySAP CRM, mySAP SRM and SAP R/3 in the first phase. MySAP SCM will be supported via SAP R/3 in the first phase. In the next phase, a direct
adaptor will also provided for mySAP SCM.

Q: What objects will be supported by SAP MDM? What services will be offered?
A: The initial release of SAP MDM will support the following master data objects: business partner, product master, product structures, document links, technical assets and change masters.
Services provided depend on the type of objects and will include maintenance of objects, search for objects, workflow, mass changes, change notifications, duplicate checking, and notifications
for object creation and discontinuation.