From Approvals to Insights: Using SAP MDG Process Analytics

Standard MDG Process Analytics in Fiori

In SAP MDG, the Process Analytics apps are grouped by master data domain and delivered as Fiori apps for Business Partners, Products, and Financial Data. These apps provide a configurable overview of your master data processes using cards that highlight key indicators and let you drill down into more detailed analytical apps.

By customizing the overviews, you can get more clarity in the MDG process and create more efficient workflows. For example, you could create a filter to get an overview of all mass change and consolidation processes. By clicking on one of the cards on the overview page, you can drill directly to the corresponding work item, Change Request or Change Process analysis app.

For a data steward or process owner, this means that the Fiori overview page can be used as a daily cockpit. At the start of the day, you can quickly check whether there is an unusual spike in open or overdue requests, filter on a specific domain or organizational level, and then navigate directly to the problematic items. This allows the MDG team to monitor the health of their processes and react much faster.

The more detailed Change Request and Change Process analysis apps allow MDG Teams to narrow down the data shown by applying filters. The charts and tables in these apps then immediately apply these filters and can show how those requests or processes are distributed by status. From there, you can select a status in the chart and use the table to investigate concrete cases, such as which requests are stopped for review with a particular approver or which Change Request type is responsible for the longest cycle times. This combination of filter, chart, and table makes it easy to move from a high-level picture to individual records in just a few clicks.

For the Work Item Analysis app, typically only a work item chart is displayed, focusing specifically on the workflow steps rather than the complete Change Request.

One final note regarding these Fiori apps is that they can be easily configured to the business needs and adjusted as these needs mature.

Extending Process Analytics

The standard MDG Process Analytics are primarily Change Request and workflow focused. They provide process dimensions (status, type, creator,…) and a limited number of standard measures (number of Change Requests, total processing time,…) to be used in the analytical apps. However, it can be extended with extra master data attributes and custom measure values to enable business to define a solution that completely satisfies their requirements.

This extension happens through the creation of CDS views that can be consumed by either the Smart Business app or SAP Analytic Cloud (SAC). To learn more about the differences between MDG PA and SAC, read our other blogpost.

In practice, this extension is often driven by more concrete questions from the business, such as:

• Which product lines generate the highest number of Change Requests and reworks?
• For which customer groups do address changes take the longest to approve?
• Are certain plants or company codes consistently missing our SLA?

By bringing master data attributes like product type, customer group, plant or company code into the analytics, MDG can answer these questions directly instead of forcing people to export data to Excel and join it manually.

For some companies it might also be necessary to analyze which changes are made to master data in the Change Requests. For example, changes to bank details, which are sensitive data, are particularly interesting for the compliance department.

Key takeaway

SAP MDG doesn’t have to be just an approval engine. By activating and extending its Process Analytics with relevant master data attributes and custom measures, you turn it into a practical management dashboard that shows where Change Requests come from, where they get stuck, and which products, customers or company codes are most affected. Start with one domain, define a few key questions you can’t answer today, and use MDG Process Analytics to make your data governance visible, measurable, and easier to improve. For more information, reach out and we will be glad to help you with all your SAP MDG Questions.