Distributed Ledger Systems to Improve Data Synchronization in Enterprise Processes

Master Data Management (MDM) in enterprises deal with fixed data/information regarding different aspects of business that are considered single record of truth and form the basis for all business transactions. Enterprises manage their master data by several methods to ensure that it is a unique comprehensive representation of the entity by spending considerable resources in MDM but at the cost of time delays for updating the master data records or structure and with copies of the master data distributed across the enterprise units for operational needs that many times has modifications not reflected back into the master tables. Issues of delays in the master data updates lead to business impacts while the distributed nature of master data across an organization or organizations impacts data quality. Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is one approach that uses blockchain to obtain consensus to cut down the approval cycle time and the distributed nature makes it uniquely suited to manage synchronizing master data updates across the network of required users in the enterprise. Choice of correct business processes to benefit from using DLT for MDM is critical to obtain benefits from improvements. This paper shows a method to select from candidate business processes with coarse or fine process data and the value that can be gained from implementation of DLT for MDM.