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For today’s finance teams, trust in data isn't optional—it’s the foundation of financial reporting, forecasting, and compliance. But in many organizations, the critical metadata that supports these activities—like cost centers, legal entities, charts of accounts, and scenario mappings—is being managed in tools that were never designed for Finance.

As organizations grow more complex and financial systems become more integrated, the limitations of traditional, referential MDM tools are coming into focus. At EPMware, we’re seeing a major shift toward Financial MDM: a purpose-built approach that gives Finance teams the structure, control, and agility they need to govern enterprise-wide financial master data.



What’s the difference between Referential and Financial MDM?

Referential MDM is great at managing consistent values for shared entities—think customers, vendors, products, or employee records. It helps ensure data accuracy across applications like CRM, HR, and supply chain. But financial master data has different characteristics:

  • It’s hierarchical and multi-dimensional: Think cost center trees, account rollups, and profit center structures
  • It’s time-sensitive: Finance needs to manage effective dates for reorganizations and acquisitions.
  • It’s scenario-specific: Alternate hierarchies are needed for legal, management, tax, or segment reporting.
  • It’s governed: Changes require workflows, segregation of duties, and audit trails.
Generic MDM tools struggle to meet these needs because they treat master data as flat, static reference values—rather than dynamic, rule-driven structures with financial implications.


Real-world failure points of using general MDM tools for Finance

When organizations try to force-fit financial metadata into referential MDM platforms, a few common failure points emerge:

Inability to manage alternate rollups
General MDM platforms lack built-in support for alternate hierarchies (e.g., management vs. statutory views). This forces teams to create workarounds in Excel or ETL tools—introducing risk and duplication.

Manual mapping between ERP and EPM systems
Finance often needs to map accounts or entities between systems like SAP and OneStream. Without native support for cross-platform metadata relationships, IT teams are left building brittle interfaces.

Limited governance and auditability
Referential MDM tools rarely offer workflow-driven approvals, role-based validations, or audit logs for every metadata change—making it harder to satisfy internal controls or SOX compliance.

Slow change cycles
Because these tools are often IT-owned, metadata changes can take weeks—especially during critical periods like forecast refreshes or reorganizations.

Disruption during system migrations
During cloud ERP or EPM transitions, finance teams need to realign metadata quickly. Generic MDM systems can’t keep up with the pace of restructuring, leading to reporting delays and reconciliation headaches.

 

Business Example: Chart of Accounts Realignment

Consider a global enterprise with multiple ERPs, EPM/CPM applications and several Data Warehouses undergoing a chart of accounts standardization. Using a general MDM tool, Finance might be forced to:

  • Flatten hierarchies into CSVs
  • Manually map values for each downstream system with Excel
  • Reconcile changes offline
  • Rely on IT for deployments

 

What Financial MDM brings to the table:

MDM platforms like EPMware are purpose-built to solve these challenges. Here’s how:

Structured hierarchy management
Manage multiple versions of charts of accounts, cost centers, or legal entities—with full version control, validations, and impact preview.

Built-in workflow and controls
Route metadata changes through configurable approval chains, with role-based security and audit trails.

Cross-platform mappings
Define and maintain relationships between ERP, EPM, and reporting systems (e.g., SAP → OneStream or NetSuite → Snowflake) in a central, governed place.

Business ownership of metadata
Give Finance teams the ability to propose, approve, and deploy metadata changes—without IT intervention or waiting for release cycles.

Deployment flexibility
Use REST APIs, flat files, SFTP, or OData to sync metadata across systems in real-time or scheduled batches.

 

With EPMware’s Financial MDM, the process becomes governed and automated:

  • Finance builds a new hierarchy using a visual editor
  • Rules validate structural changes in real time
  • Changes are routed for approval and versioned
  • Master Data is pushed to ERP, EPM/CPM, and Data Warehouses automatically via APIs

 

The Bottom Line

Financial master data isn’t just another data domain—it’s the backbone of every financial process. And it deserves a solution purpose-built for its complexity, controls, and business logic.

If your organization is still using a general-purpose MDM system to manage financial metadata, it’s time to rethink that approach.

The risks are too high, and the business case for change is clearer than ever.

At EPMware, we’re helping enterprises centralize, govern, and align their financial master data—across ERP, EPM, and beyond. Want to learn more? Click Schedule a Demo and chat with a technical expert today.