TopBraid Reference Data Manager

Mission-critical applications like product lifecycle management (PLM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM) use reference data to classify and categorize business critical data such as product and customer information. The underlying challenge is that code tables are typically defined and managed on an application-by-application basis, and the content, format, representation and meaning of the codes within the code tables differs within each application.

As a result, to move data from one application to another, or to use data outside the context of its original application, IT staff must continuously map those codes to a variety of different values and representations. This error-prone and expensive process impacts every aspect of business operations and decision making. Organizations looking for a more efficient and less costly approach to these challenges are considering reference data management (RDM) solutions.

TopBraid RDM lets organizations:

• Lower risk – by providing auditability, provenance, and security of reference data that is required for external reporting and regulatory compliance.
• Decrease costs – by minimizing chances of costly errors associated with manual, ad hoc processes and misinterpretation of the meaning of codes.
• Succeed in the data-driven world – by putting management of reference data into the hands of business users.

TopBraid RDM gives you:

• Intuitive Graphical User Interface – with auto-completion, drag and drop, rich text editing, search and filtering, accessibility across all browsers – providing easy to use environment for the business and technical stakeholders
• Flexible data and relationship modeling – handles both complex and simple data models and their relationships across domains, allows modeling, storing and using not only codes, but all relevant associated information
• Auditability – every change is logged and time stamped, change history can be searched, usage records capture where reference data is used
• Control over versions – virtual work-in-progress copies of reference datasets allow parallel development of versions and enable controlled publishing, review and approval workflow
• Collaboration – through access and accountability based on roles, support for task assignments, statuses and issues
• Shared semantics – providing the ability to define and share meaning of all information elements globally and in the context of specific use
• Repeatability of on-boarding – capturing processes and best practices for on-boarding of external reference data
• Wide and diverse distribution – support for a variety of interaction patterns (e.g. batch or real-time) and integration approaches
• Data quality – offering intuitive forms for creating data validation rules
• Integration – with third party systems and Linked Data clouds via Web Services interfaces and APIs
• Easy extensibility – configurable user interfaces, reports, metamodel, import, export, web services and more including deep customizations using TopQuadrant’s TopBraid platform
• Standards – built-in support for W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards for data and data models interchange on the web such as RDF and SPARQL
• Enterprise-readiness – scalable and robust architecture with LDAP and JMS integration

TopBraid RDM helps organizations:

• Reduce independent maintenance of code tables

Provides a central system where reference data will “live” and be maintained. With this, maintenance activities like adding new codes are done once, not multiple times, reducing authoring time and effort in making changes to reference data.

• Reduce data quality problems due to coding errors

Allows end users who use reference data (codes) in the process of data entry to better understand their meaning and, as a result, avoid mistakes of using wrong codes.

• Reduce the cost of designing code tables for databases

Provides a central system database administrators can go to get exports of “codes tables” with all the fields they may need.

• Reduce data integration issues due to inconsistent codes

When code tables used by different systems are maintained independently, they become inconsistent across the systems. This lack of consistency impacts the ability to integrate data. TopBraid RDM provides an up-to-date source that can be used as input for every code table in every database in the production landscape. Consistency is achieved and integration promoted.

• Make informed decisions based on reference data

Enables the right categorization and organization of data in reporting and analytics by providing a place for report writers to go to better understand the meaning of reference data and how it is used across the different systems.