IBM Product Master Functional Overview

IBM Product Master 12.0

A functional overview

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Table of Contents Advanced business rules ............................................. 21

Introduction ................................................................................. 3 Apache Camel based out of box Connectors ............ 21
IBM Product Master: A functional overview .................... 3 Digital Asset Management.................................................... 21
Key Concepts of IBM Product Master ................................. 5 Vendor Portal ............................................................................ 22
Developing a flexible solution ............................................... 7 Suspect Duplicate Processing (SDP) .................................. 23
Hierarchy management ........................................................... 9 Programming logic .................................................................. 24
Category management ........................................................... 10 REST API ......................................................................... 24
Item management .................................................................... 10 Java API .......................................................................... 24
Location hierarchy management ........................................ 11
Scripting language ........................................................ 24
Localization ............................................................................... 12
Performance and scalability ................................................. 24
Business process collaboration ............................................ 12
Docker Containers ........................................................ 24
Comprehensive workflow platform .................................. 12
Machine Learning .................................................................... 24
New product introduction and item maintenance ....... 12
Conclusion ................................................................................. 26
Teaming collaboration ........................................................... 14
Rules Engine & Data quality ................................................ 16
Global Data Synchronization ............................................... 19
User interfaces .......................................................................... 20
Native user interface .................................................... 20
Custom screens ............................................................. 20
Access privileges and security ............................................. 20
Integration .................................................................................. 20
Data aggregation and syndication ............................. 20
Scheduler ....................................................................... 21
SOA for real time .......................................................... 21
Solution accelerators ................................................... 21
Advanced catalog management ................................. 21

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Introduction

Product information management (PIM) is a subset of the

overarching Master Data Management (MDM) space, and its
primary purpose is to help you create a master copy of
product information. This information can be used to
address strategic business initiatives throughout an
organization.

Creating a complete and consistent PIM solution requires

addressing different data requirements across existing
systems, aligning implementations with existing business
processes and workflows, establishing appropriate role-
based access and offering business users an easy and
intuitive system. However, organizations deploying PIM
must ensure that their implementation leverages existing
data models and business processes and integrates into their
existing systems landscape. The solution must also adapt to
the continuing needs of the business— allowing the data
model, the business processes and the systems they integrate
with to change as requirements evolve or as the business
grows.

Any supplier, distributor, manufacturer or retailer must deal

with high product data expectations of their stakeholders
irrespective of their focus on B2C or B2B. As the products Figure 1
grow in numbers and with the availability of more and more
channels, keeping a check on quality is a major challenge. A
IBM Product Master: A functional overview
PIM system manages all information between the various
systems which are in use in any organization such as: ERP,
Organizations face growing demands on their product and
PLM, procurement, supply chain management systems, POS,
service information. Consumers want more personalized
ecommerce and many other systems. The core objective is to
information as they increasingly make buying decisions
efficiently offer product information, which is consistent
based solely on product information as opposed to physical
across channels and on every touchpoint.
interaction with the product. Tradespeople demand access to
IBM provides these foundational elements with IBM Product detailed information on mobile devices at their work
Master. IBM product Master is designed to be implemented location. Producers are catering to consumer demand by
in a wide range of industries and can be optimized for an introducing new, differentiated products and services that
organization’s business needs. It includes a host of features can be tailored easily to specific consumers and markets.
that help ease the integration of PIM into enterprise systems, And governments are requiring that vital information about
help capture broader collaborative business processes within products and services be managed accurately and effectively.
the system and rapidly deliver value from PIM
These challenges are often compounded by the conflicting
implementations.
requirements of current and future system landscapes, as
well as increasing merger and acquisition activity that adds
integration (business and system) pressures. In such
environments, there are five key requirements for a PIM
system: a flexible data model, business processes that can
quickly adapt to changing business needs, the ability to

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

manage multiple hierarchies, the ability to connect to

disparate systems and a granular and easily extensible
security model.

IBM Product Master meets those requirements by enabling

companies to create a single, up-to- date repository of
product and service information that can be used
throughout their organization for strategic business
initiatives (see Figure 2). Organizations using IBM Product
Master can benefit from its robust features, including:

• Intuitive and extensible out-of-the-box user

interfaces
• Business process collaboration tools including
workflow
• Data aggregation and syndication capabilities
• Granular access privileges based on roles
• Flexible data modeling capabilities
• Sophisticated hierarchy management features
• A robust service-oriented architecture (SOA) Figure 2

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Key Concepts of IBM Product Master the view that they want to work with so that they see
limited information on the screens.
• Data model: A representation of business and data • Workflow: Workflows define the business flow – steps are
requirements, designed using various and flexible business defined to perform certain business logic and these steps
objects such as Catalogs, Items or Lookup Tables. are connected to establish the flow. Workflows define the
• Catalog: A collection of items related to each other via a meta data for Collaboration areas and runtime behavior of
business context. Catalogs are containers for items and can be these collaboration areas are controlled by the definition of
associated with any number of hierarchies. For example, the workflows.
Spring Print Catalog is a collection of just the print catalog • Collaboration Areas: Collaboration areas are runtime
products from the spring collection. It has its own hierarchy to manifestation of the workflows. You can define
organize the products within the print catalog and holds only collaboration areas for a hierarchy or a catalog, based on
the fields that apply to the print medium or channel. the workflow definition. Once defined, items from a
• Hierarchy (or category hierarchy, category tree or taxonomy): catalog or categories from a hierarchy can be checked out
A hierarchy is composed of categories and the relationships under these workflows for reviews and approvals by
between them. Typically used to organize browsing or various people in the organization.
navigation, categories are like folders that can contain items or • Role: A Role entity represents the role that is being played
other categories. by different set of users. E.g. roles can be Admin role,
• Categories: Categories are used both for browsing and Approver role or Reviewer role. Multiple users can have
organizing products. A category must be created within a the same role.
hierarchy. • Company: A Company is the top most container in IBM
• Items: Items represent products and services, for example, Product Master. All the PIM operations are done under a
stock-keeping units (SKUs), global trade item numbers company. You can create multiple companies within the
(GTINs), market offers, or any other objects as defined by the same application instance.
business. • Access Control Group (ACGs): Access Control Groups
• Specs: A specification (spec) defines the data model (meta- provide a way to control the access to the users. An ACG
model) for items, categories, locations, import or export files, allows or restricts access to different parts of the systems
and lookup tables. like view catalogs, view items in the catalogs, edit items,
delete items etc. ACGs are assigned to Roles, which in-
• Sub Spec: Sub Spec is a portion of the Spec that can be turn provide the access to users having these roles.
contained within a main Spec and can be re-used by several
other Specs. • Selections: Selections are used to select a subset of items.
You can either predefine these or select the items at
• Attributes (or attribute names): An attribute is the definition of runtime. Items selected from a selection can be used for
a field, allowing data to be collected on an item or category. various purposes like running exports, reports or simply
An attribute has a type, the validations and other metadata display on the screens.
used in the capture of data against this attribute.
• Static Selections: Static selections are a type of selection that
• Attribute value: The data that is captured against an attribute has the predefined criteria for selection of items. E.g. All items
on an item or category. under set of categories are selected.
• Lookup tables: Lookup tables provide a way of storing • Dynamic Selections: Dynamic selections also select a set of
highly used, constant data which needs to be looked up by items but the criteria for selection of items is driven by a query
the users many times. Like a catalog or a hierarchy, lookup (using the query language WQL). Hence, the result set can
Tables are also driven by Specs for data modelling. vary based on the criteria provided in the query.
• Attribute collections: An attribute collection is a group of • Imports: Imports let users import data into IBM Product
item or category attributes that is associated or behave the Master. The data may correspond to items or categories.
same way in a context. Attribute collections are used for Imports support mass import of data and are run in
workflow step validation and catalog and hierarchy views. asynchronous mode.
• Views: A set of attribute collections, using which user can
control what they want to see on screen. Users can select
• Exports: Exports lets users send the data out of IBM Product
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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Master into external systems. Data is sent out asynchronously

and users can control how data is sent out.

• Reports job: Reports are asynchronous jobs that can be used

for doing various operations as jobs.

• Environment import-export: Environment import-export

supports is sort of back and restore functionality within IBM
Product Master which helps in cloning of a running system.
E.g. a test system can be exported to a production box and all
entities are cloned on the production system.

• Document Store (docstore): Document store is the store of

documents which are required by the system. E.g. any custom
scripts, Java code, or data files can be kept here, and other part
of application can easily refer to docstore to get access to these
documents.

• Custom Tools: Custom tools lets the users add their own
screen via custom tools functionality and these custom screens
can be invoked using the system menus. This is a great help in
cases where customer wants to build their own
customizations.

• Extension Points: If users want to extend any out-of-the-box

functionality, they can provide their own functionality using
the extension points. These extension points can be written
using the Java APIs or scripting language and can be hooked
to the system so that those are run at certain invocation points
in the system.
• Entry Preview: It is a type of extension point which allows
you to create a sample view of a current item set, which
can be ran from the data entry screens. For example, you
can write a script to view how an item displays when you
use an XML format.

• Pre-Processing: This is an extension point that is run when

items or categories are being saved. Preprocessing
extension point is invoked prior to the saving of the item
and before any processing for save starts.

• Post Processing: This is an extension point that is run

when items or categories are being saved. Post processing
extension point is invoked prior to the saving of the item
but after processing operation is completed.
• Post Save: This is an extension point that is run after items
or categories are saved.

• Java APIs: Java based APIs which can be run from any
extension points. Java APIs expose the complete system
functionality.

• WQL(WebSphere Query Language): IBM Product Master

provides its own SQL like query language called WQL, using
which users can directly access all the internal entities/ objects.

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Developing a flexible solution specific to the print organization of the products and require
the data to be tailored for print format. This flexible approach
Just as no one business model fits every industry, no one can translate into lower change management costs and
data model will fit every organization. Successful execution encourage faster user adoption.
of a PIM strategy requires the ability to adapt as the
Finally, as business requirements change and grow, updating
organization changes over time and data model
or adding product attributes, catalogs, sales channels or any
requirements evolve. The organization may grow organically
into new product and service areas, or may need to integrate other business object should not require intensive
the systems, products and services of a merger or acquisition. development efforts. IBM Product Master data models can be
easily extended and modified by business users, often in just
Organizations considering a PIM system must anticipate
minutes. New information managed in the PIM solution can
these demands and develop a system that can meet them
be automatically integrated with other systems.
quickly and with minimal expense. A company’s specialized
business processes can ultimately differentiate the company IBM Product Master includes features that address several
from its competitors, and it is important for the systems the segments of a PIM strategy, including catalog management,
company uses to provide the most flexibility to adapt to hierarchy management, category management, item
unique and changing needs. management, location hierarchies and localization, and
Global Data Synchronization (GDS). Those features allow
IBM Product Master fulfills these requirements with a unique
information to be tailored for specific audiences and
approach of abstracting the underlying physical database
compiled logically to help enhance productivity and
representation from the data model. Rather than relying on a
analysis.
visual representation of a database, IBM Product Master
offers a simple and intuitive object model designed from
business objects such as Catalogs, Hierarchies, Items and
Categories. This separation delivers the data model flexibility
and ease of use that organizations demand, while
simultaneously allowing them to take advantage of the latest
database technologies.

Having an adaptive UI which is backed by a flexible data

model is key to success in PIM. Adaptability refers to the
ability of the UI to adjust automatically according to the
underlying data model, without needing additional coding
or implementation efforts. Flexibility refers to the ease of
providing data model extensions, adding or updating
attributes, and provisioning multiple hierarchies or
categories.

Adding a new attribute to a product category is a common

action required by business users. Given its frequency, you
need a solution which can adapt to changes quickly.

IBM Product Master supports a very rich set of data

modelling features, including the data types, available facets
and validations around them.

IBM Product Master offers several features that help

organizations create data solutions that make intuitive sense
to business end users, including the key personnel with
Figure 3
responsibilities for managing master product data.

For example, a company may create a Spring Print Catalog Catalog management
comprised of a limited set of products, require a hierarchy

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

A catalog holds a set of products or services, represented as default views can be set to their specific department or
items, as well as any type of relationship between items category, preventing them from viewing, altering or
(bundles, packaging hierarchies, bills of materials, cross-sells launching processes in departments or categories for which
and up-sells, and so on). Catalogs are also used to represent they have not been granted access.
product offerings within a channel, to either a certain market
or customer. They can present not only a specific set of IBM Product Master also allows system- level restriction of
products or services, but also the entire experience, from any field, helping businesses keep sensitive data secure. For
browsing and organization via tailored hierarchies to example, visibility into sensitive fields, such as cost, can be
restricted to only the buyer who owns that product and
additional required fields and content or imaging tailored for
that channel, market or customer (see Figure 4). finance personnel. To further improve security, organizations
can assign the rights to edit a given field to a specific user or
job role and make those editing rights subject to a set of
preconditions or actions as part of a larger business process.
An advanced history logging mechanism makes it possible to
track and leverage changes applied to any type of data as
well as metadata (the data model). These history logs can
then be used for auditing purposes or delta exports to a
downstream system.

Presenting information in a productive format is just as

important as security and access control. IBM Product Master
allows end users to see the information relevant to their job
Figure 4 and function in a layout that is productive and meaningful to
them. For example, organizations operating in multiple
Organizations may have multiple catalogs, depending on
countries, languages, locales and currencies can improve
how their products and services are browsed and used and
productivity by assigning users to a set of languages (users
how closely related the products are.
can also designate primary and secondary preferred
Catalogs are essential organizational tools, but businesses languages). Users can then search, browse and view entirely
need to selectively give users access according to their job in their language, currencies and units of measure, in
function, role or other business parameters. Without these addition to seeing tailored marketing messages for the
tools, organizational productivity and security can be at risk. products in their market.

The IBM Product Master security model allows filtering on

multiple dimensions. With category-level security, users’

Figure 5

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Hierarchy management
corporate-wide, global hierarchies often do not exist, much
A hierarchy is collections of categories and the relationships
less systems that attractively display a hierarchy.
between them. It is used to organize, browsing or navigation,
categories are like folders that can contain items or other In IBM Product Master, hierarchies use the same features and
categories. functions that apply to products and services. By supporting
all data types for a category, all details describing a category
In large enterprises, hierarchies suffer from the same
can be captured. Just as products require different fields
symptoms and problems as products and services. There
depending on type (a television might need a “screen size”
may be multiple hierarchies from which the business can
field while a radio needs “number of pre-set stations”), so do
organize and browse products and services, such as product
categories. Therefore, a single category can have fields that
type, an organizational hierarchy, a departmental hierarchy,
differ from other categories.
a web hierarchy, enterprise resource planning (ERP)
hierarchies and other system hierarchies. Existing systems Through this extended category functionality, IBM Product
often manage just a fragment of a hierarchy, so compiling a Master helps organizations tailor their hierarchies to specific
complete picture is a manual exercise requiring significant needs and manage them with the same ease and precision
reconciliation and data cleansing. Processes to maintain they experience when managing products and services.

Figure 6

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Item management
Category management The IBM Product Master item management functionality
captures a 360-degree view of a product or service.
Organizing and updating products and services is another Therefore, an item in a catalog captures all attributes of the
important dimension of enterprise-wide product information product or service, such as the key go- to-market
management. A user should be able to browse a product or
information, rich assets such as PDFs or images, data
service via multiple routes and still retrieve the same required to drive operational and supply chain systems,
information. If a change is made to the product or service, it relationships to other products or services and mappings to
should be reflected everywhere that item appears. categories in multiple hierarchies. Because these structures
reflect the way individual organizations view their products
and services, the resulting data model is closely aligned with
the business.

There are two types of item attributes in IBM Product

Master:

• Global or common attributes: These are attributes that

all items belonging to a catalog must have. Typically,
they tend to be attributes requiring global visibility, such
as Name, Part Number, GTIN and Short Description.
These attributes are defined as the catalog’s primary
attributes and are associated with every item in the
catalog.

• Item category attributes: These are attributes that an

item acquires by its relationship with a category. For
Figure 7 example, all items under a category called “LED TV”
may need to have an attribute called “Screen Size,” but
Products and services may also need to be organized in the Screen Size attribute may not have relevance for
several ways. For example, a country with only a subset of other categories. Such attributes are associated to a
the products and services could have a very different specific category within the category hierarchy.
browsing structure. Furthermore, within a market there
could be different ways to organize the products depending
on the channel to market, such as a separate organization for
the website and the print catalog.

All these processes are enabled (or hindered) by the category

management tools available to an organization. Therefore,
robust category management capabilities are vital to a
successful PIM implementation. In IBM Product Master,
products and services (modeled via catalogs) are
independent of categories and hierarchies. This allows a
product or service to be mapped to multiple categories
within a given hierarchy or simultaneously be mapped to
Figure 8
other categories in other hierarchies. Because catalogs and
hierarchies are independent, the same hierarchy can be used
to organize multiple sets of products or services.

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IBM Product Master can accommodate many attributes and Location hierarchy management
handle a wide variety of data types including String, Rich
Text, Number and Integer, Currencies, Lookup Tables, Dates Large manufacturers and retailers can gain competitive
and Times, Flags, Images, Documents and other binary advantage by micro-merchandising and managing location-
assets. It also supports complex attribute structures, such as a specific data more effectively. But location-specific data can
hierarchy of attributes (that is, an address composed of a multiply quickly, becoming a data management challenge.
number, street name, city, state and postcode) and multiple Consider managing 10 location-specific attributes across 100
instances of attribute values (that is, a recurring field or locations for 20,000 items. This alone amount to managing 20
groups of fields, such as a contact having multiple phone million attributes.
numbers).
IBM Product Master helps control unmanageable data
Lookup tables are also a useful feature within IBM Product volumes. When a user defines an attribute for a product,
Master. These allow meaningful text to be displayed to users service or supplier specific to the region, country,
in drop-down menus and allow selection by an internal or market/cluster or store level, all locations below that level
external system code or by some additional description. For inherit the attribute. For example, a materials price set at the
example, users see “Contiguous market level will be inherited by every store in that market
and can be overridden for exceptions if necessary. This
U.S.A.” in the drop-down menu, but they can also select it by
facilitates access to reliable information and helps
choosing “U.S.A. except Alaska and Hawaii” or “48 states,”
dramatically reduce the data management maintenance
or by the ERP system code “48USA.” When faced with larger
burden.
tables, users can search to find the appropriate value.
Likewise, for a product say iPhone, there may be different
set of promotions and terms & conditions for each Location.
E.g. North America (NA) might offer free headset while
Germany may not have any such offers. With such kind of
Location specific conditions, it is fairly easy to manage items
using Location hierarchy.

Figure 9

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Localization Data model flexibility is preserved and enhanced with the

capability to alter business processes as the organizational
For organizations operating in many countries, creating needs or implementation footprint grows. Tightly integrating
product and services offerings tailored to the local market is the workflow engine inside the PIM system allows it to
a critical requirement. This goes beyond creating country- accommodate the growth of the business into a new product
specific catalogs to customizing the product information and type: new data requirements can be modeled, a role or
selecting available products and services. workflow step can be introduced to manage new data
requirements and the workflow can be linked to the data
To support this customization, IBM Product Master stores all model for the new product type. Finally, users can be
information in the Unicode character set, enabling the mapped to new roles, enabling them to create and manage
capture of information in any language. Information the data for the new product type. All the capabilities
including marketing or technical data may need to be altered described above for products exist for categories as well.
for the local market, translated, reviewed and approved. IBM
Product Master enables relevant fields to be designated as
New product introduction and item
target market–specific, allowing them to contain an
additional local market–specific value. It also contains maintenance
country-specific formats and displays for numbers, currency
In addition to a 360-degree view of the product, IBM Product
and units of measure.
Master enables 360-degree collaboration on the product—
However, it is not just the information that needs to be bringing all parts of the organization into a single system
managed in multiple languages and formats—the UI also with the needed checks and balances to help ensure speed,
needs to be available in the user’s language. The native UI in quality and accountability. Administrators can define as
IBM Product Master is presented in 14 global languages, and many workflows as necessary to represent the different
everything from the hierarchy used to browse the products business processes the system must support (see Figure 10).
and services to a field’s label can be
The workflow engine goes beyond a state engine or a task
localized into multiple languages. Users can view data side manager, to enforce data quality and routing that is based on
by side in multiple languages to review or perform business rules and product authoring rules.
translations.
Alerts can be used to drive users to the system, notifying
them when a task awaits their attention. The system can also

escalate tasks or warn the user if a task is not dealt with in a

Business process collaboration timely manner. Escalation can be configured as a step-level
duration or deadline, one relative to the deadline for the
Enabling collaboration in the creation and maintenance of
process or a trigger for a “fast track” process managed by a
the product information is a key function of a PIM system.
team lead. When time is short or deadlines change, IBM
IBM Product Master provides a comprehensive, out-of-the-
Product Master allows a structured implementation of
box workflow capability that is highly scalable and
exception processes.
configurable.
A core feature of the workflow is the parallel processing
Comprehensive workflow platform capability, which allows multiple users to work on different
parts of the product at the same time. Working on the
When configuring a workflow, different types of steps can be product in parallel can dramatically shorten product creation
created; some require human action or attention (such as and update processes. For example, a marketing manager
approval or edit steps) and some are automatic, triggering can work on marketing attributes while a technician updates
internal or external system actions. Using the IBM Product the technical information about the product. As shown in
Master platform’s comprehensive workflow capability, it is figure 10, user can define a six step workflow where step 5 is
possible to publish state or data to external systems and a parallel step where action be performed by 2 different users
provide visibility into an end-to-end intersystem process. at same time and later on the data changes will be merged
and sent to next step for approval.

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

In addition, with IBM Product Master, a product can functional areas; for example, an imaging update can happen
participate in multiple workflows at the same time. There while the product is being introduced into a new country.
can be as many workflows as there are independent

Figure 10

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Teaming collaboration Users can also approve or reject a portion of the work and
send it for revision with comments. Data that is being
True 360-degree collaboration on a product requires authored and reviewed is restricted to the collaboration
additional teaming capabilities. IBM Product Master users workspace until all approvals are complete—only then is it
can take ownership of a task—an essential capability when a released to affect published, live product data.
team shares a common task list (see Figure 11).

Figure 11

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Two other features necessary for effective teaming are Visibility features track where the product is in the process,
auditing and visibility. Auditing provides accountability of who has taken ownership of it and how long it has been
who changed what, when and with what comments. The UI there. For both features, IBM Product Master provides out-
highlights the differences and how they were made. of-the-box functionality from a platform and end-user
perspective.

Figure 13

Figure 12

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Rules Engine & Data quality Individual data quality/ validation rules can be defined for
products during the onboarding and enrichment process,
The Rules console feature in IBM Product Master provides an which can also be combined to provide a channel-specific
opportunity to business users, to create/ manage business product quality. Workflows in IBM Product Master are
rules from an intuitive user interface. It also provides data highly integrated with its flexible and extensive data model,
governance functions that enable companies to define clear helping to ensure that users enter the correct data. Available
rules for handling their data, processes, and exceptions. business rules, including data types, validations, drop-down
menus, units of measure, currencies and precisions, can be
Business rules allows you to enrich the product information applied during the workflow process.
automatically, according to actions based on conditions.

Figure 14

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Not only are users restricted to what they need to see and acquired and that it meets the business validations .
how they need to see the data to do their job, but they are
further restricted to what they need to do. Data can be IBM Product Master can also be easily integrated with data
quality tools such as those available through IBM InfoSphere
organized to suit each job, while the validation rules can be
configured to help ensure that a minimum data set is Information Server.

Figure 15

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Integrated dashboards
The integrated dashboard feature enables you to view
various metrics across several aspects of the product.
Depending upon user privileges, various reporting
dashboards can be viewed.

These dashboards are designed to visualize key metrics for

each user persona. From the summary level dashboards (top
level), you can drill down to the detailed level dashboards or
to go into next level details for easier data analysis. The out-
of-the-box feature integrates dashboard engine with the IBM
Product Master. By default, the feature is enabled, and no
further configuration is required. With rich interactive
widgets to visualize key metrics along with the ability to
export the data to PDF, Excel, or CSV file formats.

Figure 17

Figure 16

Figure 18

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Free text search used as the key to match against set of attributes and red is
used as the value to search for in the matching records.
Free text feature allows users to search for any item or Similarly, multiple search attributes can be specified in the
categories in an unstructured manner. It works like google following format by using semicolon (;) as a separator:
like search where you can give any search string which part
of the item or category attributes is. Name=Apple iPhone ; Color=White;

You can search attribute names, which are an exact match or

a substring of the actual attribute name. The results are
achieved through attributes in the spec and associated
attribute paths in the spec. The search terms should be in the
Key = Value format, for example, "color = red" where color is

Figure 19

• Enterprise-class robustness, scalability and performance

Global Data Synchronization capabilities that help address immediate GDS needs and
can grow with the business over time
The GDS interface gets to the core of organizations’ business
objectives—maximizing the effectiveness of trading partner • Sophisticated integration capabilities that help companies
relationships and improving overall supply chain efficiency leverage existing product information throughout their
to increase revenues. technology infrastructure
• Detailed insight into GDS activities, which can drive
Key benefits of GDS include: process improvements both internally and with trading
partners
• The ability to enrich product information to increase
• A foundation for collaborative activities among supply
accuracy of attributes
chain partners, such as radio frequency identification
• Compliance with global standards and data pool
(RFID), collaborative planning forecasting and
standards

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

replenishment (CPFR) and other business-to-business Objects (Catalogs, Hierarchies and so on) that require
(B2B) initiatives different access for different user groups are divided into
Access Control Groups (ACGs). The intersection of the ACG
User interfaces and the role defines the access privileges for that role. These
are permissions such as the ability to view products, search
Native user interface products and perform an import of data. Because a user can
IBM Product Master offers a Persona based UI based belong to multiple roles, it is possible for a single user to
developed in Angular that enables quick user access from derive view access to a set of products from a “view only”
anywhere in the world and helps businesses avoid the role, but gain access to initiate business processes, such as
deployment pains of specialized clients and upgrades. New Product Introduction, on another set of products.
Within its small footprint, IBM Product Master uses the latest
web technologies to deliver a sophisticated and rich user
experience.
Integration
The out-of-the-box native UI is dynamic, adapting to the
configurations in the data model, access controls and Data aggregation and syndication
workflow, and incorporates user settings and preferences to A master data repository’s value lies in its ability to integrate
help users reduce implementation time. with other enterprise systems. IBM Product Master is
architected to be easy to deploy in heterogeneous
Multiple productivity tools are available for the users,
environments. It supports commonly used communication
including mass update capabilities, Excel based import protocols, including IBM WebSphere® MQ, Java Message
export, etc. allowing the maintenance of hundreds of items or
Service (JMS), HTTP, FTP and SOAP, as well as multiple data
categories simultaneously. formats including XML, CSV and Microsoft Excel.
The UI represents the configuration of the business process,
While supporting future requirements, its flexibility also
data model and validations specific to your enterprise. helps ensure that IBM Product Master has minimal impact
The ability to extensively configure IBM Product Master on existing systems and, in most cases, will work with files
helps accelerate the time-to-value of the PIM already available.
implementation. In addition to integrating point-to-point with inbound and
outbound source systems, IBM Product Master can integrate
Custom screens
with middleware technologies from IBM and a variety of
The IBM Product Master UI can be extended to adapt to an
providers, such as Microsoft BizTalk, SAP Exchange
organization’s business needs. All native business objects
Infrastructure (SAP XI), TIBCO and Software AG
(Catalogs, Items and so on) that are exposed through the
webMethods.
standard UI are also exposed through application
programming interfaces (APIs). This allows administrators to IBM Product Master natively supports deltas for aggregation
build custom UI screens step-by-step using process wizards as well as syndication. It supports inbound and outbound
and utilities. deltas for items and categories, both at an entity level (that is,
receiving or sending data for only products that have
Access privileges and security changed) and at an attribute level (that is, receiving or
sending data for only the field that has changed within a
The IBM Product Master security model is many-to-many, product).
allowing for very granular control as well as maximum reuse
of access rights. Roles define system-level access for business Many organizations require aggregations to initiate or
or administrative functions and users can belong to multiple perform part of a business process, and IBM Product Master
roles. This helps make it easy to define very specific user accomplishes this for full or delta incoming data. It can also
roles, such as complete authoring of product data, syndicate data as part of the business process to interact with
lightweight searching-only usage or advanced solution target systems.
administration. As with the other administration functionality, data
aggregations and syndications can be configured via the
administration UI. The consoles give an at-a-glance view of
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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

current activity, while wizards help to configure a new Apache Camel based out of box Connectors
aggregation or syndication by guiding the administrator IBM Product Master is natively integrated with Apache
through tasks ranging from file transfer and field mappings Camel which is an Enterprise Application Integration
to setting up a schedule. framework based on known Enterprise Integration Patterns.
The developed framework enables faster integration of third-
Scheduler
party systems with MDM CE given the availability of
Administrators can use the IBM Product Master platform’s numerous OOTB data formats (JSON, XML, CSV, etc.) as
built-in scheduler to easily schedule recurring jobs. IBM well as support for numerous transport models (JMS, HTTP
Product Master also works with external schedulers that
etc.)
manage enterprise-wide job choreography. The scheduler
console provides information on both ongoing and past Any successful PIM implementation needs to integrate with
activity, and allows users to inspect performance multiple upstream/downstream systems. Typical integration
characteristics and logs. with other enterprise systems can take weeks, thereby
significantly increasing the overall implementation cycle.
SOA for real time
IBM Product Master supports an SOA environment via In addition, the integration may not be developed in most
inbound and outbound web services. Different business optimized way and as per PIM best practices. IBM Product
functions can be offered as services to accept and respond to Master has built several OOTB connectors which helps
requests across a network or via the web. These web services reduce the overall implementation cycles from few months to
can be written in the IBM Product Master scripting language few days.
or in Java.

Solution accelerators
Several solution accelerators are included with IBM Product
Master. These accelerators enable integration with various
supporting programs or other systems to help increase value.
These accelerators are fully extendable and can be
customized to meet organizations’ specific needs.

Advanced catalog management

IBM Product Master includes a solution designed specifically
to support e-commerce initiatives. The Advanced Catalog Figure 20
Management (ACM) solution provides an out-of-the-box
data model, sample workflows and a ready- to-use Some of the important connectors released so far are Amazon
integration framework specifically designed for IBM Marketplace, Google Merchant Center, Magento eCommerce
platform, eBay Commerce Center Network Merchant, SAP
WebSphere Commerce. This solution can be customized and Material Management and Oracle JD Edwards and Adobe
extended based on need and provides WebSphere Commerce inDesign. The connectors help customers in getting data that
customers with more sophisticated catalog management is synced to various downstream channels or systems
capabilities to support their e-commerce initiatives. without needing any major customizations.

Advanced business rules

This IBM Product Master solution acts as a single interface
for product collaboration and advanced rules authoring
through direct integration into IBM Operational Decision
Management (ODM). Utilizing rule templates in ODM,
business users can take advantage of a complete set of UIs
from within IBM Product Master to add, edit and associate
advanced business rules. Like the ACM and Portal solutions, Digital Asset Management
this solution can be customized to meet the specific needs of
Digital Asset Management(DAM) is a process, which can be
each client.
used to upload, organize, store, and retrieve digital media

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

according to the organizational need. DAM provides access

to the assets anytime and anywhere and is useful for fast and
easy integration. Thus ensures a faster turnaround time,
speed, consistency, agility, control, and flexibility to the
assets.

You can upload assets from FTP or from local computer. You
can also opt for bulk upload and conveniently upload
multiple assets. The same asset can be linked with multiple
items making it easier to manage assets and avoid asset
duplication. DAM also provides a way in which the media
can be easily linked and de-linked to the item.

Digital Assets Manager Role can view all the assets and
perform different operations on the assets. A user with
Merchandise Manager role can link and delink the assets to Figure 21
the items and perform various other transformations on the
assets. The metadata information for the assets provides

details like size of the assets and modified date of the assets
(version control) and helps in managing the assets.

Figure 22

The Vendor Persona of IBM Product Master enables an

Vendor Portal external user as a Vendor user. The Vendor user can add or

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

update items from the Vendor specific collaboration area but As different data stewards create entities
can view items through the Search option only. (products/suppliers/customers) over time, or the new
entities are added automatically during migration, some
Vendors can access the system through the internet thus
entities may be represented in the system under more than
there is a security model in place to restrict the user to only
one name.
specific data pertaining to organization.
Using this new feature, business users get the opportunity to
Each vendor has own collaboration area, which can be
compare the suggested matches, choose the right one or
created on demand. All users who are listed under the merge the possible duplicates into master entity, thereby
vendor in the organization hierarchies are administrators of
assisting in improving the overall data quality by reducing
this collaboration area duplicates in system.
The approval workflow, which can be handled by the
manager or the administrator of the owner organization. All
items from the vendor workflow are moved here for
approval. The items that are created by any vendor move to the
Catalog only when the administrator approves the items.

Suspect Duplicate Processing (SDP)

Figure 23

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Programming logic Key features that power the high performance, scalability
and reliability of IBM Product Master include:
IBM Product Master can be extensively configured through
• Standards-based application composed of Java Platform,
programming, from business rules and validation rules to
Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and Java Platform,
import, export or completely create new screens and
Standard Edition (Java SE) components
business features. Administrators can also present IBM
• Support for application server clustering
Product Master functionality as web services, making it easy
to integrate the solution as part of an enterprise-wide SOA. • High user concurrency
• Large data and batch processing capacity
REST API • Graphical user interface (GUI) optimized for the power
IBM Product Master has published set of REST APIs to access user
various product entities. These REST APIs follow the
IBM Product Master supports both vertical and horizontal
security model based on the user roles and ACGs and
clustering. Because it is standards- based, it also enables
require the same set of access permissions as the Persona-
deployment of various database optimizations and
based UI interface of the product.
technologies.
These APIs are very useful for customers in building their
own custom implementations. The detailed explanation of Docker Containers
each API such as URLs, parameters, descriptions, sample Applying agile DevOps methodologies is becoming a
input, and output data are well documented on the necessity to increase efficiency and time-to-value. An
Knowledge Center portal using Swagger. Swagger based important cornerstone of a modern DevOps process is
documentation provides clear insight into how the API having flexible and fast deployment options. One such
responds to parameters and options. deployment option is to use container technology such as
Docker.
Java API
IBM Product Master includes the option to deploy the
IBM Product Master offers a comprehensive library of Java
solution by using a Docker-based container. These images
APIs that exceed the capabilities available via scripting. The
are built on a CentOS base Docker image that runs on all
Java APIs are composed of more than 1,000 operations and
Docker supported hosts. It supports containerized
over 230 interfaces in 30 components or modules. Developers
deployment on Docker as well as Kubernetes.
can access all underlying objects via Java APIs, so business
logic can be implemented in Java and any standard Java During an accelerated deployment, IBM Product Master can
integrated development environment (IDE) can be used for be installed from Docker images, which ensures a simple and
its development and testing. Additionally, this allows for consistent installation experience. IBM Product Master
reuse of any existing Java business logic. provides docker images of various product services which
can be scaled as much as you want. Users get flexibility and
New features developed with scripting or Java programming
control with Docker containers in terms of setting policies,
are set up as extensions of the solution and do not affect the
managing resources, and security. For example: Before the
core code of the product. This means that product extensions
start of the sale season, a company may have to add higher
can usually be redeployed “as-is” when a new version of the
volume of new products and during that stage, they can scale
product is available.
up the workflow service on demand, so as to process more
Scripting language number of products.
The IBM Product Master scripting language is very similar to
JavaScript, making it quick to configure the solution. With a Machine Learning
comprehensive library of more than 900 operations that
provides access to all IBM Product Master objects, the Data stewardship often involves several tedious and time-
scripting language is ideally suited for fast implementations. consuming tasks which are can be Easily automated so that
stewards can focus on more productive and intelligent work.

Machine learning involves reviewing large volumes of data

to discover specific trends and patterns that would most
Performance and scalability often not be apparent to humans. For example, machine

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

learning can be very useful for standardization or

categorization of products by understanding history and
good sample data for model training.

IBM Product Master offers the benefits of Machine learning

which is based on open source lightweight python libraries
having no additional licensing overhead. Machine learning
assisted data stewardship provides multi-fold benefits like
accelerating manual tasks, shortening review cycles and
improving data quality. Machine learning-based product
categorization or standardization feature helps the data
stewards in improving the data quality and utilizing their
time on more meaningful activities than thinking about the
right category for the products.

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IBM Product Master Functional Overview

Conclusion dimensions of control. The user experience and all other

managed information can be configured for both the user
Collaboration between enterprise departments, systems and type and the target market—an especially valuable feature
employees has never been more important in this age of real- for companies operating in global markets.
time, always-on communications and commerce. Without
Together, these capabilities help make IBM Product Master a
a single source of trusted data about products, services and highly scalable and reliable product information
customers, decision makers cannot be sure that the management platform. It can be quickly adapted to the
information they are using is the most up-to-date, accurate business, allowing organizations to represent, organize and
version. manage business objects and deliver trusted information to
all systems.
IBM Product Master offers several features that help
organizations manage ever-changing enterprise data. Its For more information
comprehensive workflow capability helps accelerate the
For more information about IBM Product Master, please
process of creating a new data model and business process,
contact your IBM representative or visit:
linking the two and mapping users to their roles in the
ibm.com/software/data/master-data-management
process.
Additionally, IBM Global Financing can tailor financing
IBM Product Master provides users with a 360-degree view
solutions to your specific IT needs. For more information on
of products, services and hierarchies, and supports
great rates, flexible payment plans and loans and asset
enterprise-wide collaboration on them. The security model
buyback and disposal, visit: ibm.com/financing.
provides role-based, granular access with multiple

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