The #1 Platform for Connected Data

WHITE PAPER

Rethink Your
Master Data
How Connections Will Define
the Future of MDM
Nav Mathur, Senior Director of Global Solutions, Neo4j

neo4j.com
 The #1 Platform for Connected Data

White Paper

Rethink Your
TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Big Data Problem 1

Modern Master Data Master Data

Management 2

Why Graph Technology? 2

How Connections Will Define
the Future of MDM
The Limits of Relational
Databases 2
Nav Mathur, Senior Director of Global Solutions, Neo4j
The Power of Graph
Technology 3

Introducing Neo4j 3
Introduction
How Graphs and MDM Data is both our most valuable asset and our biggest ongoing challenge. As data grows in
volume, variety and complexity, across applications, clouds and siloed systems, traditional
Intersect 4
ways of working with data no longer work.

Governance, Risk and Increasingly, businesses are recognizing a need to harness all of their data, particularly
their data around customers, products, partners and more – often called master data.
Compliance 6
Pressing business priorities such as compliance and digital transformation require a
holistic view of this master data.
From MDM to Innovation 8
Achieving that holistic view requires connecting data across a myriad of sources and silos.
Connecting data using flexible graph technology offers a proven approach to solving these
Conclusion 9
data challenges, capturing not only data but an unlimited number of connections and
relationships between data.

This paper describes the power of connecting your most important data about customers,
products, employees, business partners and more using graph technology. Along the way,
real-world use cases from global enterprises to disruptive startups illustrate the power of
connected data.

A Big Data Problem

Organizations have lots of data, but it’s siloed and disconnected. Data is spread across:

• Different departments (CRM, Sales, Marketing, Product Development, Finance, HR)

• Different divisions (product lines)

• Different platforms (web team, data warehouses, NoSQL systems, data lakes)

• Different locations (cloud, on-premise, edge, IoT, mobile)

• Different formats (XLS, database schema, unstructured, object storage)

• Different systems (CRM, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Slack, Office 365)

Disconnected data creates problems.

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Without a holistic view of your data, fragmentation, misunderstandings, inaccuracies If data is the lifeblood
and mistakes abound. Worse, disconnected data creates friction that makes compliance
more difficult, customer 360 impossible and new business opportunities hard to see, let
of your enterprise,
alone execute. then MDM is
hematology – the
Modern Master Data Management discipline of the
entire system.
Master data is the authoritative record of everything vital to your organization’s
operations including information on users, customers, products, accounts, partners,
locations, business units and more. Typically, this data is stored in many different places,
with lots of redundancy, variable formats, uneven quality and inconsistent access.
Master data management – at its essence – involves connecting and organizing all of
your most important data.

If data is the lifeblood of your enterprise, then MDM is hematology – the discipline of
the entire system. Simply put, MDM is a set of methods, systems and technologies
that ensure the quality, accuracy, completeness, timeliness and consistency of all
reference data in the organization. It encompasses virtually every element of the
enterprise including databases, applications, business processes, organizational units
and geographies. MDM provides the authoritative foundation for all information across
the enterprise and a single source of truth, with the aim of building a “golden record”
that has the approved version of the latest and most important data about customers,
suppliers, products and the like.

In the past, MDM systems required a centralized approach. Such systems were
implemented as major corporate initiatives, complex and expensive long-term projects
that required executive buy-in and alignment across numerous stakeholders. Further,
such systems used a rigid schema that made changes and additions time-consuming.

Modern MDM requires the capability to work across silos, absorb new technologies and
sources of information, find hidden relationships, quickly generate insights and deliver
results in real-time at scale. It offers agility to answer any questions that arise, not just
those anticipated in advance.

Why Graph Technology?

Graph database technology offers a proven way to connect master data. It enables you
to start right where you are with a use case that solves pressing problems and creates
immediate business value. It gives you the flexibility to connect data across existing MDM
systems, or use the graph data store itself as your MDM system.

There is good reason that graphs lie at the core of the most disruptive companies of
our modern era, including Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Amazon. These companies
continue to demonstrate the competitive advantage of understanding networks and
mastering connected data.

The Limits of Relational Databases

Most MDM systems rely on relational databases with grid-like structures that are not
optimized for traversing relationships. Despite the name, relational databases are
not designed to capture relationships between data points. Even with all the recent
advances in computer processing and high-speed networks, the performance of
relational database applications continues to lag when it comes to ad hoc, multi-hop
queries.

The root cause usually boils down to one factor: queries about data relationships.

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“Neo4j continues to Relational databases were not built to handle connected information, so queries about
dominate the graph data relationships require numerous JOIN tables. These operations are costly in terms of
computing and memory – and the burden rises exponentially with the size and complexity
database market.” of queries. Lengthy SQL statements are required to accomplish simple operations.
Performance degrades sharply with the number and levels of data relationships (hops)
-Forrester Research and the size of the database.

While relational databases continue to serve many purposes, they do not serve
connected data use cases effectively. Because JOINs are expensive, they can’t analyze
relationships beyond three hops. These multi-hop queries are time-consuming and may
even hang, never returning an answer.

The Power of Graph Technology

Graph databases connect all types of data stores – both flexibly and at scale – providing
a sweet spot that complements existing databases. Graphs enable next-generation
approaches that connect master data wherever it is by building a metadata fabric that
weaves connections in the underlying data.

Graph queries are fast, nimble and able to identify and exploit the natural connections
hidden in data – and this advantage increases with scale and complexity. With graph
databases, queries are much faster – ten times faster is normal but in some cases
performance is a thousand or even a million times faster than a relational database.

The advantages of graph technology include:

• Support for any query

• Lightning fast, no matter how many connections (hops)

• Simple query language

• Complements existing systems; no need to rip and replace

• AI/ML on connected data using graph algorithms

• Visualization and communication (whiteboard style structure)

Introducing Neo4j
Neo4j is the leading graph database platform. Hundreds of organizations have turned
to Neo4j from industries such as financial services, government, energy, software, retail,
media, manufacturing and more.

Neo4j stores and queries data as nodes (entities) and relationships (connections). Nodes
linked by relationships form a network. Think of nodes as nouns and relationships as
verbs. Properties can be attached to both nodes and relationships, akin to adjectives and
adverbs, respectively.

Relational databases force data into a pre-defined model; in contrast, graphs capture the
natural structure of a given dataset. Information is stored according to how it is retrieved –
thus revealing how individual entities are naturally connected.

The relationships between data are as important as the data points themselves. By
contrast, relational databases compute relationships at query time through expensive
JOIN operations. Graph databases excel at managing highly connected data and complex
queries. Neo4j uses the Cypher query language (similar to SQL but designed for graphs).
With a native graph database, you can traverse millions of connections per second.

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How Graphs and MDM Intersect A Neo4j-powered

Relational databases are not going away, so there’s no need to rip and replace. A more MDM solution can
practical approach is to add a solution that complements your existing system and allows be layered atop
you to continue to reap the benefits of past investments. Neo4j provides the missing
legacy systems,
connections and insights.
work across silos,
Many organizations maintain multiple data sources – CRM systems, work management
provide a consistent
systems, accounts payable and receivable and so on. In most cases, it simply is not
feasible to move all data into a single location. A Neo4j-powered MDM solution can be source of information
layered atop legacy systems, work across silos, provide a consistent source of information and reveal the
and reveal the relationships hidden in your master data.
relationships hidden
in your master data.

Just ask the global booking platform Airbnb.

Internal MDM for Increased Productivity: Airbnb

Airbnb had more than 3,500 employees across the globe and faced the huge challenge
of managing the volume and complexity of its data. The company managed more than
200,000 tables in its data warehouse, all spread across multiple clusters.

“It wasn’t evident how you even found the right table,” recalled Airbnb software engineer
John Bodley. In surveys, employees gave the company poor reviews when asked whether
they had the right information to do their jobs.

Using Neo4j, the company created an internal MDM tool called the Dataportal to connect
all these silos, enabling employees to find the data they need with ease. Neo4j served
as the perfect fit for the company’s operations. As Bodley explained, “Our company is a
graph.”

Ask yourself: Is your company – and your company’s data – a graph?

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Connecting Silos to Fight Diabetes: DZD

The German Centre for Diabetes Research (DZD) sought a way to bring together all the
information spread across the organization and its various research activities. The DZD
wanted a centralized data and knowledge management system for technical reasons and
human ones too – especially to promote cross-disciplinary collaboration.

DZD’s research network accumulates a huge amount of data distributed across various
locations and consolidates it into a single, master database. This central database provides
DZD’s 400-strong team of scientists with a holistic view of available information, enabling
them to gain valuable insights into the causes and progression of diabetes.

With Neo4j, DZD runs queries across many locations – and already has discovered
intriguing connections and patterns for future research.

“Creating the first data models with Neo4j was very fast,” said Dr. Alexander Jarasch, head
of bioinformatics and data management at DZD.

“In the first week, I was able to connect metadata from our scientists into a data model,
test the model and show the added value of the graph database,” said Jarasch. “Thanks
to the high scalability and performance of Neo4j, the data integration possibilities are
limitless. We’re employing AI and graph analytics to find connections with other diseases,
including cancers.”

Ask yourself: What could you do in a week by connecting your data silos?

Product 360: Lockheed-Martin

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the strategic value of graph databases. But it
doesn’t hurt to be one either.

Lockheed Martin Space (LMS) builds satellites, space vehicles and other astronautical
equipment. As the premier government contractor for NASA, it has built more
interplanetary spacecraft than all U.S. companies combined. The company had many silos
– all filled with data.

Ann Grubbs, LMS chief data engineer, described the environment as “hundreds, maybe
thousands of data systems and tens of thousands of datasets.”

Lockheed Martin Space connects all of its data silos by storing the relationships between
the data and those systems in a graph database. This lightweight manner of connecting
data silos by storing the pointers between them made it possible to quickly answer
questions that formerly required weeks of querying different systems.

Graph technology now reveals connections never visible before. In one case, LMS analyzed
which spacecraft parts were most important.

“To our surprise,” chuckled Grubbs, “it turned out to be a tube of adhesive that had the
most influence.”

Ask yourself: What questions could you answer if your data sources were connected?

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Transformative MDM: Pitney Bowes

For some organizations, graph-based MDM has been transformational.

Although best known for postage meters and mailing services, Pitney Bowes actually
is one of the top software companies in the world. Having built a slew of back-end
processes to run its global business (routing mail around the world requires a lot of
coordination), it is effectively a tech company.

“The main go-to-market focus we have is around the single view of customers, which is
the Master Data Management (MDM) use case at its heart,” said Aaron Wallace, principal
product manager, Pitney Bowes.

Pitney Bowes had more than 150 different systems spread across the globe. The
number grew constantly as the company made up to a dozen or more acquisitions
every year. The company needed a centralized hub that all of these systems could plug
into. At first, the company took a typical silo approach with an MDM stack that was highly
centralized, controlled and governed.

They then realized that a single-system solution to MDM wasn’t conducive to making
their systems efficient. Seeking an enterprise-wide solution, Pitney Bowes became an
early adopter of graph databases and a Neo4j partner.

Built on Neo4j, the solution provides a visualization of data moving through the
organization. For example, the Pitney Bowes data-matching engine generates a record
from multiple data repositories and matching algorithms resolve discrepancies. One
individual may appear as “Charles Kane” in one data record, “Chuck Kane” in another and
“Citizen Kane” elsewhere. Similarly, an individual’s address may reside in one database,
the email in a second database and mobile phone and social media information in a
third. The system merges all those records into a single graph.

The efforts proved so successful that Pitney Bowes began offering an MDM solution to
its own customers called the Spectrum Data Hub Module – powered, naturally, by the
Neo4j graph database.

Ask yourself: Could you productize your company’s secret sauce?

Governance, Risk and Compliance

Just as data is growing more voluminous and complex, so are regulatory requirements.
Compliance is a major driver of MDM initiatives. Graph technology helps enterprises
navigate this new regulatory environment.

In 2016, the European Commission ratified the General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR). Under the law, companies must allow customers to transfer their personal
information to competitors and allow people to exercise their “right to be forgotten,”
which requires the organization to erase all their personal information.

The GDPR comes amid a broader regulatory movement. The California Consumer
Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) imposes stiff penalties on those that misuse and resell
consumers’ private information. Nevada and New York have followed suit, and many
other states and nations are considering similar legislation.

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Companies must not only safeguard customer data, but also track how it is collected,
used, stored, shared, accessed by third parties and protected. The “right to be forgotten”
poses a disruptive requirement because organizations historically have focused
on protecting and preserving information. Purging data case-by-case requires new
capabilities. Compliance demands traceability, time stamps and mapping all the activity
around personal data. As a consequence, organizations must adopt a new approach to
data governance – and a platform to match.

With graph technology, companies track the data lifecycle, build “reverse lineage” maps of
data flow and provide a full accounting to regulatory authorities.

Compliance Leads to Innovation: Convergys

There is a silver lining when you solve compliance with graph technology: new
opportunities.

Convergys is a global customer care outsourcing firm whose clients include about half of
the Fortune 500. It employs more than 115,000 employees worldwide and handles about
8 billion contacts per year.

With extensive operations in the EU, the company was alarmed by the requirements of
GDPR. The company managed about 120 applications, internal storage and collaboration
systems, plus more than 100 customers and 43 sites affected by the EU regulations.
Initially, the company tried to build its own compliance solution.

“There’s one problem with all of these apps – they were all built to put data in,” said Lloyd
Byrd, Convergys vice president of application development and technical solutions. “None
of these apps were built to take data out, records at a time, or manipulate individual
records. We didn’t have a good way to address this problem.”

The company partnered with Neo4j and within a couple of months built a graph-based
GDPR solution running on the cloud. The solution was designed to extend well beyond
the EU because data accountability is becoming a global reality.

The graph database solution opened the door to other benefits – better operational
analytics, a tenfold improvement in large data loading, employee knowledge graphs and
statistical insights.

“There are probably more use cases than people imagine where graph technology can
enable better results,” said Byrd. “For us, we think it’s around operational results and
being able to connect data better.”

Ask yourself: What compliance challenge could you overcome using connected data?

Data Lineage: UBS

Another powerful MDM capability is tracking data lineage. The UBS Group – one of the
largest financial institutions in the world – built a data lineage and data governance
platform using Neo4j.

The project began as a compliance mission but turned into something with broader
benefits. The 2007 global financial crisis showed that banks lacked capabilities for risk
data aggregation and practices for risk reporting. In response, the Basel Committee on
Banking Supervision issued standard 239 (BCBS 239) to strengthen systems for risk data
aggregation and internal risk reporting.

Data lineage is an essential component of risk management. It involves tracking the entire
lifecycle of information – its origin, evolution and movement through the organization.
With these tools, organizations trace information as it flows through the enterprise,
monitor quality, discover errors, fix mistakes and reduce duplication.

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After attempting a solution with a relational database, UBS switched its data lineage If an organization
system to Neo4j. UBS used Neo4j to evaluate data lineages and depict the results in a
lineage diagram.
has a data silo
problem, it probably
UBS attained better transparency into its own data. When generating a lineage, the
company no longer suffers the headaches of JOINing multiple tables of a relational
has knowledge
database. With Neo4j, the results are obtained easily and displayed in an intuitive graph silos too. Graph
visualization. thinking catalyzes
“Neo4j helps us understand the flow of data through the organization,” explained Sidharth better insights
Goyal, a senior software engineer and technical lead at UBS. “It helps us understand and captures
how changes in one application are going to impact the entire organization. It helps us
understand how errors can propagate through the system.” organizational
know-how.
Ask yourself: How could graphs illuminate your data flows?

From MDM to Innovation

Once data is connected, the use cases are endless.

Let’s say you have connected customer and product data. What if you add another node
with another data source, such as partners or transactional data? In the language of
innovation, the small step from your first use case to your next one is called the adjacent
possible.

Graph technology also triggers healthy cultural shifts. If an organization has a data silo
problem, it probably has knowledge silos too. Graph thinking catalyzes better insights and
captures organizational know-how.

Talent
Management
Knowledge
Research and
Graphs
Development

Customer 360

Fraud Detection

Churn Prediction With master data

connected in Neo4j,
Compliance
a world of use cases
opens up

Asset
Management Recommendations

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NASA: Space-Age Knowledge Graphs

We are living in the century of the knowledge worker.

Few organizations have amassed as much institutional brainpower as NASA, the

organization that put astronauts on the moon half a century ago and constantly expands
the frontiers of science and engineering. To build its knowledge architecture, the space
agency turned to Neo4j.

The challenge: a super abundance of brainpower and a shortage of connections. NASA

operates 20 locations with 80,000 employees and has been amassing data since the
1950s – hundreds of millions of documents and reports stored in a database growing by
the day. NASA keeps a database of lessons learned and encourages engineers to read
about past projects – but finding the right information was like looking for a needle in a
vast haystack.

“We have to try to break down those silos, which is exactly the capability that graph
databases provide,” said David Meza, the chief knowledge architect at NASA.

In the past, searches were time-consuming, inefficient, yielded unsorted results and only
scratched the surface of millions of documents. NASA turned to a graph approach and
began to convert its document-oriented database into a graph-oriented one using Neo4j.

The results are impressive.

“Using Neo4j, someone from our Orion project found information from the Apollo project
that prevented an issue, saving well over two years of work and one million dollars of
taxpayer funds,” said Meza.

Ask yourself: How could you capture the know-how in your company using graphs?

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Graph technology is Conclusion

designed to reveal and Neo4j closes the innovation gap.
handle connected data It brings together disparate sources of master data, connects silos and enriches it all with
– the revolutionary metadata. It keeps pace with the millisecond pace of modern business and scales without
limits. Most importantly, graph technology is designed to reveal and handle connected
approach that is
data – the revolutionary approach that is already defining the future of the digital era.
already defining the
Graph technology allows you to start where you are: with a single area, connecting
future of the digital data across disparate systems, in a nondisruptive fashion to solve a pressing problem.
era. Connecting your data in this way creates a snowball effect, supporting new opportunities
and use cases with minimal additional effort.

The Neo4j Graph Platform connects data at scale, powering millisecond queries on vast
amounts of connected data. Furthermore, with its large library of graph algorithms, it
paves the way for AI and machine learning on all of that data.

Graphs hold immense strategic value for master data management and beyond. Neo4j
transforms your data managers and data scientists into data strategists. Armed with the
power of graph technology, these strategists discover relationships, generate insights,
drive innovation and capture competitive advantage.

Neo4j is the leader in graph database technology. As the world’s most widely deployed graph database, we help Questions about Neo4j?
global brands – including Comcast, NASA, UBS, and Volvo Cars – to reveal and predict how people, processes and
systems are interrelated. Contact us around the
globe:
Using this relationships-first approach, applications built with Neo4j tackle connected data challenges such as
info@neo4j.com
analytics and artificial intelligence, fraud detection, real-time recommendations, and knowledge graphs. Find out
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