CHICAGO (1 April 2008) – Initiate Systems, Inc., a leader in master data management solutions (MDM), announced today the availability of version 8.1 of its Initiate Master Data Service™ software, as the company continues to focus on software that delivers robust data stewardship and data quality capabilities, industry leading time-to-value and exceptional performance and scalability.

Version 8.1 enables customers to operationalize governance processes that require data stewards to visualize and manage complex data relationships and resolve data quality issues and ambiguities relating to such relationships. For example, data stewards can visualize and manage consumer householding relationships, patient communities of care, criminal activity patterns and corporate hierarchical relationships involving many subsidiaries, branches or locations.

Aaron Zornes, founder and chief research officer for the CDI-MDM Institute commented, “This latest version of Initiate Master Data Service promises data governance and stewardship capabilities much needed to address the challenges organizations face when trying to manage complex relationships and master data assets about their customers.”

A key component of version 8.1 is continued enhancement of Initiate Inspector™, a web-based, fully-integrated data stewardship application that provides data stakeholders with a rich user interface for managing data relationships and data quality issues. This application provides new capabilities to view, manage and modify complex master data relationships, including hierarchical relationships using innovative relationship visualization technology.

“Many of today’s data stewardship tools are either too simplistic or they seem like they were built for system administrators rather than business users,” said Sean Cassidy, vice president, products, Initiate Systems. “With Initiate Inspector™, data stewards finally have a robust, easy-to-use application that truly reflects how they want to visualize and manage complex relationships and handle data quality issues.”

Initiate Master Data Service™ is a comprehensive master data platform that provides identity matching and management, data modeling, multilingual information quality management, data sharing, relationship and hierarchy management, and integration and synchronization capabilities. Working transparently behind existing line-of-business systems and applications, it delivers more confidence in the accuracy and integrity of critical data assets.  

Initiate Master Data Service is now faster to implement and easier to use, monitor and fine tune. Workbench, Initiate’s installation, configuration and management tool, has been enhanced in version 8.1 to further speed implementation of master data management solutions. Workbench now provides graphical, interactive data quality analysis capabilities that enable business and IT stakeholders to lower the effort and cost associated with achieving and maintaining the business benefits associated with MDM.
Initiate Master Data Service version 8.1 also includes improved data quality capabilities:

• Enhanced data cleansing and parsing capabilities that help establish even higher quality master data records and views
• Address standardization tools that provide properly formatted postal-standard addresses in more than 100 countries
• Enhanced language packs that address the nuances of locale–specific names and addresses