Understanding master data management

Master data management (MDM) is effectively the process of creating and managing a centralized data system. The idea is that you create a golden record, or a single source of truth. Having one place where all of your data is clean, standardized, consolidated, and up to date has many benefits. You end up with higher data quality, higher data integrity, cleaner data, and much faster and easier access to the data, and you can even format the data so that it is ready to report. Also, if you create new data objects, you can connect them to the golden record and automatically populate the fields with the appropriate data. You can even automate compliance checks. Effectively, you have the data in its highest quality on tap and ready to use by anyone who has access.

That said, MDM is not a practice that is used by every company. It sounds great, but it can also be a lot of work and expensive to set up. There are even variations, where MDM is only practiced...