Master data is usually defined as the set of core entities within an organization, depending on the industry it may include customers, prospects, suppliers, sites, hierarchies etc.

Master data management should cover the process of collecting the data that is for each of these domains and provide it to all relevant systems and stakeholders.

The purpose of managing this data is to assure a consistent definition of these business entities and data about them across the organization’s multiple systems, establishing a standard definition for business-critical data that represents a single source of truth.

Master data is the most valuable data that an organization owns, used across all the organizations’ units, processes, and systems to keep the organization working.

Without consolidating this data, each business process is forced to rely on locally available data too often incomplete, obsolete, redundant, and low quality, with substantial negative impacts on business performance.

In the absence of a master data management solution, the most usual approach has been to bridge these siloed systems by building point-to-point interfaces, leading to complex and expensive IT solutions that fall short on the initial objectives.

On the other hand, Master Data Management solution will offer the capability to merge, cleanse, optimise and manage all master data in an organization, integrating different data sources at a central location - that will become single source of truth – and to distribute it to different target systems (Core, CRM, BPM, Portals, etc.), ensuring cross system data consistency, removing the data redundancies and inconsistencies that reduce business performance.

Master Data Management plays an important role in this solution and a pivotal role in the organizations’ ambitions in a competitive marketplace.

Master Data Management is crucial as the foundation in this process:

• Providing customers, the personal experience they demand.

• Providing the core business data processes with accurate, reliable, and timely information.

• Synchronizing digital and physical channels, accelerate time-to-market and increase up-sell and cross-sell conversions, with the range of products, business partners, and the organizations’ structure with its branches, warehouses, stores, and other sales channels and fully available and consistent.

• Managing the relationship between the organization and its vendors.

• Maintaining high-quality privacy-compliant consumer data.

The purpose here is not to give a detailed perspective of all the features a master data management can offer but the critical impact it has on the performance of the most critical business processes that are using this data.

Next, I’ll move to the How. How can Master Data Management be approached.