Adrian
2 min readDec 12, 2020
Data Management

Master Data Management (MDM): 10 Definitions

“The set of disciplines and methods to ensure the currency, meaning, and quality of a company’s reference data that is shared across various systems and organizations.” (Jill Dyché & Evan Levy, “Customer Data Integration”, 2006)

“The framework of processes and technologies aimed at creating and maintaining an authoritative, reliable, sustainable, accurate, and secure data environment that represents a “single version of truth,” an accepted system of record used both intra- and interenterprise across a diverse set of application systems, lines of business, and user communities. (Alex Berson & Lawrence Dubov, “Master Data Management and Customer Data Integration for a Global Enterprise”, 2007)

“Processes that control management of master data values to enable consistent, shared, contextual use across systems, of the most accurate, timely, and relevant version of truth about essential business entities.” (DAMA International, “The DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge” 1st Ed., 2009)

“A discipline that resolves master data to maintain the golden record, the holistic and panoramic view of master entities and relationships, and the benchmark for master data that can be used across the enterprise, and sometimes between enterprises to facilitate data exchanges.” (Alex Berson & Lawrence Dubov, “Master Data Management and Data Governance”, 2010)

“The processes and tools to help an organization consistently define and manage core reference or descriptive data “ (Martin Oberhofer et al, “The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture”, 2010)

“The data that describes the important details of a business subject area such as customer, product, or material across the organization. Master data allows different applications and lines of business to use the same definitions and data regarding the subject area. Master data gives an accurate, 360-degree view of the business subject.” (Jim Davis & Aiman Zeid, “Business Transformation: A Roadmap for Maximizing Organizational Insights”, 2014)

‘It is a technology-enabled discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets. Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes the core entities of the enterprise including customers, prospects, citizens, suppliers, sites, hierarchies and chart of accounts.” (Richard T Herschel, “Business Intelligence”, 2019)

“The technology, tools, and processes required to create and maintain consistent and accurate lists of master data of an organization.” (Microsoft)

“Master data management solutions provide the capabilities to create the unique and qualified reference of shared enterprise data, such as customer, product, supplier, employee, site, asset, and organizational data.” (Forrester)

“Master data management (MDM) is the effort made by an organization to create one single master reference source for all critical business data, leading to fewer errors and less redundancy in business processes.” (Informatica)

More definitions for “Master Data Management” at sql-troubles.blogspot.com.

Adrian

IT professional/blogger with more than 24 years experience in IT - Software Engineering, BI & Analytics, Data, Project, Quality, Database & Knowledge Management