Master Data Management (MDM)

Master Data is data describing common business entities like products and customers. Master data includes reference data and relationship data. Reference data is the attribute data that is used to describe and uniquely identify an entity. Relationship data describes how data entities are related to one another.

Master Data Management is the entire solution, from the application itself to business processes, and finally integration. It's the process used to achieve consistency of commonly shared business information that is, by definition, used in multiple systems. This entails the business rules used to match, merge and publish records. It includes the trust levels set for each attribute for each possible source system.

The publication of the master data, its touch points with middleware communication solutions, and ultimately, all other enterprise systems, is called ‘Enterprise Integration’. When talking to customers, this integration piece is commonly referred to as ‘Customer Data Integration’ (CDI).