Master Data Management
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Master data management (MDM) comprises a set of processes and tools which consistently define and manage the non-transactional data entities of an organization (also called Reference data). The general objective of MDM is to ensure a process for collecting, aggregating, matching, consolidating, quality assuring, persisting, and distributing such data throughout an organization in such a way as to ensure consistency and control in the ongoing maintenance and business use of this information.
At a basic level, MDM seeks to ensure that an organization is not using multiple (potentially inconsistent) versions of the same master data in different parts of its operations, which is not an uncommon occurrence in large companies. A common example of poor MDM is when a bank at which a customer has taken out a mortgage begins to send credit card solicitations to that customer, ignorant of the fact that the person already has a credit card account with the bank. This happens because the customer information used by the mortgage lending organization within the bank is not integrated with the customer information used by the credit card organization of the bank. Therefore the two groups are unaware that they share a customer. This is just one type of data management problem that MDM seeks to resolve. Other problems include issues with the quality of data, consistent classification and identification of data, data reconciliation issues, and others.
One of the most common reasons why some large corporation are experiencing massive issues with MDM has to do with the way in which companies grow through mergers and acquisitions. Two companies that merge will typically create an entity with duplicate master data (since each company likely had at least one master database of its own prior to the merger). Ideally, this duplication in master data is resolved as part of the merger. In practice, however, reconciling several master data systems can be a daunting task because of the dependencies that existing applications have on the master databases. As a result, more often than not the two systems are not fully merged, but kept separate, with a special reconciliation process defined that ensures consistency between the data stored in the two systems. Over time, however, as further mergers and acquisitions occur, the problem multiplies, more and more master databases are introduced, and data reconciliation processes become extremely complex, and consequently unmanageable and unreliable. Because of this trend, it is not uncommon to see organizations with 10, 15, or even as many as 100(!) separate, poorly integrated master databases, which can cause serious operational problems in the areas of customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, decision support, and regulatory compliance.
Processes commonly seen in MDM solutions include source identification, data collection, data transformation, normalization, rule administration, error detection and correction, data consolidation, data storage, data distribution, and data governance.
The tools include data networks, file systems, a data warehouse, a data mart, an operational data store, data mining, data analysis, data federation and data visualization.
The selection of entities considered for MDM depends somewhat on the nature of an organization. A common case is the commercial business, for which MDM applies to such entities as customer (Customer Data Integration), product (Product Information Management), employee, and vendor. MDM processes identify the sources from which descriptions of these entities can be collected. In the course of transformation and normalization, the descriptions are conformed to standard formats and data domains, so that duplicate instances of any entity can be removed. The result of these processes would generally be an organizational MDM repository, from which, all requests for a certain entity instance produce the same description, irrespective of the originating sources and the requesting destinations.
The term recalls the concept of the master file from an earlier computing era.
[edit] See also
- Reference Data
- Master Data
- Customer Data Integration
- Product Information Management
- Identity resolution
[edit] External links
- MDM Vendors at the Open Directory Project
- The What, Why, and How of Master Data Management
- An Introduction to the Master Data Management Reference Architecture
|
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
