The what and how of material master data management

What is material master data management?

Master data management is a comprehensive manner of ensuring that an enterprise’s critical data are linked to one file, which is the master file. MDM is more relevant to large organizations. The larger the organization, the greater may be the disparity between the different versions of data. An organization may have data for different needs, stored on the servers in different forms. An integrated Operational Data also known as operational data store is a volatile collection of data that supports an organization’s daily business activities.

Why does your business require MDM?

MDM is a key resource in any business since it assists in coordinating and ‘talking’ to the various systems in an organization. It has become of utmost important for good business performance. To elaborate, few of the basic systems in a typical business would consist of customer master, products master, accounts master, location master etc. Any organization struggling to consolidate its core data can benefit from MDM.

Without a clearly defined master data, the enterprise runs the risk of having multiple copies of data that are inconsistent with one another.

How does it work?

To clarify with an example- Company A worth 20 million takes over company B worth 10 million The master data of both the companies would be huge given their net worth. As a result of the merger, data from both the sources will need to be merged to create one master file or 2 master files if the data is too large. This is where master data management vendors will help organizations with master data management solutions to consolidate and collate, maintain the accuracy and retrieve data as and when required.

To list a few steps on how master data management vendors provide solutions:

The very first step would be – consistent data formats

In the above example, the customer data stored in company A servers might be in first name, last name format and the data for Company B might be in the last name and first name format. The very step towards MDM would be to get all the data in one format.

Look for missing values

If values are missing, the data cannot be used to depict the true picture, hence the need for thoroughly scrubbing all the data to avoid discrepancies.

Standardize values

Convert all measurements to metric, convert prices to a common currency, change part numbers to an industry standard.

Verdantis provides your enterprise with MDM solutions to suit your business needs. Our material master data management solutions allow your enterprise to focus on the core business activities and not spending valuable resources on data management.


Jessica Banks is one of the most passionate marketing professionals in Verdantis. She is a strong proponent of master data management solutions for large enterprises. For her, data drives performance.