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Is MDM the Same as Data Quality?

March 11th, 2008

I just reviewed a handful of case studies on master data management, and I had the distinct feeling of deja vu. Many of the MDM programs in the case studies centered (of course) on customer data, and even more pointedly, on the matching and linkage aspects of customer data integration. Considering that five years ago (prior to the creation of the term “master data management”), these case studies would have been touted as best practices in data quality. Checking out some “best practices awards” in data quality from 2002 and 2003, they talk about similar stuff - data stewardship to harmonize data object names and definitions, data integration to support business objectives, eliminating duplicate data, data governance - all the same buzz terms crowding the MDM community.

One other interesting point - the conclusion one could draw from the case studies was that instituting MDM should start with a small project, and that the program could be expanded from successes in the small project. However, if the “master” data is only drawn from one or two applications (from a landscape of scores, hundreds, or maybe thousands of applications), then is it truly master data? Creating a consolidated clean copy is just that: data cleansing. Making that consolidated view transparently integrated as the trusted master data asset is probably a little more challenging.

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Below are some additional resources which David.Loshin produced or helped produce.