To address critical business challenges like high operational costs, undifferentiated customer service, high risk associated with regulatory compliance, the need to introduce new products quickly, and the inability to cross-sell and up-sell, MDM provides a trusted view of critical entities typically stored and potentially duplicated in siloed applications - customers, suppliers, partners, products, materials, accounts, etc. MDM is a discipline that provides a consistent understanding of master data entities, and their relationships and hierarchies.
MDM is a key component for addressing big data challenges. Half of the big data initiatives today have customer-centric objectives. To improve the customer experience, organizations need to do what master data management has been doing for years – start with the facts about customers by defining the golden record.