5 Best Practices for a Successful Master Data Management Strategy

Multiple data sources, overburdening data assets – managing data consistently and pragmatically is a daily challenge. To meet this challenge, companies are turning to Master Data Management (MDM). Here are some best practices for a successful MDM strategy.

The need to develop an MDM strategy is closely related to the acceleration of the necessity for companies to undergo a digital transformation. This transformation comes with the multiplication and piling up of dozens, even hundreds, of distinct applications and systems that generate and exploit data. This data is passed from department to department, from business to business, and ends up being fragmented, degraded, and duplicated…a harsh reality that accelerates obsolescence, and which, without the discipline of Master Data Management, will continue to grow.

When this phenomenon occurs, data exploitation becomes difficult, even impossible. And not only for the most complex data projects! Even for questions as simple as identifying the most profitable customers or gaining visibility into the highest-margin products, your data strategy can no longer fulfill its mission.

What is Master Data Management?

To describe what Master Data Management represents, we can easily compare it with the foundations of a house. Companies must identify reference data that is deemed reliable, safe and usable, so that they can refer to it when starting another data project on a sound and solid basis. Building the walls of your data house means making expansions and improvements, with foundations that must remain solid. MDM guarantees the solidity of your data project.

In principle, MDM is very similar to data governance. In fact, Master Data Management centralizes data into a single master file to facilitate secure data sharing between your teams. Master Data Management, therefore, creates a master record that contains the essential information your business relies on.

Why is Master Data Management so Important for Data-Driven Companies?

Companies that do not embrace MDM run the risk of facing major difficulties in the deployment of their data strategy: data fragmentation, quality degradation, data duplication leading to an explosion of storage costs, interpretation errors, and lack of coordination in decision making between different teams…

There are many problems that can arise in the absence of MDM. Very often, due to a lack of knowledge, companies make the mistake of thinking of Master Data Management essentially as a technical or IT project. But in reality, Master Data Management is mostly a matter of good practices.

Master Data Management Best Practices

1 – Centralize Data

The first mission of MDM is to fight against the scattering of data within your information system. By centralizing all your data in a data catalog, for example, you limit your exposure to this risk. A data catalog uses metadata to create a repository of all the company’s information assets and centralize access to the information.

2 – Integrate Data Governance into the Process

The main purpose of data governance is to define the organizational structures of your data. Because it establishes the principles of data ownership and use, data governance facilitates the sound administration of data throughout its lifecycle, from collection to deletion, avoiding its premature obsolescence.

3 – Align Your Objectives With Those of the Company

Your MDM strategy meets a challenge: to serve your business development ambitions based on a data-centric approach. For Master Data Management to deliver its full potential, it must be designed to align with the overall objectives you have defined for your company.

4 – Democratize Access to Data

Your data project is based on one principle: to enable all your teams to rely on an acute knowledge of their markets, their customers, and their ecosystem. It is therefore natural that data circulates widely within your teams. The more it circulates, the more it is enriched, and the more value it generates.

5 – Keep the Data up to Date

For your MDM strategy to have a lasting effect, you need to be scrupulous about keeping your data up to date. Beyond the obvious issue of data quality, these updates help create the conditions for optimal security and confidentiality.

Enhance Your MDM Strategy With Zeenea Data Catalog

Zeenea is a cloud solution, available anywhere in the world, in a few clicks. By choosing our data catalog, you give your data teams the best environment to find, understand, and leverage your company’s data assets.

About Actian Corporation

Actian makes data easy. Our data platform simplifies how people connect, manage, and analyze data across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. With decades of experience in data management and analytics, Actian delivers high-performance solutions that empower businesses to make data-driven decisions. Actian is recognized by leading analysts and has received industry awards for performance and innovation. Our teams share proven use cases at conferences (e.g., Strata Data) and contribute to open-source projects. On the Actian blog, we cover topics ranging from real-time data ingestion, data analytics, data governance, data management, data quality, data intelligence to AI-driven analytics.