Master data management (MDM) is a methodology that identifies the most critical information within an organization—and creates a single source of its truth to power business processes. MDM involves a number of technology solutions, including data integration, data quality, and business process management (BPM). It delivers: A single view of the data—Creating a single, authoritative view of business-critical data from disparate, duplicate, and conflicting information lets you see, for instance, that Rob Barnes and Robert Barnes are the same person. A 360-degree view of the relationships—Business rules let you identify the relationships among the data, so you can combine data showing Robert Barnes owns a Razor scooter with data showing he bought it at a Target store. A complete view of all interactions—Integrating the transactions and social interactions that have occurred with that product, customer, channel partner, or other data element gives you a complete view of that customer. Not all MDM solutions are created equal. When considering options, look for these features: Flexibility—MDM is a journey. Although your business may first buy a product for one type of data integrity problem, you should be able to use that solution to solve additional ones. Built for data variability—Likewise, it needs to handle multiple data types: customer records as well as products, locations, accounts, and all related elements. Designed for complexity—Not understanding relationships can cost your company money. You should know if two people belong to the same household or if a customer owns more than one of your products. Scalability from small to big projects—Many MDM problems are exceedingly complex. But you don’t want to take a year for the initiative to get off the ground. You want the ability to break down a data problem into smaller components. Configurable—An MDM system shouldn’t require coding, which comes with testing and maintenance headaches.