With small organizations with just a few systems, keeping systems up to date generally isn't an issue:
<insert two-system diagram>
The process of keeping data up to date between disparate systems is called "Data Integration".
But, as organizations bring more and more systems online their business data gets duplicated and the problem of keeping all of the systems up to date becomes problematic.
For example, imagine a delivery service that stores information about its customers in several systems:
- CRM
- Accounting
- Distribution
- Customer Service
- Warehouse Management
- Sales
As information about the delivery service's customers change, the difficulty of propagating the change becomes exponentially more difficult as more systems are brought online:
The onus of transferring data between systems becomes a data integration nightmare where some systems have to spend a great deal of resources converting data so that it can be consumed by or received from other systems. It is a common data integration practice to in batch so that changes are not made in a timely fashion.
Master data management (MDM) solves this problem by creating a separate system that defines neutral data formats for all systems inside the organization. YOUnite MDM can centrally save the latest change of a record or it can be merely notified of when a change occurs (federated).
So in the example of our delivery service, the latest changes of a customer's record can be retrieved; this is called a Master Data Record. No longer is there a doubt if the user or application has the latest data.
Additionally, MDM provides better control over data access or governance over data integration. MDM can manage who can see what so in the federated example, perhaps the Warehouse Management system only has access to data stored in the Distribution and CRM systems. but the Accounting System has access to all systems. When the Warehouse looks up the master data record for the Acme Company it may get a different result than Accounting since the Accounting group has access or "scope" to the Acme Company's information on all systems.