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" or DI.
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 their customers change, the difficulty of keeping all the systems up to date becomes exponentially more difficult as the number of systems increases:
<insert spider-web looking diagram>
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 make note of when a change occurs in one of the organization's systems without actually storing the data; this is called federated master data management.
So in the example of our delivery service, the latest changes of a customer's record can be retrieved; the latest record is called the Master Data Record.
Additionally, MDM provides better control over data access or governance over DI. 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 Division looks up the master data record for its customer the Acme Company it may get a different result than Accounting Division since the Accounting Division has access or "scope" to Acme Company's information on all systems.