Glossary AI technique
Master data management (MDM)
What is master data management?
Master data management is managing your core data, such as customers, products, suppliers and employees, so that it is the same, complete and current in every system.
Master data is the data all other data refers to. An order, an invoice or a project always belongs to a customer, a product or an employee. If the same customer appears three times in your systems, with three different addresses, every report and every AI application inherits that confusion. That is why master data management is a building block of a data foundation for AI.
In practice you decide, for each type of core data, which system is authoritative, who may make changes and how those changes flow to the other systems. That creates a single source of truth for the data that matters most.
A separate MDM platform is usually not needed to get started in a mid-sized organisation. Integrations between the systems you already have and clear agreements on ownership (data governance) solve most of it. AI helps by flagging duplicates and deviations, see data quality.
Last updated: 20 October 2026