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A Daily Lexicon of Trustworthy Data

006·31

master data

/ˈmæs.tər ˈdeɪ.tə/ - n.

1 [colloq.] The handful of nouns the entire company depends on and no single function will admit it owns.Keep. Punchy.This is the problem.

Working definition

2. The shared core entities of a business — customers, products, suppliers, accounts — maintained for consistent use across processes and systems.

Promoted

Seen in the wild · 3

The Master Data Quadrant Returns After a Four-Year SabbaticalShiny Object Pursuit
The Company That Sells the Single Source Becomes a Row in Someone Else'sPlatform Tunnel Vision
Master data management returns wearing an AI badge. The job description has not changed.Definition Drift

See also

entity resolutionDeciding whether these four customers are one customer, a question the org would rather bill four times than answer once.
golden recordThe one true version of the customer, assembled from five wrong ones by a rule no one in the room can recite.
master data managementA program funded to decide who owns 'customer', staffed by everyone who is certain it is not them.
reference dataThe list of approved values, maintained in a spreadsheet, owned by an analyst who left in 2019.