MDM – What is it?

Master Data Management (MDM) takes care of the organisation, management and distribution of a company’s business-relevant data (master data).
Consistent and ‘clean’ master data is the data basis of every company and is also the prerequisite for connected systems to be able to receive and process data correctly.
Master data management is often still an underestimated area in companies.
The individual units responsible for this often maintain data purely according to their needs, without keeping the big picture of the company in mind.
This non-standardised maintenance of data means that third-party systems that are connected cannot simply process it further.
This is a problem that anyone who has had the opportunity to introduce a PIM system in a company whose master data management is inadequate will recognise.
PIM consumes data from the design department and/or the ERP system, for example. If technical article data in particular (dimensions, performance, etc.) is not maintained consistently and uniformly, it can only be processed in the PIM with the help of ‘workarounds’.
Interfaces must then be adapted so that they ‘iron out’ the errors in the ERP system on the PIM side.
Of course, the right way would be to eliminate the error at the source, but the reality in many projects has shown that this is time-consuming and problematic, so people often bite the bullet and fix the problem in the PIM system – with all the negative consequences that this has.

MDM – Who needs it?

Basically any company that holds master data and wants to distribute and use it consistently. In principle, every company. The characteristics of MDM naturally depend on the size, data volume and data consumers of the company.

MDM – What friends does it have?

In principle, all systems that produce master data:

• ERP systems
• Technical Construction
• etc./li>