Master data management: the questions we get asked most
The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. The questions about master data management that come up most often on our calls.
Most data problems are ownership problems that turned into technical ones. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
Do we need to care about this?
Two systems with different customer records will disagree at the worst moment. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.
Can it wait until after launch?
Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it.
How do we know it is working?
Reconciliation is cheaper than arbitration later. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.
In practice
Numbers get quoted in meetings long after anyone remembers how they were calculated. Three things worth confirming about master data management before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Reconciliation is cheaper than arbitration later — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.