Master data management: what to get right first

This is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to retrofit. If you only fix one thing about master data management this quarter, make it the first item below.

Most data problems are ownership problems that turned into technical ones. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Start here

Two systems with different customer records will disagree at the worst moment. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

Then this

Decide which system is authoritative for each entity. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

Eventually

Reconciliation is cheaper than arbitration later. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

How to tell if yours is fine

Data outlives the applications built on top of it, which is why the model deserves more thought than the screens. Three things worth confirming about master data management before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Decide which system is authoritative for each entity — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.