A practical checklist for master data management

Master data management (MDM) often gets a reputation for being heavy and bureaucratic. But at its core it's about something simple: your organization being able to trust its business data. When customer, product and supplier data is accurate, consistent and owned, everything else flows more easily – from order handling to reporting and, not least, your next system change.

Bad master data is expensive in a creeping way: duplicates that cause wrong mailings, products nobody can find, reports nobody quite trusts. Here's the checklist I use to get started without getting stuck in theory.

Before you begin

• Identify your master data domains. Usually customer, product, supplier and employee. Start with one – the one that hurts most today.
• Define what "a record" means. When are two customers the same customer? That question is harder than it sounds, and the answer decides how you handle duplicates.
• Find the source of truth. Which system owns the field today – and should it keep doing so? A field should have exactly one owner.

Build the foundation

1. Set up data quality rules that can be measured automatically – not vague opinion, but concrete, owned rules.
2. Introduce a lightweight approval process for new and changed records, so quality is built in rather than cleaned up afterwards.
3. Track lineage – where did the data come from and who changed it last? Traceability is the difference between guessing and knowing.

Keep it alive

MDM is not a project with an end date, it's a capability. Measure quality continuously and show the numbers to the business. When data quality becomes visible, it becomes a priority – and then the organization starts caring for its own data.

The most important step is the first one. Pick one domain, set measurable goals and build from there.

Why it pays off before a migration

This isn't just everyday hygiene. The better your master data is before a system change, the easier the migration becomes. An organization with owned, quality‑assured master data has already done half the work when it's time to move to a new system – and avoids the most common pitfalls that otherwise sink projects.

Want to talk through how this would look at your organization? Get in touch – I'm happy to be specific.