What is Master Data Management (MDM)?

Master Data Management brings accuracy, order and consistency to master data. Master data is data that identifies the key entities and relationships in an enterprise and in the supply chain across trading partners. It includes identifiers and names for things like products, customers, sites, suppliers, bills of material, and other trading partner organizations.

Master data management can be extremely complex and challenging. For example, in one 737 aircraft, there are over 367,000 parts and thousands of corresponding suppliers. Many of the suppliers may manufacture the same part, but they have given it different names. This increases the complexity for procurement and supply chain planners. For consistency, accuracy, and to streamline processes, master data management seeks to create common data across all stakeholders. This seemingly simple problem is one of the single greatest challenges in the deployment of new processes and technologies for multi-party business networks. Traditional MDM solutions help to address the problem within an enterprise, but global enterprises require a Multi-party Master Data Management solution that extends across their complete supply chain networks and every business partner.

One Network Enterprises offers a network-wide Multi-party Master Data Management Solution for the entire supply chain network that allows trading partners to reconcile master data efficiently and accurately. Key to managing and securing multi-party data is a robust permissions framework. One Network’s patented permissions model assures that network participants see only the data they need to see to perform their functions in a multi-party workflow. By enabling a clean, real-time single version of the truth to the supply chain, businesses eliminate data errors, improve accuracy, gain efficiency, and streamline decision-making, which drive improvements in both operations and financial metrics.