**Estimated reading time:** 11–13 minutes

# Master Data Management

## Definition

**Master Data Management (MDM)** is the discipline of creating and maintaining consistent, authoritative representations of important business entities across systems.

Common master-data domains include Customer, Product, Employee, Supplier, Location, and Content.

## Simple Mental Model

> **MDM answers: "What is the trusted identity of this thing across the company?"**

## How It Works

Example:

```text
CMS: Show ID = 784
JW Player: Media ID = ABC91
Advertising: Content ID = 55129
Analytics: Content Key = 9031
```

These may all refer to the same program.

MDM establishes mappings and an authoritative representation.

## Example

```text
CMS
"The Great Show - S1E1"

Video Platform
"great_show_ep01"

Programming
Program ID 81817

Advertising
Asset 500992
```

A governed master-content entity can map all of them to one canonical identity.

## How It Fits Into the Bigger Picture

MDM is related to [[Dimension Table]] and [[Data Governance]], but it is broader than analytics.

Master Data can serve operational and analytical systems.

## My Company / Real-World Context

Content is a likely MDM challenge in a media organization because the same content may have identifiers in CMS, video, OTT, linear scheduling, advertising, and analytics systems.

## CTO Perspective

MDM initiatives can become enormous and expensive.

Start with:

> **Which business entity is causing enough inconsistency that centralized management would create meaningful value?**

Do not start with purchasing an MDM platform.

### Questions to Ask

- Which entities exist in multiple systems?
- Which system is authoritative for each attribute?
- How are duplicates resolved?
- How are identifiers mapped?
- Who is the [[Data Owner]]?
- Do we need full MDM tooling or a simpler governed approach?

## Meeting Scenario

**Situation:** Your team spends significant time manually mapping content IDs across systems.

**Possible response:**

> "We clearly have a master-data problem around content identity. Let's define which system owns each attribute and the canonical identity we need before deciding what technology is required."

## Key Takeaways

- MDM manages authoritative identities across systems.
- It addresses inconsistency and duplication.
- Master Data is broader than analytical [[Dimension Table|Dimension Tables]].
- [[Data Governance]] determines ownership and authority.
- Solve the entity problem before choosing the platform.

## Related Concepts

- [[Data Governance]]
- [[Data Owner]]
- [[Dimension Table]]
- [[Natural Key]]
- [[Surrogate Key]]
- [[Metadata]]
- [[Data Quality]]
- [[Entity Resolution]]