Master Data Management and Data Integration: Complementary but Distinct from Informatica IThound

Master Data Management and Data Integration: Complementary but Distinct
by Informatica
Published:October 2006
Format: Portable Document Format (.pdf)
Length: 12 pages
Overview

This white paper discusses the relationship between master data management (MDM) and data integration. However, before we do that, we need to understand what we mean by MDM on the one hand and data integration on the other. We also need to understand the role of technologies such as customer data integration (CDI), product information management (PIM) and global supplier management (GSM).

MDM is an increasingly popular technology because it enables the enterprise to understand customers, products, suppliers and other business entities in a more complete and holistic manner, thereby enabling more advantageous interactions with external bodies and better control over internal company assets.

Moving on to data integration, this consists of several technologies. However, between them they basically do two types of things: they either move information from one place to another or they check and assure the validity of the data. It should be clear that MDM cannot work without some means of moving data, as otherwise you could not form a consolidated view of your customers across, say, 5 different sales order processing systems. Note that this is regardless of whether you move all of the data into one place first and then consult the consolidated view or if you do this dynamically, collating this view when, say, the customer calls into a call centre.

In this paper we will discuss the different ways in which MDM may be implemented, the role that data integration has to play (which may differ according to the approach taken to master data) and expand on why we believe that data integration should be regarded as a separate set of technologies.

Go to Analyst Report

View company report	View all by this company	Return to search results
Send to colleague	Bookmark	Save to my research