The goal of business intelligence (BI) is to empower decision makers with deeper insight on the state of the business. To be effective in this role, BI depends fundamentally on having meaningful and trustworthy data. An essential strategy for ensuring the data meets these criteria is to institute a master data management (MDM) strategy.
The Need for Master Data Management
In organizations with multiple transactional systems, the production of redundant data records for core business entities (e.g. customers or employees) is extremely common. Typically systems will collect data about the same entities but create their own record.