The adoption of master data management (MDM) promises many benefits ranging from business agility and improved business performance to increased revenue and lower IT and business costs. However, according to Gartner, Inc., achieving these benefits often entails overcoming formidable technical, organizational and political hurdles.

Gartner defines MDM as a technology-enabled discipline that ensures the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship and semantic consistency of an enterprise's official, shared master data assets. Organizations use master data for consistency, simplification, uniformity of process, analysis and communication across the business.

“MDM is the latest attempt to solve the old problem of inconsistent versions of important data at the center of an organization,” said Andrew White, research vice president at Gartner. “As with any new initiative, there is a lot of hype and confusion, and with hype and confusion comes misunderstanding. Executive sponsors of MDM and MDM program managers must avoid several common mistakes that have been known to derail MDM initiatives in the past.”

To clarify some of the confusing and conflicting points of view on MDM, Gartner has highlighted the prevalent myths surrounding MDM alongside an explanation of the realities.

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