Master Data Management (MDM) has received growing attention recently as an essential component of information management alongside data governance and data quality. More and more, organizations are turning to Master Data Management as a key enabler in improving the timeliness, quality and reliability of business intelligence with the ultimate goal of improving business performance. Increasing regulatory requirements and the recent financial crisis have ensured that Master Data Management is increasingly finding its way onto the business agenda.

Information Difference conducted a survey of both end-user organizations and systems integrators aimed at gaining deeper insight into MDM implementations and their success factors. This report summarizes and analyzes the results of that survey, and presents practical recommendations on the "do and don't" of MDM. It also contains some enlightening findings on the use of open source and manual coding in MDM projects.