Master data
Quick answer
Core reference data - customers, products, prices, organisational units - for which a single source of truth is defined across the application landscape.
Key takeaways
- Customers and delivery points, identified by tax ID and customer code
- Products, with unit of measure, internal code and barcode
- Price lists and commercial terms per customer
- Organisational structure: reps, territories, teams
What master data covers
- Customers and delivery points, identified by tax ID and customer code
- Products, with unit of measure, internal code and barcode
- Price lists and commercial terms per customer
- Organisational structure: reps, territories, teams
Why it is the first stage of any implementation
Every report, forecast and automation rests on this data. A duplicated customer produces two partial histories, two forecasts, and a rep unaware a colleague works the same account.
The practical deduplication rule
Deduplicate by tax identifier, not by name. Names vary by abbreviation, diacritics and legal form; the tax identifier does not.
Real-world example
In an import of 6,800 customers, deduplicating by name found 210 duplicates; deduplicating by tax ID found 640.
Last updated:
Frequently asked
Who is accountable for master data quality?+
A named owner per data set - usually commercial for customers, operations for products. Without a named owner, quality steadily degrades.
How often should it be cleaned?+
Continuously, through validation rules at creation, plus a quarterly review of inactive records and likely duplicates.
Where CRMconnect fits
Related terms
CRM-ERP integration
Controlled data exchange between CRM and ERP with a single owning system per entity, so no duplicates or contradictory values appear.
TechnologyBidirectional synchronisation
Two-way data exchange between systems, with explicit precedence rules defining what happens when the same record changes in both places.