What is Master Data?
Turkish: Master Data
Master data is the core set of business records, such as customers, products, suppliers, and accounts, shared across systems.
What is Master Data?
Master data is the set of core business records reused across a company’s processes. Customer, supplier, product, price list, chart of accounts, location, employee, and material records can all be master data.
How Is It Different from Transaction Data?
Master data is not the sales invoice itself; it is the customer, product, tax rate, and warehouse referenced by that invoice. Transaction data describes daily activity. Master data defines the business entities that those activities use.
Why Does It Matter?
Reports and operations break down when the same customer appears under different names in separate systems, product codes do not match across channels, or inactive suppliers remain available in purchasing. Healthy master data requires deduplication, required fields, approval workflows, ownership, and regular cleanup.
ERP systems are one of the main places where master data is maintained. CRM, e-commerce, warehouse, and accounting systems also use the same records, so data ownership must be clear.
Related Terms
Data governance defines ownership, quality rules, access controls, and compliance practices so business data can be trusted.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)ERP manages finance, inventory, sales, production, HR, and supply chain processes through a shared enterprise data model.
SAP IntegrationSAP integration securely connects SAP ERP or S/4HANA data with e-commerce, CRM, warehouse, finance, and custom software systems.