Issues[edit]

At a basic level, master data management seeks to ensure that an organization does not use
multiple (potentially inconsistent) versions of the same master data in different parts of its
operations, which can occur in large organizations. A typical example of poor master data
management is the scenario of a bank at which a customer has taken out a mortgageand the bank
begins to send mortgage solicitations to that customer, ignoring the fact that the person already has
a mortgage account relationship with the bank. This happens because the customer information
used by the marketing section within the bank lacks integration with the customer information used
by the customer services section of the bank. Thus the two groups remain unaware that an existing
customer is also considered a sales lead. The process of record linkage is used to associate
different records that correspond to the same entity, in this case the same person.