MDM includes information, processes (creation and maintenance), policies, standards, governance, and tools common across the enterprise.

It holds these two main types of data:

• Reference data (data referenced across the organizational system)
• Analytical data:
  • Identification and verification of entities and their relationships
  • Analytics on master data, for example, number of total customers increased in a month
  • Analytical information (for example, in terms of metrics) fed from data warehouse(s)