Post your opinion about how do we differentiate business intelligence with master data management. Both has similar process and ultimately we are looking to have a single source of truth. So how do we call them? Is it BI or MDM solution?

Try your thoughts please.

CEAUG Moderator.

I'm not entirely sure I agree that Business Intelligence and Master data management are similar. The following statements I use, albeit crude, demonstrate where I believe the differences to be;

BI is the vehicle through which we gain understanding of the business data.

MDM is the vehicle through which we organise our business data.

I would agree that an architecture that has a well thought through implementation of MDM would be better placed to carry out BI tasks especially when we consider that MDM helps with data federation and thereby reduces the strain placed on intelligence analytics in attempting to consolidate several disparate data sources into a single truth. MDM is however not just about supporting BI but also about organising data for other component applications such as CRM.

BI and MDM are very different things and must continue to be referred to individually.