What is product master data management?

What it covers

Product master data is the core information about what a business makes or buys: technical specifications, manufacturing and development details, materials and components, attributes, supplier links and supply chain definitions. Managing it means deciding who owns each field, how changes are approved and how updates reach every system that relies on them.

Common problems

• The same product described differently in different systems
• No clear owner or governance for changes
• Old or duplicate records that lead to wrong orders
• Slow updates when products or suppliers change
• Decisions made on data nobody trusts

Clean product data speeds new products to market, makes sourcing easier and lets procurement compare like with like when it buys.

How Aavenir handles it

Aavenir is not a product data hub, but product and item data feeds the contracts and invoices it manages. RFPflow uses item lists in sourcing events and pricing rounds, and Invoiceflow matches invoice lines to the items and rates on the purchase order and contract.

Getting started

Start with the products and fields that cause the most errors, agree one owner for each field, clean the duplicates and set rules for changes. Then connect the systems that use the data, so updates flow out from one place.