Maximizing Data Potential: A Guide to Reference Data Management

Maciek - Data Bushido
4 min readJan 30, 2024

On the path to achieving excellence in Data Management

Implementing Reference Data Management is a significant step on a data-driven journey, it’s worth taking the time to understand it.

In Data Governance, our goals are to ensure the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of the data that drives our business operations and fuels company products. This data stewardship initiative aims to empower us to make better-informed decisions, provide quality reporting for our clients, and support our organization in reaching its business goals.

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Why is it crucial to understand how significant it is for future company growth?

Let’s start with the definition of reference data.

It’s the set of fixed values or codes used to categorize and classify data within a company, commonly used across different systems and applications.

There are two types of Reference Data based on mandates:

  • Internally defined — Client segments, Business Regions, Product Categories.
  • External standards — like ISO lists of countries or currencies

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Maciek - Data Bushido

Data Quality professional. Product manager for analytics platform. Passionate for data, people and technology.