MDMS

MDMS is an acronym for several information management systems, depending on the industry. The two most common meanings are Master Data Management System and Meter Data Management System.

A Master Data Management System (MDMS) centralizes and governs an organization’s core data assets—such as customers, products, suppliers, and locations—creating a single source of truth across applications. Key features include data modeling, survivorship rules, data quality checks, data lineage, metadata management, and governance workflows. MDMS aims to improve consistency, accuracy, and analytics by aligning data across ERP, CRM, and other systems.

A Meter Data Management System (MDMS) is used in the utility sector to collect, validate, store, and analyze interval meter data from smart meters. It handles time-series data, supports billing, outage analysis, demand response, and customer analytics, and provides interfaces to billing, GIS, and operations systems. Common capabilities include data cleansing, validation, aggregation, and rule-based processing. Standards such as the Common Information Model (CIM) are often used to ensure interoperability with meter data and related systems.

Because the acronym MDMS can refer to different systems, context is important. Organizations should specify the domain and the scope to avoid ambiguity, particularly when discussing enterprise data governance versus utility meter data platforms.