In a manufacturer’s item master, the same screw often exists under three codes: one opened by purchasing, one by the warehouse, one by accounting. Units are a mess too: “piece”, “PC”, “pcs”. The ERP runs, invoices go out, but at month end the question “how many of this item did we sell, and how many kilos of steel did we use?” turns into two days of spreadsheet work.
Most SMEs recognise this picture. The problem is master data, and it gets more expensive as the green side of the business grows. An emissions calculation, a CBAM declaration or a sustainability report all sit on the same product and site records. If the ground is uneven, every report built on it is uneven too.
What is master data, and how is it different from transaction data?
Two distinctions make it clear:
- Master data: Slow-changing “who, what, where” records. Item and material cards, units of measure, customer and supplier cards, the list of sites and machines, the chart of accounts, bills of materials.
- Transaction data: What is produced every day. Orders, delivery notes, invoices, production receipts, energy readings.
Transaction data is always written against master data. A sales invoice line points to an item card and a customer card. If the card is wrong, every line points to the wrong place, and nobody notices, because no screen throws an error.
What scattered master data costs an SME
The cost rarely shows up as one line item. It leaks out in small frictions:
- Duplicate stock for the same item, wrong reorder points, unnecessary purchases.
- Wrong unit costs because raw material units do not match.
- Duplicate supplier records that muddle payments and reconciliation.
- Inconsistent product and unit data in e-documents; Turkey’s e-invoice and e-waybill schemas expect coded, orderly data.
- Mapping tables that drag on for months when an ERP, MES or e-commerce integration is set up.
In integration projects, most of the time goes not to code but to arguing over “which record equals which”. We covered this in our ERP integration article.
Why green transition puts master data in the spotlight
Carbon and environmental calculations look like an extra “green data set”, but they are mostly a reinterpretation of records you already hold.
CBAM. Whether a product you export to the EU falls under CBAM depends on matching it to EU Combined Nomenclature (CN) codes. Covered goods are listed by CN code in the annex of the CBAM Regulation (EU 2023/956). If the customs tariff code on your item card is missing, outdated or written differently for each variant, finding which sales fall under the declaration becomes a manual hunt. More in our CBAM definitive period article.
Carbon footprint. For Scope 1 and 2, you need to tie fuel, electricity and natural gas consumption to a site and a process. If site, meter and cost centre codes are inconsistent, consumption is totalled without knowing where it was used. We explain the method in our carbon footprint guide.
Product-level emissions. If the bill of materials is out of date, you cannot work out how much raw material and energy went into a product. Emissions per product start with the accuracy of BOM quantities.
Supply chain. To ask a supplier for emissions data, the supplier card must first be unique, matched to a tax number and linked to what you buy from them.
Where to start: five areas, in this order
Trying to clean everything at once kills the project. Go where the effect is greatest:
- Units of measure. A short list, one spelling, conversion factors (kg, tonne, piece, m²). The cheapest and most effective step.
- Item and material cards. Merge duplicates, make customs tariff code and product group mandatory.
- Bills of materials. Start with your best-selling or most-exported products; record scrap and waste rates separately.
- Site, machine and meter list. Write down which site and cost centre each energy meter belongs to.
- Supplier and customer cards. Fill in tax number and country; leave no duplicate cards.
As important as cleaning: owning the data
Data that is cleaned once but has no owner gets dirty again within months. Three simple rules are enough:
- Every field has an owner. Item cards belong to purchasing or planning, supplier cards to finance.
- Limit who can create cards. If anyone can open a new stock card, duplicates are inevitable.
- Enforce mandatory fields in the system. Saying “must be filled” is not enough; the ERP should refuse to save an incomplete card.
Some ERPs offer similar-record warnings, approval flows and field validation when creating cards; these vary by product and version, so check the vendor’s documentation.
Master data in twin transition
The core idea of twin transition is that digital systems make green targets measurable. The connection point is often master data: when the ERP item card, the CBAM goods code and the product in the carbon calculation are the same record, one piece of data serves three needs. You stop entering the same information three times for accounting, export and sustainability. See our twin transition approach and the measure, software, compliance chain.
At İkiz Eksen we run this work across Türkiye as turnkey projects: first we measure the master data quality in your existing ERP, then we identify the fields that carbon and compliance reports need, and set up the clean-up and the rules. Behind this is the experience built with Qera (550+ customers, 15+ sectors, 100+ ERP deployments), and we work on Microsoft Azure infrastructure. To discuss your situation, get in touch or look at our solutions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need separate software for master data management?
Usually not. At small and mid-size scale, most of the job is solved by the ERP’s own field validation, approval flows and well-defined rules. A separate master data tool becomes relevant when you run several systems and many companies.
How long does data clean-up take?
It depends on scope, so a fixed duration would be misleading. Limited areas like units and item cards can be sorted in weeks; bills of materials and supplier data take longer. Choosing the areas with the biggest impact first shortens the path.
Which product data should be ready for CBAM?
At minimum, the customs tariff code, which goods are in scope and the production record must be linkable to each other. Scope and obligations change, so confirm the current position on the European Commission’s CBAM page and with your adviser.
Why is running it in Excel a risk?
Excel is flexible but has no rules: different spellings for the same item, unit errors and version chaos appear easily. A separate table kept for reports drifts away from the real records in the ERP.
Where should I start?
With units. Making the unit-of-measure list unique gives the most visible gain for the least effort. Then check the customs tariff codes on your item cards.