Why this keeps recurring project after project
Without a declared system of record and a governed process for reconciling disagreements, each new integration team makes its own local, pragmatic decision about which source to trust — producing inconsistent resolution logic scattered across every integration, each one slightly different and each one a future maintenance liability.
This is a governance gap, not an integration design flaw, which is exactly why no amount of better integration tooling on its own resolves it.
What resolving it centrally actually requires
Declaring an explicit system of record per core entity type, a defined, governed reconciliation process for conflicts, and a single, shared identity-resolution service every integration can call rather than reimplementing its own version, closes the recurring cost at its actual source instead of patching around it project by project.
Every new integration project re-solving the same master data problem independently isn't bad luck. It's a missing governance decision, paid for repeatedly.MNB Integration Practice
Key actions
- Declare an explicit system of record for each core entity type
- Define a governed reconciliation process for data conflicts
- Build a shared identity-resolution service every integration can call
- Audit new integration projects for re-solving this problem locally