Metadata refers to the process of tagging data with descriptions, such as file name, creation date and author, in order for data stewards to contextualize and make sense of the data.

Similar to the descriptions found next to a painting in an art gallery, or descriptions of books in a library, metadata is a way for those who are navigating through wades of data to find what they are looking for and understand it more easily. 

By leveraging metadata, an enterprise can benefit from greater operational efficiency and business intelligence, as data becomes better organized and more accessible. Metadata is an essential feature of data lineage, data profiling and data catalogs, all key functional components of an organisation’s data management efforts.