Evaluating MDM Vendors

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Today, we’ll talk about some criteria you can use to evaluate Master Data Management vendors.

Before you go into “evaluation mode”, it’s important that, on the business side, you first have your MDM strategy chalked out.

And on the technical side, you should have mapped your organization’s data landscape, completed some in-depth data profiling and documented your data requirements. Not doing these things can significantly reduce your chances of getting the right MDM platform for your company.

Some important questions you can ask your potential vendors are:

1. Do they support multiple data domains? In other words, does their solution handle just one type of data (like customer), or can it handle other important types of data, like product information, as well?
2. In what vertical industries do they have a strong presence?
3. Is their solution service-oriented architecture (SOA) enabled? What services are available “out-of-the-box”?
4. Does their product have workflow capability or an MDM methodology built-in?
5. If hierarchies are important to your organization, do they have a flexible hierarchy management tool?
6. What third-party data providers do they integrate with (e.g. D&B, Axciom, Trillium, etc.)?
7. Is their solution used primarily for operational or analytical MDM?
8. What’s the state of resource availability in the market (or at SI firms) to implement their solution?
9. Do they have an integrated data quality engine for standardization, matching and measurement purposes?
10. Lastly, are they easy to work with in terms of response times, flexibility, and demonstrated alignment with your corporate objectives?

Answers to these questions may not be readily available on the vendors’ websites. But if your organization hasn’t started its software evaluation process yet, and you’d like answers to some of these questions, please feel free to contact us for our perspective.