04 Nov How to choose MDM
At a time when so many organizations are dipping their toes into the choppy waters of MDM, Kano MDM team has decided to study the topic of MDM selection and, of course, to share the results of the review.
We propose to start with the definition.
What is Master Data Management?
“MDM is a technology-enabled discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency, and accountability of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets.
Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes the core entities of the enterprise including customers, prospects, citizens, suppliers, sites, hierarchies, and chart of accounts.”
Typically, the IT landscape within an organization consists of a complex set of disparate systems and technologies such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and others. This fragmented environment creates isolated islands of information. As a consequence, the enterprise receives duplicate, incomplete and inaccurate data, which leads to inaccurate analytics and poorly planned business solutions based on misinformation.
MDM with a wide range of ready APIs( such as Kano MDM) easily solves these problems and enables organizations to create a single source of records or systems of records that prevent multiple versions of the same master data.
A successful MDM solution provides complete functionality for data integration, data quality, data profiling, data mastering, and data governance. MDM solution has strategic importance, this is why it is so critical to make the right choice.
The choice of master data management software is a complicated process due to differences in features and software benefits. Unfortunately, there is no universal solution for master data management, because each of the products has its own strengths in functionality, industry focus, integration capabilities, and features. The most important is to define how the software suits your business in terms of features, business processes, and functionality.
Kano MDM team suggests to split the process of selecting an MDM solution into three main steps. This is general division and the passage of each stage may involve nuances.
1. Requirements and research
Many MDM technologies will cover a wide range of features. Before you evaluate vendor technologies, start with a clear understanding of your needs. At this stage develop the approximate data architecture and data model. This may seem difficult, but there is no need to worry, future detailed discussions with vendors will bring clarity and will help with necessary changes and improvements. It is this outline that will help reduce the initial selection to a few of the most suitable MDM suppliers.
Based on your needs, the designed sketch of the data model, and information about different vendors, choose the most appropriate and interesting ones for detailed review.
2. Engage Vendors
Each vendor has a bias, but that’s okay. Ask questions, it’s the key to understanding, they will help you to learn and modify your own strategy. Some vendors, such as Kano MDM, give potential customers recommendations for process optimization.
Before implementation, It is very important to ensure that the MDM provider fully meets your business needs. Only testing will help you understand how exactly the proposed MDM solution will cope with the tasks and processes that are critical to your business. Kano MDM realizes the importance of this and that’s why we offer free PoC. The PoC gives you the best approach to ensure vendors can meet your needs according to your business objectives. Read more about Kano MDM PoC in our Whitepaper.
3. Evaluate / Select the Master Data Management Tool
After a detailed review of the vendors, their demos, and РоСs highlight the strengths and weaknesses of all vendors. Pay special attention to their integration capabilities to enable future communication with all existing external systems. We recommend you to use these core characteristics to consider your business’s MDM needs, and you will definitely choose the best MDM vendor for your organization.
Conclusion
To take advantage of all the business opportunities that data can provide, your organization must keep its data managed, regardless of where it was created, where it is located, or what format it uses. MDM provides a solution to manage your data and achieve the desired “single version of truth”. But it is important to ensure that you have implemented the right MDM solution.
Kano MDM is confident that these critical steps will help companies to make the right choice of MDM vendor.
Regardless of what stage of choosing MDM you are at, if you don’t know where to start or if you want to learn more about Master Data Management, Kano MDM is ready to help you out. Contact us and we will be happy to answer all your questions.