You don't need a MDM tool implementing MDM!

In one of my projects we are defining a MDM project and currently i am into all kind of discussions about MDM. This post is about one of the statements that have been passed during the different meetings: "You don't need a MDM tool to do MDM!". I'm not saying that this statement is erroneous. It only gave me some food for thought.

Well this is an interesting statement! You don't need a MDM tool to do MDM?! For instance, do you need to adopt a seperate MDM tool when there is only one source system for every Master Data Element? This isn't an easy question and the answer is somewhere between "offcourse" and "nope".

Pro MDM System
When your organization is scattered around the globe and has multiple systems involved for maintaining master data elements then, yes you'll benefit very much of integration of the disparate data into a "golden record". As my current understanding of MDM is that the main benefit of a MDM Application is on the input side of MDM: how to integrate the different Master Data Elements from the sourcesystems into a MDM system. The benefits on the output side of the MDM system is less obvious (in case of one input application per Master Data Element).

Contra MDM system
As i read the blog from Andrew White from Gartner that, for instance, ERP systems are supposed to give a single view on the business but because of implementations of multiple ERP systems because of multiple federated subsidiairies consolidation is needed. This is a heterogenous situation. But when is a MDM application not really necessary?

I think there are a couple of situations:

• There is a homogeneous situation available.
• Master Data elements are uniquely created in one source system.
• Data Elements are not integrated that very much.

So perhaps you don't need a MDM application but you do need to organize and define processes "for doing" MDM! Think about data stewardship, governance, policies and dataquality.

Gr,
Hennie