MDM-Slam (Q & A)

Master Data ... MDM-Slam (Fragen & Antworten)

Stammdaten (Master Data) sind die grundlegenden Unternehmensdaten

MDM Software-Anbieter antworten auf drei Fragen ...


Dr. Tobias Brockmann
(Co-founder & Head of Operation der Innoscale AG)

Warum/wann sollte eine Firma MDM-Lösungen einsetzen?

Unternehmen sollten MDM-Lösungen einsetzen, um langfristig Ihr Fortbestehen zu garantieren. MDM-Lösungen sind der Schlüssel zu integrierten Systemen, hoher Datenqualität und erfolgreichen Data Governance-Projekten – die Produktivität und Effizienz der Unternehmen kann dadurch im erheblichen Maße gesteigert werden. 

Was ist der innovative Charakter eurer MDM-Lösung?

DataRocket vereint die technische Unterstützung  der organisatorischen Data Governance Prozesse in einer Lösung. Integration, Analyse, Reporting und Aufgabenmanagement werden ganzheitlich, visuell und nutzerorientiert umgesetzt und ein simplifiziertes und ehrliches Lizenzmodell erleichtert die Realisierung.    

Wo siehst du Master Data Management in fünf Jahren?

Master Data Management wird zum Wettbewerbsvorteil und somit zum Alleinstellungsmerkmal für Unternehmen am Markt. Master Data Management etabliert sich als „fester“ Bestandteil eines idealtypischen Organigramms von Unternehmen mittlerer Größe.


Michael Ott
(Senior Vice President, Innovative Systems, Inc. and FinScan)

Why/when should a company implement a MDM solution?

Organizations that want to be “best-in-class” and remain ahead of their competitors rely on an MDM solution to provide a single view of customer, supplier, asset, location, etc. to help them enable key initiatives, including analytics, customer engagement, digital transformation, and compliance. 

What is the innovative character of your MDM solution?

Innovative Systems provides the Instant 360° View™ solution, an alternative to traditional MDM that produces extremely high data quality (typically 99.5%+) in a matter of weeks and at far less cost. This is based upon Innovative’s knowledge-based systems that have been built up over decades by processing and learning from billions of records. These knowledge-based systems allow a high degree of automation, minimizing reviewable records but ensuring high quality.   

Where do you see Master Data Management within five years?

Innovative sees MDM in general evolving so that (1) more and more functions can be safely automated using machine learning and other techniques, and (2) MDMs will be extended more directly into end-user business applications instead of just providing data feeds to them.


Tom Paulson
(Senior Director, Business Solutions at Magnitude Software)

Why/when should a company implement a MDM solution?

Companies should consider an MDM solution when they ...

  • Cross Sell, service and report on various brands, products or services stored siloed applications.
  • Have Customer, Product, Vendor, and other domains of information spread across multiple systems.
  • Sell products sooner or reduce time for internal process to author a product for sale.
  • Reducing operational errors due to incomplete, inaccurate or invalid data
  • Improve IT efficiency’s by consolidating and rationalizing complex processes, automate workflow and control proliferation.
  • Spend time creating, collecting or correcting data in spreadsheets
  • Reduce risk and ensure compliance, effectively generating accurate and timely reporting.
  • Improving quality and speed to change and update business report
  • Eliminate disagreements about measures, classification and definitions
  • Resolve semantic disconnects across the organization

What is the innovative character of your MDM solution?

Magnitude MDM is business model driven meaning it is a true ‘every domain’ solution that can easily adapt to business requirements without coding. It supports both on-premises and Cloud deployment, and it is source agnostic. Last, it supports the ability for companies to build ‘MDM-based applications’ for centralized control of key data elements and processes by user group governing data.

Where do you see Master Data Management within five years?

We will continue to see MDM systems gain awareness to source systems (common ERP systems) and native connections to SQL, No SQL, and SaaS systems and other source types including linking structured and unstructured data. Automated harmonization systems will also improve, such as including machine learning to improve matching and survivorship rules prior to data steward involvement.


Dr. Christiana Klingenberg
(Lead Business Consultant Master Data Management, msg systems)

Warum/wann sollte eine Firma MDM-Lösungen einsetzen?

Master Data Management hilft bei der Optimierung für bestehendes Business und ist Wegbereiter für neuartige Geschäftsideen. Lange nicht mehr sind nur die angebotenen Produkte und Services für den Umsatz oder das Wachstum verantwortlich. Hinter jedem Vertrag und hinter jeder Geschäftsbeziehung stehen Menschen und Organisationen. Nur wenn es einen umfassenden Blick auf diese Person oder diese Organisation gibt, kann ein Unternehmen auch angemessene und attraktive Angebote machen. Das wiederum erhöht die Kundenbindung und verbessert das Lieferantenmanagement. Voraussetzung ist allerdings ein gutes Stammdaten-Management: in Bezug auf die eigentlichen Daten, aber auch in Hinblick auf die Strategie, die Organisation, Prozesse und Unternehmens-Applikationen. Ähnliches gilt für die Welt der Produkte. Einer der Treiber ist eine effiziente Go-to-Market Strategie. Nur wer seine Produkte und deren Komponenten im Zusammenhang mit Lieferanten und Preisen kennt, kann neue Produkte schnell und kosteneffizient am Markt anbieten und erlangt dadurch einen klaren Wettberwerbsvorteil.

Was ist der innovative Charakter eurer MDM-Lösung?

msg systems bietet Beratungs- und Unterstützungsleistungen rund um Master Data Management an. Dabei handelt es sich u.a. um ein MDM Reifegradmodell, mit dem wir einen wertvollen Beitrag bei der Umsetzung von MDM Programmen leisten können. Das MDM Reifegradmodell bildet alle relevanten Handlungsfelder von Master Data Management und Data Governance ab. Dazu gehören Strategie, Organisation, Prozesse, Systeme & Architektur und Datenqualität & Standards. Jeder dieser Bereiche kann individuell analysiert werden und bietet zum einen die Möglichkeit der Standortbestimmung (IST-Zustand) und bildet die Basis für den künftigen SOLL-Zustand. Dabei werden ganz individuelle Handlungsempfehlungen ausgesprochen und zielgerichtet umgesetzt. D.h. weg von der Gießkanne bei der Datenoptimierung, blindem Aktionismus bei der Prozess-Definition oder Auswahl eines MDM Systems. Vielmehr ist es möglich, sachlich und überlegt bei der Umsetzung von MDM Programmen vorzugehen und Entscheidungen faktenbasiert und transparent darzustellen. Und zwar in der Ausprägung, die für das jeweilige Unternehmen passend und angemessen ist.

Wo siehst du Master Data Management in fünf Jahren?

Das Thema Master Data Management wird sich kontinuierlich weiter entwickeln. Zum einen werden die heutigen Technologien zu Standard-Plattformen werden, die stabil laufen, performant sind, mit großen Datenmengen arbeiten können und verschiedene Domänen unterstützen und verbinden. D.h. Multidomain wird immer mehr zum Standard werden. Dazu kommt, dass neuartige Technologien aus den Bereichen AI und Data Science viel mehr und neue Erkenntnisse aus den vorhanden Daten ziehen werden. Da spielt dann auch das Thema Big Data eine Rolle. Allerdings ist dann eine gute Data Governance Struktur umso wichtiger, da bei Big Data die Entstehung einzelner Datensätze nur noch schwer nachvollziehbar ist. Auch gebildete Kennzahlen basieren auf anderen Kennzahlen, da ist es gut zu wissen, wie sie entstehen und wie man sie interpretieren kann.


Ben Rund
(GM DACH & VP Business Development Europe, Riversand Technologies)

Why/when should a company implement a MDM solution?

Every company who takes data as a strategic asset for the business, needs MDM.

What is the innovative character of your MDM solution?

Riversand is a true cloud born platform with apps, extendable and scalable to different business needs. While the technology is leading-edge for the next decade of big data, machine learning and AI.

Where do you see Master Data Management within five years?

In five years master data will still be the center in digital business models, while the technologies are fundamentally changing to the new generation. Key characteristics will be Contextual Multi-Domain Master Data Core and Modeling Environment. It will be needed to be able to handle scale, velocity and variety of data. MDM will come with more embedded AI/Analytics Framework to drive better Insights and Actions around Data. MDM will be built on Cloud and with the ability to integrate data and processes across hybrid clouds. For users Self Service Orientation and Highly Business Friendly User Experience will be key. Finally more and more apps will be added that can solve the “final mile marketing and commerce” problem for business outcomes with industry focus.


Richard Branch
(VP and General Manager Semarchy Ltd)

Why/when should a company implement a MDM solution?

MDM is at the core of an Intelligent Data Hub. Any organization that needs an intuitive data application provided to users across an entire enterprise can rely on our MDM technology to enable this. These organizations are solving for business requirements such as:

  • Compliance protocols such as GDPR, IDMP, MiFID II, BASEL (I,II,III)
  • Empowering Customer up-sell and cross-sell
  • Ensuring trusted data for BI & Analytics
  • Authoring and curating any kind of data

What is the innovative character of your MDM solution?

xDM from Semarchy is an Intelligent Data Hub - a single, integrated platform for MDM, Governance, Data Quality & Enrichment, as well as Workflows. It is designed to be intuitive and agile; the user interface is based on Google’s Material Design philosophy, providing an unparalleled end user experience, while 80% of our clients have a fully-functional solution in under 10 weeks, delivering an application to the business that drives value immediately.

Where do you see Master Data Management within five years?

MDM remains a critical capability to the larger requirement for an Intelligent Data Hub. AI and Machine Learning become a core requirement, filling in the gaps for automation, match/merge, survivorship, and enhanced data stewarding capabilities. A postmodern view of cloud MDM means that Cloud systems have 100% parity to on-premises ones, and the difference will be indiscernible. Data curation will happen within business units, stewarded by those with high contextual understanding of the data with no training on MDM or other capabilities, as these tasks will be simple for anyone to accomplish. Dashboarding, profiling, and metrics as well as data catalogue, glossary, and metadata management functions will all be subsumed by this broader “MDM plus” concept of the “Data Hub”.


Hilke Diepenbruck
(Marketing Manager EMEA at Stibo Systems)

Why/when should a company implement a MDM solution?

Using MDM, companies can unlock the full value of their information to drive better business outcomes – empowering users to act with confidence in their data, adapt quickly to changing market conditions, and go beyond the status quo to anticipate future market trends. Implementing MDM comes with numerous rewards. It has helped a global auto parts company increase the number of parts handled by 64% while decreasing returns 7%. It enabled a well-known online retailer in The Netherlands to reduce the time for product introduction by 80%. And, it helped a large consumer packaged goods manufacturer provide seamless brand experiences, quicker product introductions and a single, global version of the truth. A recent study by Aberdeen Group found that MDM can cut labour costs by 67%.

As businesses and their interactions with customers become increasingly digital around the globe, a wealth of master data is being created. Customer master data is generated by email signup forms, e-commerce sales, customer service calls and third-party sources. You might have hundreds of stores selling thousands of products – producing millions of individual details to manage across your inventory. This master data must be complete, accurate and consistent across the various systems you use to interact with customers, market and sell your products, support your partners and perform numerous business activities. Otherwise, your employees, your customers and your partners may be making decisions based on incomplete and inaccurate information.

Any company with shared master data across multiple business systems and processes can benefit from MDM. In simplest terms, master data is data shared across your business that describes attributes of key objects, such as products, customers, suppliers, locations, etc. Master data management (MDM) is the technology-enabled discipline that helps business and IT teams work together to ensure this master data is uniform, accurate and semantically consistent across the enterprise. In summary, if your company is producing master data across diverse systems across the enterprise, you can benefit in a big way from implementing MDM to push the boundaries of what you can achieve with your information assets.

What is the innovative character of your MDM solution?

Stibo Systems employs a Business-first mindset to move past “IT plumbing” and deploy a comprehensive MDM solution that is flexible and scalable enough to meet even the most demanding needs of diverse enterprises. By embracing this Business-first mindset in everything we do, we provide data management solutions allowing you to connect and deliver information to every point within your enterprise to drive value.

Our MDM solution is delivered on a single connected platform that seamlessly integrates critical multidomain data points, providing complete data/information visibility and connectivity across consumers, products, stores/locations, designers, supply chains and other domains to help customers make better, faster decisions. Our solution is also the only MDM offering that includes an integrated product lifecycle management (PLM) solution to enable customers to manage product data end-to-end, from ideation to commercialization.

Furthermore, Stibo Systems is a stable, privately held, AAA-rated company. We are run as a foundation, which allows us to focus on the long-term development of a strong product portfolio and obsess about servicing our customers – all without the interruptions of mergers and acquisitions.

Where do you see Master Data Management within five years?

We continue to see growing interest in MDM solutions from organizations around the globe, especially in key industries like retail, CPG and wholesale distribution, as well as in emerging markets like automotive, financial services and life sciences. In the past, businesses have primarily been focused on mastering a single domain, such as product or customer data. Increasingly, however, the benefits of managing multiple domains with a single system have led customers and prospects to tailor their search for MDM solutions that offer multidomain capabilities. We see this trend continuing to grow over the next five years.

We expect the popularity of delivering MDM capabilities on the cloud to continue to increase over the next few years. This has become an expectation in almost all our sales cycles today due to not only cost considerations but the flexibility it enables. As a result, we offer cloud-based options for our solution, as well as on-premise and a hybrid cloud model.

We are also continuing to see interest grow in the intersection of MDM and emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things, machine learning and artificial intelligence. We see a lot of potential in this area as well and are investing in R&D to ensure our customers can capitalize on the benefits of these technologies in the coming years.