Video Notes

So, what is master data management? We’ve defined what master data is. You go to different industry analysts and you can see different, fairly lengthy definitions of MDM. These are two fairly cut-down ones from a couple analysts. All the vendors have their own definitions, but, we’ve tried to define it fairly simply.

Master data management is the combination of people, process, and technology for centralizing and maintaining your master data. The key here is, it’s not just the technology.

Obviously, we are a software company and we deliver a technology in the form of software, but when you’re implementing MDM, you have to consider that it’s not just the purchasing of a platform to implement, but also getting the right people involved and defining the business processes that you need to solve, and then applying the technology to solve those problems.

Components of MDM

So, the MDM platforms typically deliver a kind of common set of features and functionality that are used to implement the underlying solution. There’s functional and non-functional components.

A lot of people zero in on the functional components. So, you’ve got to have a data model, you’ve got to be able to integrate your data, implement data quality and matching, provide sort of the top front end for data stewards to interact with.

Those are all important things, but just as important is the non-functional aspects of MDM. So, based on your data volumes, how you’re using the system. Is it going to have appropriate performance? Is it going to be highly available?

So, if operational processes are dependent upon it, how do you handle system failures and maintain availability? And how does this thing scale up as you potentially grow your data volumes over time?