Master data management (MDM) is concerned with how an organization manages its most critical and valuable strategic resources—its “master data,” or data that describes the core business objects and main data assets shared across the organization. MDM combines the tools, processes, and governance mechanisms to ensure that master data is properly governed and coordinated across the enterprise, with high accuracy and integrity.
The software market is filled with tools to help businesses with critical master data processes and governance efforts. To help them sort through the options, we scored them on pricing, core and enterprise features, and how well they integrate with other systems, as well as on their vendors’ reputation and profile and the amount of support they offer customers.
Here are our top picks for best MDM solutions in 2023:
The MDM space is relatively mature and consists primarily of enterprise customers, and our ratings focus on how well each system meets the needs of that specific market. Here’s how they compared.
Core Features | Enterprise Features | Integrations | Support | Pricing | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dell Boomi | ????✫ | ????✫ | ????? | ????? | ????✫ |
Ataccama ONE | ????✫ | ????✫ | ????✫ | ???✫✫ | ????✫ |
Informatica Multidomain MDM | ????✫ | ????✫ | ???✫✫ | ????✫ | ??✫✫✫ |
Profisee MDM Platform | ????✫ | ???✫✫ | ???✫✫ | ????✫ | ????✫ |
Semarchy xDM | ????✫ | ????✫ | ????✫ | ????✫ | ????✫ |
Syniti MDM | ????? | ???✫✫ | ????✫ | ????✫ | ???✫✫ |
SAP Master Data Governance | ????✫ | ????? | ???✫✫ | ???✫✫ | ?✫✫✫✫ |
Insight Software/Magnitude Kalido MDM | ???✫✫ | ???✫✫ | ??✫✫✫ | ??✫✫✫ | ??✫✫✫ |
Stibo Systems Multidomain MDM | ????✫ | ??✫✫✫ | ???✫✫ | ????✫ | ??✫✫✫ |
Pimcore MDM | ????? | ???✫✫ | ????? | ???✫✫ | ????? |
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Best for Support and Integrations
Since being acquired by Dell Technologies in 2010, Boomi has continued to grow as a leader in the MDM market. Billed as an “integration platform as a service,” Boomi’s Master Data Hub offers a low-code, cloud-native platform for connecting and synchronizing an enterprise’s data sources for data quality, consistency, and visibility. The platform is known for its easy-to-use interface and relatively low learning curve.
Best for Ease-of-Use
Canadian enterprise software developer Ataccama has been focused on MDM and business metadata management since its inception back in 2007. These days, its leading platform Ataccama ONE has over 55,000 users globally and is one of the more popular MDM solutions on the market. The platform is known for being easy-to-use while offering quite a bit of power through its intelligently-designed interface.
Best for Data Modeling and Workflows
Informatica’s Multidomain MDM enables organizations to create authoritative views of their mission-critical data from disparate, duplicate, or conflicting sources. The solution offers artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) tools that augment its data quality, data integration, and business process management capabilities. Additionally, data security and privacy features allow for the safe, easy enrichment of master data records with data from external sources.
Best for Data Stewardship Features
Profisee MDM Platform is a cloud-native solution that provides users with an intuitive data stewardship interface and visual relationship management tools, workflow management, data quality rule enforcement, and more. The solution integrates natively with Microsoft Azure services and offers a REST application programming interface (API) for connecting to any external service, database, or applications.
Best for Automations
Semarchy’s xDM focuses heavily on ML-powered automations—algorithms that enable data stewardship and advanced matching, survivorship, curation, and classification. The solution also provides a native data model for supporting transparent lineage, audibility, and governance. xDM can also integrate with any data source via real-time and batch APIs.
Best for Core Features
Syniti MDM allows users to create a single point of reference to master and application data from multiple domains, with connectivity to over 200 systems and applications. The solution is capable of intelligently notifying users regarding work to be performed, as well as monitoring processes against defined service level agreements (SLAs).
Best for Enterprise Features
Make no mistake—the SAP Master Data Governance platform is an enterprise offering through and through. The solution offers robust capabilities for consolidating and centrally governing enterprise master data, and includes support for all master data domains and implementation styles, as well as pre-built data models, business rules, workflow, and user interfaces.
Best for Data Modeling
Kalido MDM, now part of insightsoftware, is a multi-domain MDM solution that offers advanced data modeling and policy-driven data governance. The solution complements the Kalido Dynamic Information Warehouse (DIW) solution as an all-in-one toolset for modeling, defining, and managing business data.
Best for Use Case Diversity
Danish software developer Stibo Systems offers an integrated suite of MDM tools that allows users to connect, govern, enrich, and syndicate data to their specific business requirements. The solution is capable of consolidating multi-domain master data and other enterprise application and system data into a single source of truth for data accuracy and visibility.
Best for Pricing
Pimcore MDM is the only open source offering in this list, making it extremely low-cost—but there are hidden costs and drawbacks in the form of lack of enterprise support and quality documentation. That said, the solution provides some powerful core MDM features, such as the ability to consolidate master data across disparate system landscapes using its open source tools, as well as features like data quality monitoring, hierarchy management, rich content integrations, audit trails, and workflow management.
When it comes to MDM software, key features should be centralized around the management and maintenance of master data. Core features should be focused on data governance and stewardship. Enterprise features and support options are also crucial for servicing larger organizations. Expect pricing to fall on the high end, with the exception of Pimco’s open source MDM solution.
To rate these 10 top master data management tools, we assigned them weighted scores from zero to five based on how well they met enterprise needs in the six key areas detailed below, and then aggregated the results.
At the heart of all MDM software are its data governance and data stewardship capabilities. Along with these functionalities, other core feature considerations include collaboration tools, built-in analytics, and customizable user interfaces (UIs).
MDM software vendors should offer multiple channels for support, including live chat, phone, email, and other forms of self-service support (e.g., knowledgebase, support forums). Given the prominence of enterprise buyers in this space, MDM vendors should offer options for paid custom support to customers willing to pay a premium for it.
Integration concerns in this software category primarily revolve around data integrations and API connectivity—ideally, an MDM solution should offer extensive plugins and connectors to support a vast array of data types, as well as a REST API for integrating with other software packages and applications.
Enterprise concerns trump all others in the MDM space. A key requirement for most enterprises is compatibility with existing back office systems—for example, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and financial platforms—as well as flexible deployment modes (on-premises and in the cloud) and advanced AI/ML functionality.
Pricing is somewhat of a secondary concern in this tool category, as organizations evaluating MDM solutions tend to be less price-conscious when it comes to managing their master data. Relevant sub-criteria used in calculating this metric include the overall cost of the solution, availability of a free trial or demo, number of pricing tiers, and upgrades or discounts, if any.
As is the case with enterprise features, vendor profile metrics are more critical to large organizations—especially when it comes to MDM. Sub-criteria used in evaluating vendor profiles include the breadth of the vendor’s solution suite, vendor business type ( startup or enterprise software vendor, for example), customer base size, and length of time in business.
The ideal MDM software for your business is the solution that addresses your specific data requirements, use cases, and environments. For example, organizations operating in highly regulated industries may be relegated to on-premises only solutions—a predicament that significantly narrows the range of options.
Similarly, firms wishing to retain full control of their data infrastructure may opt for a completely open source, self-hosted solution like Pimco MDM, assuming they have the necessary expertise/resources to support it. Your MDM software evaluation process should start with these types of non-negotiable requirements, followed by analysis of the candidate solution’s master data management and maintenance capabilities.
MDM tools are essential software applications for centralizing and harmonizing an organization’s critical data, such as customer information, product details, and supplier data.
As vital tools that enable better strategic decision-making, MDM platforms play a pivotal role in ensuring data accuracy, consistency, and cross-enterprise reliability by eliminating duplicates, standardizing formats, and providing a single source of truth for all of the organization’s data users.
Due to the sensitive nature of master data and overarching concerns related to data security/privacy and sovereignty, organizations should first evaluate an MDM solution in this context, followed by a careful consideration of the solution’s data governance and data stewardship features.
Data security is also a concern when dealing with data; however, when it comes to MDM tools, data security is a heightened concern, since it deals with an organization’s master data.
This depends on your organization’s specific requirements, IT environments, as well as the availability of staff with the requisite expertise to deploy and manage an on-premises MDM solution.
MDM solutions provide enterprises with an accurate, comprehensive way of linking and harmonizing critical data across the organization. Not all solutions are created equal—but these guidelines and considerations will better equip businesses to select the right solution for their unique requirements and use cases.
Read Data Management: Types and Challenges to learn more about how MDM fits into the bigger picture of enterprise data management.
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