MDM Overview
Whether above, or below the line all marketers are under increased pressure to deliver demonstrable ROI and a real contribution margin. Traditional metrics, because they are so tied to a specific channel do not do a good job of translating value creation in terms of the customer. What can bridge this gap, however, is a smorgasbord of data technology products.
There isn’t clear consensus on a name for the space. Broadly speaking the field is probably most commonly known as Master Data Management (MDM). Without going into the details, and there are many, MDM is a combined tool and approach for taking data from across your organization and combining it all in a single, consolidated repository. What this does is enable marketers to pull campaign data out of its channel silo and view the totality impact on the customer.
Related to MDM, actually a subset that is important for the marketer to be aware of is the concept of Customer Data Integration (CDI). This is the magic, the mojo if you will. It’s a bit technical, but what it refers to is the matching of customer keys, think social security # in computer speak, from different applications and finds way to connect the records. This can be extremely complicated and can involve name matching, address verification, phone lookup, etc.
You don’t need to know all the details about how MDM, CDI, or their subsets do what they do. You do, however, need an MDM solution with robust CDI capabilities. Partner with IT to decide who can best meet your needs. This should be a critical piece of your strategic marketing plan. Without it you are swinging in the dark. You can’t effectively measure how your campaigns are delivering value for your high value segments. And as a notable coach once told me, “… if you aren’t measuring it, you are not getting better at it.” (If memory serves this was also preceded by a stream of expletives). In the hyper markets we all compete in today you can bet top dollar someone else is.
Let me emphasize this. Customer data management needs to be a central part of your marketing strategy. If you aren’t doing it today you need to establish an immediate roadmap to get yourself there. Go dark if you have to, nothing else will have this type of long term value creation.
The Capability Pyramid
Building this list of vendors was much more difficult than some others, because from the marketing perspective the needs span numerous technical segments (e.g., ETL, Hygiene, EAI, etc.). Each of these subsets could be cause for a Pyramid in their own right and combining it all here would result in a total mash.
What I’ve tried to do, therefore, is select vendors from multiple segments and rank them on their integration, data quality, and business orientation capabilities. These are defined below:
Connectors – are being defined as the ability to integrate with your other transactional and marketing applications. Sometimes this will involve building custom interfaces to extract data, but in other cases vendors will have pre-built ones for well known, common ones. Vendors with strong connector capabilities are the ones who can extract your data wherever it may lie.
Cleansing - the raw data is often not sufficient for making business decision. Duplicates, incomplete or inaccurate data, etc. are all typical problems that need to be addressed. Cleansing solutions do just that. Leading cleansing providers can take the garbled, raw data and boil it down to a consistent actionable core.
Services – for many marketing organizations the process of measuring financial performance from a customer perspective is going to be new and different. While there are service firms that specialize in doing just this, it is also something that platform vendors are taking into account. Firms that rank highly in service are those who could most quickly translate results to business users.
Vendor Summaries
While Oracle, IBM, and Seibel all have offerings in this space, I’ve left them out of the analysis because their selection is really tied to their brethren transactional systems. Also, in terms of the rankings there are firms like Endeca who may not be in the sweet spot on this Pyramid, but certainly would on others.
Acxiom is a large, below the line marketing services agency that has developed solid data hygiene and list validation capabilities. Not exactly an innovator, but they have a global footprint and can execute in multiple channels.
Business Objects is the overall, the leader in the MDM space. They cover all the main bases, services, cleansing, and connectors; have deployed in very large complex environments, and have the financial structure that comes through SAP ownership. You would never be faulted for choosing BO.
DataFlux is a solid MDM pure play. Not a lot of vertical or horizontal focus, but a good story around data management. If your data needs branch away from customer focused towards workflow and process they could be a good fit.
Data Foundations started off a leader in the MDM space, being named as a “Cool Company” by Gartner in 2006. Since that time however they haven’t expanded their partner network nor re-sharpened their message.
Endeca has a tight focus around intuitive information retrieval (which is more descriptive of the E2.0 or content management vendors). However, there underlying engine is very robust and potentially leverageable by the marketing organization. While Endeca is certainly a leader in many spaces, they are only part of the answer for a complete MDM solution.
FullTilt is a b2b focused PIM provider. They were acquired by QAD which doesn’t bold well for future innovation.
Heiler is the largest, highly innovative, and best networked Product Information Management (PIM) vendor on the market. If product management is an issue, Heiler needs to be in your consideration set.
Professional services organization that not only does MDM package implementations, but also demonstrates a wider understanding of the business impact of MDM on a marketing organization. They also have technical capabilities to custom deploy connectors.
Australian firm that made an early mark by deploying a SaaS PIM system; has fallen behind recently, but certainly an interesting vendor for firms in the Pacific Rim.
Leading MDM vendor that has patented a customer integration technology specialized for catalog and retail organizations. Has broader applicability, but a very rich, interesting vendor. Further, their offering has really been elevated by the recent acquisition by Haggin.
Overall, Informatica is the market leader in data integration. Excellent ETL capabilities and canned deployments for virtually and packaged application makes them relevant to any firm taking on an MDM effort.
Initiate is one of the leading, innovative players in the MDM space. They’ve gone about things the right way, crafting a very robust process and platform that they can now target to specific vertical or horizontal needs. From this solid base, look them to lead the way toward more tailored offerings in the near future.
Australian firm that has an adequate MDM solution, but really specializes in product information management (PIM). Have some named brand clients to their credit. It seems while they had some early market leadership that they just aren’t pushing the bar.
Service orientated organization who had developed linkages to piece together a best of breed MDM platform. As a result, they are able to focus on maximizing business ROI.
ObjectRiver is a boutique developer who specializes in SOA architecture and building connectors for an MDM environment. They have their own tool and methodology for deploying an MDM, but their core strength is the connectors.
If you deal in French, or have a cross domain MDM environment, then Orchestra Networks could be an excellent fit. Fairly decent connector support as well.
Netrics is a data cleansing specialist – specifically on automated word / record matching. Very good at what they do, but part of a larger solution.
Silvercreek is on par, if not in front of Informatica when it comes to heavy lifting MDM. They are clearly an innovative leader that ranks right along with firms like Initiate and BO. As a testament to their backend capabilities they’ve been selected by other market leader Siperian to tackle the largest data integration problems.
Siperian is one of the leading innovators in the MDM space. They’ve left some of the heavy lifting integration to firms like Silvercreek or Initiate, but in turn have focused on developing an analytic, reporting framework that enables them to rapidly push out reports that are valuable to the business. If you need rapid ROI then Siperian is an excellent choice.
MDM implementation partner for Siperian who specializes in the healthcare vertical.
Stalworth is another data cleansing specialist with an area of emphasis on dealing with multinational data. They also have prebuilt interfaces for Seibel.
The industry leader in the data cleansing space. Takes a brute force approach and merges data with massive third party lists to drive issues like address verification.
WebMethods is one of the grandfathers of the MDM space. While they don’t dominate the space like they used to, if your need revolves around integrating data silos at the application level then they are an excellent choice.
Can CDI stand on its own? Yes. Technically speaking CDI isn’t a solution, but rather a methodology or approach for handling integration around customer keys. Many MDM vendors have CDI offerings, but really they are a “solution” as opposed to a “product”.
Marketing MDM implementations. Yes, again. MDM, is basically a master set of ETL, can be used to solve nearly any data integration problem.
I would stop, however, and ask – why, or what would a marketing only integration look like? Much of the power and promise of future marketing efforts are tied to an engagement approach which is predicated on integrated data. It’s not just a specific campaign that is relevant to a buyer relationship, but each piece of information learned across the myriad number of channels a relationship can span.
Can CDI be used only for marketers as a stand alone system and exluding MDM
Nice post on the implications of CDI/MDM technologies on marketers.
Can we have MDM implementations just for marketing units in an organisation?