Rob Karel, Forrester Research, Inc. (FORR), wrote an interesting year-end review of his 2007 Master Data Management (MDM) forecasts in the Forrester Information Management blog on December 26th. Rob hits on a few themes that I am constantly discussing with clients and colleagues:

“While all of the product development, marketing, and M&A activity coming from the MDM vendors is interesting and entertaining, the most valuable and insightful information about the evolution of the MDM market comes from the Forrester customers I speak to every day. Unlike my coverage of more mature data integration technologies like ETL where vendor selection is the most common question asked, I rarely field questions about MDM vendor selection. Regarding MDM, these customers are more concerned about data governance, organizational readiness, architectural strategy, business case development, prioritization, and the biggie — do we really need to worry about MDM? If so, why?

What does it all mean? I’m happy to report that it means you are asking the right questions at the right time. …be sure your organization is prepared to deal with the cross-functional and technical complexities of adopting a master data management strategy….”

My contention has always been that MDM is not a product solution, but a process with the key ingredients being people and politics. If you don’t have data governance and an organization ready to commit to an ongoing effort to implement and keep MDM going, then it does not matter what product you buy.
I have seen companies spend a budget of eight figures with top-notch software and service vendors, but still fail to achieve MDM success because they assumed product trumps process and people. Assuming that technology solves everything is why so many IT projects fail.

How do you get the people and politics lined up to support the MDM project? Build the business case and then market the need across the organization. The business need is there, but you need to establish the business will to solve the problem.

After process, people and politics the key technology enabler to MDM is data integration. The business problem that MDM addresses, whether customer data integration (CDI) or product information management (PIM), is getting a single view of a customer or product.

When you’re looking at all the marketing literature and sales presentations, read between the lines; it’s data integration that enables the solution.