Tamr’s 5 Takeaways from the Gartner® Market Guide for MDM Solutions

The start of a new year offers the opportunity to embrace fresh perspectives and innovative strategies to address persistent challenges with master data management (MDM). It’s a “new year, new you” mindset that will enable you to rethink, refresh, and reimagine the way you tackle the challenges of poor data quality, legacy MDM solutions, and delivering the holistic, 360-degree views of your customers and other key business entities needed to drive better, more informed decision-making. 

To support you on this journey, we’re sharing highlights from the 2024 Gartner® Market Guide for Master Data Management, as well as our unique point of view on the report’s findings. We’ll explore how the report’s insights into the evolving MDM landscape resonate with our approach and discuss how we’re positioned to help organizations like yours thrive with data in 2025 and beyond. Let’s dig in!

1. MDM is Evolving

For years, companies have embarked on MDM initiatives with the promise of delivering the golden records business users need to make better decisions. However, these initiatives often failed to deliver the clean, trustworthy data users expected. The reason? These initiatives focused primarily on technology – and that’s a mistake. 

Gartner sees that MDM is evolving. And Tamr agrees. While technology still plays an important role, so does the ability to deliver key customer or product data to business users. That’s why we believe that companies must start by assessing their data, improving it, and thoughtfully reviewing it with data users. Once they’ve taken these critical steps, then they can connect the data to essential business systems. This is the MDM Journey, and it’s the secret to finally delivering data users can trust. 

2. Start Small

When it comes to MDM, Gartner states that companies should “adopt a lean approach, focusing on master data that uses business outcomes to identify the smallest amount of data (i.e., master data) with the biggest influence on business outcomes.” 

We couldn’t agree more. In our experience, the most successful MDM initiatives prioritize the data that the business deems most important, allowing companies to quickly demonstrate the value of MDM by delivering the high-quality golden records business users need most. 

3. Not all MDM Vendors are the Same

When considering a vendor to support MDM, Gartner offers the following advice: “Select MDM vendors that best support your immediate use cases and MDM maturity levels, ensuring they support all future use case needs without being limited by domain.”

Said differently, not all MDM vendors are created equally. Some offer a suite of related products, while others, like Tamr, offer a best-suited solution designed to solve specific business challenges. Regardless of which solution you choose, Gartner considers the following mandatory features:

• Multiple usage scenario (operational/analytical) support 
• Multiple domain support
• Augmented MDM
• Data modeling
• Data stewardship (policy enforcement) support
• Data governance

To learn more about these capabilities, download your complimentary copy of the 2024 Gartner Market Guide to Master Data Management. 

Tamr checks all the boxes, delivering the comprehensive set of capabilities companies need to support their MDM journey. From assessing and improving their data to reviewing it with end users and connecting it to key business systems, Tamr’s AI-native MDM solution enables companies to progress through the MDM journey with confidence. 

For more than a decade, Tamr has focused on using AI/ML to tackle the hard problem of accurately mastering data and creating golden records at scale. Our unique blend of advanced AI/ML and human feedback makes improving the quality of data easier than ever before, enabling companies to progress through each phase of the MDM journey at the pace that is right for their organization. 

4. Entity Resolution is a Steppingstone to MDM

In their latest Market Guide for Master Data Management, Gartner states “there has been a growing trend of clients beginning their MDM journey with entity resolution to ensure a cleansed and harmonized set of data before launching their MDM program.” 

We believe that starting with high-quality data is key to a successful MDM journey. After all, MDM isn’t just about adopting technology. It’s about ensuring you have data that you trust. 

Entity resolution, also known as entity linkage or record matching, is a critical step in delivering trustworthy data. It’s a data management technique used to associate multiple disparate datasets into a logical entity such as a person, business, or product. Entity resolution addresses the challenge of reconciling records across and within datasets by detecting and matching records that are the same, despite differences in spelling, formatting, and other discrepancies. Through the assignment of a unique ID, entity resolution ensures that these matched records are treated as one unique entity going forward. 

Entity resolution is at the heart of Tamr’s solution. Our AI-powered technology is at the forefront of data innovation, enabling organizations worldwide to reap the benefits of golden records and the holistic view of key business entities they provide. By using Tamr to elevate their customer experiences, drive operational efficiencies, and uncover new opportunities to grow, companies are changing the way they approach data management and positioning their business to grow and adapt today and well into the future. 

5. Data Products Play a Role in the MDM Journey

Gartner defines data products as “...tools or applications created from data that provide actionable insights to enhance decision making.” Gartner goes on to say “master data is the quintessential data product — if we think of a data product as a consumption-ready set of high-quality, trustworthy and accessible data that people across an organization can use to solve business challenges — that’s exactly what master data is.”

A data product from Tamr is a pre-configured packaged application that utilizes our AI-native MDM platform capabilities to deliver the best version of your enterprise data to all consumption endpoints. By providing data products for critical entities such as customers, healthcare providers, and suppliers, Tamr makes master data tangible for everyone across the organization. 

At Tamr, we’re excited about how our vision and solutions address the evolving needs and insights outlined in the Gartner report. To delve deeper into the Gartner perspectives on the MDM market, download your complimentary copy of the 2024 Gartner Market Guide for Master Data Management.

As your organization navigates the dynamic MDM landscape, having a partner who understands the challenges and opportunities you’re facing is vital. If you’re ready to take the next step in your MDM journey, download our ebook, The MDM Journey: From Trusted Data to Operationalization.

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