Master data management software market up 30%
Master data management (MDM) software is one of the fastest
growing software revenue segments, says analyst Gartner.
The analyst says the worldwide MDM market is on pace to total
$1.3bn in 2008, a 30% increase on 2007 revenue.
Gartner said the market will experience steady growth through to
2012 when revenue will total $2.8bn.
Gartner said that despite the current economic crisis, ongoing
requirements for businesses to increase effectiveness, reduce costs
and meet compliance requirements are driving the adoption of MDM
technologies.
"MDM technology can help organisations achieve and maintain a
single view of master data across an entire organisation, enabling
business and IT initiatives to perform in better unison, allowing
for opportunities to increase revenue, reduce costs, achieve
effective compliance, reduce risk and improve business agility,"
said John Radcliffe, a Gartner analyst.
"The technology continues to mature and has great potential for
enabling more-efficient and effective business processes in the
future," he said.
Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and
extended attributes that describe the core entities of the
organisation, and are used across multiple business processes.
Some examples of core entities are parties (customers,
prospects, people, citizens, employees, vendors, suppliers or
trading partners), places (locations, offices, regional alignments
or geographies) and things (accounts, assets, policies, products or
services).
Groupings of master data include organisational hierarchies,
sales territories, product roll-ups, pricing lists, customer
segmentations and preferred suppliers.
MDM is a process that may be workflow-driven or transactional in
nature, in which business units and IT departments collaborate,
cleanse, publish and protect common information assets that must be
shared across the organisation.
MDM ensures the consistency, accuracy, stewardship and
accountability for the core information of the organisation.
The MDM market will be discussed at the
Gartner Customer Relationship
Management Summit 2009, taking place 3-4 March in London.