No, this is not an(other) attempt to challenge Gartner, the analyst firm, in making quadrants about vendors in the Master Data Management (MDM) realm.
This an attempt to highlight some capabilities of Multi-Domain MDM solutions here focusing on party and product master data and the sell-side and the buy-side of MDM as discussed some years ago in the post Sell-side vs Buy-side Master Data Quality.
A simple quadrant will look like this:
- The upper right corner is where MDM started, being with solutions back then called Customer Data Integration (CDI).
- The Product Information Management (PIM) side is quite diverse and depending on the industry vertical where implemented:
- Retailers and distributors have their challenges with sometimes high numbers of products that goes in and comes out as the same but with data reflecting different viewing points.
- Manufacturers have other issues managing raw materials, semi-finished products, finish products and products and services used to facilitate the processes.
- Everyone have supplies.
- The supplier master data management has more or less also been part of the PIM space but looks more like customer master data and should be part of a party master data discipline also embracing other party roles as employee.
Also, this quadrant is by the way without other important domains as location (as discussed in the post Bringing the Location to Multi-Domain MDM) and asset (as discussed in the post Where is the Asset?)
Liliendahl on Data Quality 
Great, Henrik – it looks like you are in my brain 🙂 Especially the idea that supplier master data should be a part of any PIM http://blog.actualog.com/there-is-no-pim-without-cdi/
Hi Kate
I would amend the title of your article to read “There is no Product Integration Management without Party Data Integration”. ‘Customer’ is a very unsafe foundation for MDM as it is not actually a Master Entity, merely a Role played by Party.
If you swap ‘Party’ for ‘Customer’ in your article, then all that you say is sound.
I would strongly suggest that the Actualog product also move Party to its core, with ‘Customer’ just one of many Roles that Party can play.
Kind regards
John
Yes, you are right. I will update, thank you a lot.
Now if you added another dimension leaving domain and sell-side/buy-side as you have it and adding vendor as the 3rd dimension you would have cube. You could call this Henrik’s Cube. It would be an interesting exercise to see which vendors fitted closest to the core of the cube – this being the ideal position. Multi-domain, multi-implementation style platforms would perform well in Henrik’s Cube and aiming for “dead centre” would provide a nice alternative to “top right”. 😉