How Accurate Was SAP on MDM? - Brightwork Research & Analysis

Table of Contents: Select a Link to be Taken to That Section

Executive Summary

For years SAP has said that MDM and MDG were a highly effective master data management application.
In this article, we review the accuracy of this claim.

What SAP Said About SAP MDM

Our listing of SAP MDM is essentially the same story as PLM. So this is not an analysis of a specific comment by SAP, but an analysis of SAP’s overall proposal with MDM. One of the problems is that when a product “goes away,” the vendor’s statements and projects tend to be forgotten.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem.
Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers.

What Actually Happened with SAP MDM?

When implemented, SAP MDM is used for an extremely narrow set of master data tasks. We have never seen a customer that uses MDM for anything but a small fraction of MDM requirements.

Although it should be said that while going through a major bubble in roughly the 2006 to 20010 timeframe, most vendors that introduced MDM applications fared exceptionally poorly. It is rare to see a software category bomb as extensively as did the MDM market.

By 2011 the bloom was off of the MDM rose.

In 2010 we explained how SAP MDM was undermining real MDM progress in companies in the article How SAP MDM is Hurting Actual Master Data Capabilities in Companies.

And in a second article, Why Software Based MDM is a Consulting Boondoggle.

We have assigned a low fraction to account for how much of SAP’s proposals about how their MDM product would be used came true.

Conclusion and Calculation

SAP receives a 5% accuracy rating on SAP MDM.

Link to the Parent Article

This is one of many research articles on a specific topic that supports a larger research calculation. For the overview of the research calculation for all of the SAP topics that were part of the study, see the following primary research A Study into SAP’s Accuracy.