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MDM #11. How to Read the 2026 Gartner MDM Magic Quadrant: Five Leaders, Two Acquisitions, One Buyer Framework

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The 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions was published on April 6, 2026. By September, part of the market it described had already changed. Salesforce had completed its acquisition of Informatica in November 2025. Then, only a month after Gartner published the new MDM Magic Quadrant, SAP completed its acquisition of Reltio on May 7, 2026. That timing makes the 2026 report particularly interesting. The Magic Quadrant still provides a useful snapshot of 20 MDM vendors evaluated on Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision . But an enterprise selecting an MDM platform today has to look beyond the chart and ask another question: What has changed around the vendor since Gartner completed its evaluation — and does that change improve or complicate the fit for our enterprise? That is how I would use the 2026 Magic Quadrant. Not as a ranking that chooses a platform for us, but as a starting point for a more difficult purchasing decision. Fi...
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MDM #10. Why Master Data Derails SAP S/4HANA Migration — and What to Fix Before Cutover

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Late in an SAP S/4HANA migration, a data problem can suddenly become a program problem. The conversion itself may be running. Interfaces may already have passed testing. Business users may be preparing for cutover. Then a migration rehearsal exposes something that looked minor in the legacy environment. A supplier exists under several identifiers. A customer is linked to the wrong organizational structure. Material attributes mean different things in different plants. A legacy code has no agreed target value. A record loads successfully but cannot support the first business transaction after go-live. At that point, another cleansing cycle is often started. Sometimes that is necessary. But I think it is important to ask a more fundamental question: Is this really a migration defect — or is the migration exposing a master-data decision that the organization never made? That distinction matters. A migration tool can move data. It can validate formats, execute mappings...
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MDM #9. Why Enterprise MDM Governance Fails After Go-Live — and How to Make Ownership Real

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Enterprise MDM governance often looks strongest on the day it is designed. The governance council has been named. Data Owners and Data Stewards appear in the organization chart. RACI matrices have been approved. Workflow roles exist in the MDM platform. Then the system goes live. A country organization requests an exception to a global customer standard. Two business units disagree about whether two supplier records represent the same legal entity. A product attribute fails repeatedly, but nobody wants to change the upstream process that creates the error. A Data Steward can identify the problem but cannot compel the business function to resolve it. At this point, the real governance model becomes visible. MDM governance is not proven by the existence of governance roles. It is proven by what happens when people disagree about data. That is why I would not begin a governance review by asking whether an organization has Data Owners, Data Stewards and governance coun...
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MDM #8. When Enterprise MDM Goes Off Track — Five Early Warning Signs

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The first warning sign in a troubled MDM program is rarely a red project dashboard. More often, it sounds harmless. “We have already selected the platform, so we can define governance later.” “While we are doing customer, why not add supplier and product as well?” “The business can review the design once IT finishes the first version.” “We will establish the operating model after go-live.” None of those statements proves that an MDM initiative will fail. But when several appear together, they can indicate something more important: the program is beginning to drift away from the business problem it was supposed to solve. I find that more useful than asking whether an MDM project is simply “successful” or “failing.” By the time failure is obvious, much of the budget, architecture and organizational credibility may already be committed. The useful question is not “Will this MDM project fail?” It is “What would tell us early that the program is moving in the wrong dire...
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MDM #7. How to Build an MDM Business Case Executives Can Fund

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“I understand why master data matters. But why should we fund this now?” That is one of the hardest questions an MDM team can receive from an executive sponsor. It is also a reasonable question. The project team may be looking at duplicate customers, inconsistent supplier records, conflicting product hierarchies and hundreds of manual corrections. Leadership is looking at competing investments. An ERP transformation may need funding. AI programs are competing for budget. Cybersecurity, cloud modernization and regulatory initiatives may already be mandatory. Against that background, saying that MDM will create a “single source of truth” is usually not enough. An executive business case for MDM should not begin with the value of master data. It should begin with a business problem that leadership already cares about. This changes the conversation. Instead of asking executives to invest in cleaner data, the MDM team can show how unreliable master data contributes to a...
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