Russian MDM Market: Technology Trends

Advantages and disadvantages of Russian systems

Russian MDM systems, as market experts note, have made significant progress in development and in many aspects are no longer inferior to their Western counterparts, and in some they are completely ahead of them. For example, they allow data integration with systems of services such as Federal Information Address System and GAR, and also take into account Russian specifics, while foreign vendors usually offer unified solutions for the global market.

At the same time, it should be borne in mind that MDM modules were mainly offered as part of large ERP systems of Oracle, SAP, etc., while domestic products are more isolated and allocated to a separate segment. And individual solutions for managing regulatory reference information were not so widely presented on the Russian market even before the departure of Western vendors.

The regulatory reference information management processes themselves are well implemented in Russian products. Another question is that domestic systems do not have much experience in implementing, and rather, it is the issues related to practical recommendations for organizing a data service that may cause the feeling that the Western solution was somehow ″ better than ″. In general, it should be noted that the basic functionality of the product does not always determine the success of the implementation. And here one cannot but say that the advantage of working with a Russian product is both its lower cost and the ″ proximity of ″ and implementation partner and vendor. The possibility of customization for client processes in Russian products is also much better, - comments Alexey Yudin, Commercial Director, SOFROS.

According to Alisa Shkolnikova, head of the Data Governance department of the analytical solutions department of KORUS Consulting Group, if Western vendors decide to return to the Russian market in a couple of years, they will face strong competitors who will have both a large client base and a well-developed roadmap.

Dmitry Kichko, Vice President of Consulting at Borlas Group, notes that the capabilities and quality of Russian MDM systems already allow them to be used in any case with complex functionality and critical requirements for storing a large amount of data and their processing speed.

But it should be taken into account that the success of implementation and the effectiveness of further use of master data management systems and NSI is determined primarily by a team of consultants and integrators, because master data is always at the junction of different business processes. Accordingly, it is ″ necessary to make friends ″ different business units of organizations, and this can only be done by experienced implementers. The shortage of such performers is today the main problem in the MDM market, says the expert.

Among the advantages of Russian systems are compliance with Russian legislative and regulatory requirements, flexibility and adaptability to business specifics, the possibility of prompt support and refinement taking into account the individual needs of users, as well as the absence of language and cultural barriers when interacting with the supplier. All this makes Russian solutions more attractive for domestic companies.

However, Russian MDM systems have their own features. These include a limited set of examples of large projects, which makes it difficult to assess the safety margin and scalability of systems. In addition, a smaller ecosystem of partners and integrators compared to familiar Western solutions can limit integration and support opportunities. Restrictions in functionality for specific industries are also possible, where Western solutions had a significant accumulated amount of functionality, including due to many years of development after implementation.

According to Dmitry Vyvolokin, Deputy General Director of INTERTECH HOLDING, Russian systems, unlike Western ones, cannot yet provide the required level of service functions, technical support, documentation of platforms or developments, training, change management. This may change if 2-3 Russian NSI management platforms enter the international market, after which full-fledged global technical support, an advanced documentation and training system should appear.

Another of the disadvantages that companies face is the development of various classifiers.

Not all domestic systems have built-in flexible functionality for classifying NSI objects, but with an increase in the number of implementations, the shortage of this functionality will go away. Disadvantages include a lack of high-quality training courses and scarce documentation. Also, most vendors cannot offer full-fledged demonstration versions of systems, - comments Alexander Belyakin, senior manager of TeDo technology practice.

On projects on the transition from foreign ERP class systems to Russian analogues, companies are faced with problems of low-quality basic and reference data.

To correctly migrate directories, transfer remnants, configure integrations - immediately lay a solid foundation and create a new IT landscape, relying on correct basic and reference data, companies decide to implement an MDM system. For example, the 1C:ERP provides an NSI unit, but for effective record management, you need to take it to an alienated decision such as Unidata or 1C:MDM. We recommend allocating a separate NSI block when the number of records exceeds ten thousand, - says Nikita Bessmertny, business development manager at K2Tekh.

Also, in Russian systems, functions have not yet been fully optimized or interfaces have not been developed. And it is not yet entirely clear how Russian MDM solutions cope with the high load - large users did not have enough time to check this.

Some customers who have been using foreign solutions for a long time have slightly high expectations for their replacement. They not only expect products with similar functionality from Russian developers, but also require them to immediately solve problems that previously existed in imported software, add new functions and do all this in the shortest possible time. In addition, not all customers are ready to consider comprehensive universal platform solutions - corporate users have already developed the practice of using specialized industry MDM systems with a pre-installed set of master data and NSIs isolated from the circuit of other large corporate products, for example, ERP, - notes Natalya Zeitenidi, General Director of BFT-Holding.

But all the shortcomings are gradually overcome with an increase in the number of customers and requests, active development and accumulation of experience by Russian vendors, which allows them to confidently compete with Western counterparts.

Key Market Technology Trends

• Service architecture and API orientation. To facilitate system integration and accelerate development.
• Strengthen data security requirements. Protecting information becomes a priority in the face of increasing cyber threats. All integration components are potentially risky systems, and it is necessary to determine in advance the level of risk and efficiency acceptable to the company from system integration.
• Low-code approaches in creating systems. There is a growing interest in Low-code products that do not require the involvement of programmers to configure processes. It is important for companies to be able to create data models in user mode. In addition, this approach allows you to reduce the cost of developing a solution for a specific customer, reduce the time and budgets for the development of the functionality of the solution for users.
• Internet of Things (IoT). The growth of data from devices requires new approaches to master data management.
• Switch MDM products from relatively simple status models and workflows to significantly more complex maintenance processes. They are implemented by a built-in BPM module that allows users to flexibly build NSI management processes without involving vendors or integrators.
• Development of cloud solutions. They remain consistently in demand, despite all the concerns of the companies. Now there are high-quality public clouds from Russian providers.
• A comprehensive approach to working with data and the use of platform MDM solutions.

Businesses are no longer interested in using products that can only store and process data. At the same time, implementing individual services, for example, for consolidation or data integration, is also not an option. Preference is given to complex platform products that combine everything you need - MDM, ETL, BPM, ESB mechanisms, - notes Aleksei Orekhov, CEO, DATAREON.

• Big Data and real-time analytics. For processing large amounts of data and making operational decisions.
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning. To analyze and normalize data, automate their cleaning and enrichment processes.

According to reports from leading foreign analytical agencies such as Garnter, Forrester, MatketDataForecast, ICT and others, artificial intelligence is currently playing a decisive role in the MDM market, improving data quality, automating data management processes and providing predictive analytics capabilities. AI-based applications of MDM systems can classify records, find field values ​ ​ in unstructured names, and predict values ​ ​ of other attributes, identify data inconsistencies, duplicate records, and provide other useful information, thereby improving overall management and operational efficiency when working with data. A similar picture is observed in the Russian market. Customers began to include in their requirements the presence of functionality in the MDM system, which is implemented through the use of AI, - comments the Development Director of SDI SOLUTIONS JSC, Ph.D. Andrei Andrichenko.

AI is a reality that is already helping the entire data management industry. An example is the introduction of virtual digital assistants developed on the basis of AI. Users can significantly speed up the data processing process, reduce labor costs and improve the efficiency of working with large reference books.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning not only complement traditional methods, but significantly expand the capabilities of MDM systems, making them more efficient and reliable. For example, the capabilities of AI technologies are already widely used in MDM to clean and normalize data, predict and prevent errors at the stage of entering, updating and updating internal data based on information from external sources, creating personalized proposals and improving user experience. One way or another, most scenarios for AI applications in MDM systems are aimed at improving data quality and reducing manual routine work, adds Nikita Bessmertny, business development manager. K2Teh

Now, procedures such as mapping between credentials or normalizing data are performed manually. I see a trend towards the development of AI in this particular part - mepping directories, autocomplete those data that already exist, and automatic routing of coordination. That is, all routine work will be automated, - says Alisa Shkolnikova, head of the Data Governance department of the analytical solutions department of KORUS Consulting Group.

As Nikita Nazarov, technical director of HFLabs, notes, in terms of NSI, language models are already doing a good job of classifying data, but since companies have a desire to minimize errors and possible miscalculations, the introduction of these technologies is cautious.

Large language models still do not provide transparency in the process, as they do not allow you to answer the question of why this or that decision was made when de-publishing client records. Experiments in this area continue, but the business is not yet ready to accept the risks that arise when making a decision, the logic of which is hidden.

Natalia Zeitenidi, CEO of BFT-Holding, also highlights the emergence of industry solutions on the market among the trends. Due to the difficulty of forming specialized reference books, most likely, such systems will be created by developers or integrators on the basis of real implementation projects with their subsequent replication.

Another trend is the maximum use by MDM solutions of external state information systems as "reference" directories, on the basis of which the organization will maintain its internal directories.

This will make it possible to enrich the corporate system with reliable data without additional labor costs and a proactive reaction to changes in key data downloaded from government systems, the expert comments.

Products gradually reach the level of maturity when they can incorporate the latest technological solutions. However, a sense of measure is important here: if earlier, when working with world software manufacturers, customers often paid for excessive functionality, today they are not ready for this. Increasing IT literacy and the ability to influence product development is one of the trends in the development of the consumer community, summarizes Evgeny Kokin, head of MDM at Navicon.