Informatica MDM

Informatica Master Data Management (MDM) is an all-in-one master data management solution, powered by its advanced AI engine, CLAIRE®. Built on the IDMC platform, this provides the capabilities required for enterprise data management, a cloud-native environment for scalability with consumption-based pricing. Informatica MDM is based on Mongo DB, though it supports traditional relational databases like Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server for on-premise and hybrid deployments.

Informatica MDM has data mastering, reference data management, master data governance, with connectivity to a wide range of source systems via the broader data and application integration capabilities of Informatica IDMC, which are included in the MDM license.  Informatica MDM supports more than 150 data domains with low- and no-code configuration capabilities.

A mature data quality suite of capabilities within the MDM solution includes data profiling, observability, cleansing, enrichment, verifying, validating and standardizing data. Inclusive of the broader Informatica IDMC services, it has extensive security and privacy capabilities such as role-based admin, access control, data anonymization and single sign-on using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) or the
OAuth protocol.

The product has a data catalog with support for data governance by allowing business policies and rules to be set up and administered by data stewards either manually or automated as recommended through CLAIRE.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is built-in, with CLAIRE, CLAIRE Copilot and CLAIRE GPT currently. These AI capabilities allow for AI-guided recommendations, intelligent automation of routine tasks and natural language / GPT interaction with master data.

Informatica also offers multiple pre-built domain-specific applications for faster time to market, including Customer 360, Product 360, Reference 360, and Supplier 360, enabling dynamic modelling of business entities and their relationships. In addition to this, various out-of-the- box industry, cross-industry and integration extensions support a wide variety of use cases, significantly accelerating implementation speed and time to value.

Informatica MDM is based on the core Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud, which includes CLAIRE, its AI engine built on 40 petabytes of metadata for AI and generative AI use cases.  These include machine learning models for data matching. In such cases, a human expert trains the model by manually matching a few hundred records, and after a time (typically after 400 or so manual matches), the model is ready to make its own decisions based on its observation of the human domain expert.

Informatica MDM also includes the ability to produce a graph of relationships between records.  For example, the graph can show how a customer may be linked to certain products that they purchased, a particular bank account used for payment, a household, employer, location and more.

Informatica MDM includes the ability to parse external files, such as product specification PDFs and extract attributes from those files automatically. AI is also used to automate the structuring, classification and tagging of large datasets, reducing the level of human effort needed for this.

In addition to these capabilities, Informatica’s AI-powered business user interface enables no-code drag and drop experiences for business and technical users alike. Configurable screen layouts and color coding for specific outcomes and personas reduce overload and enhance focus. Data stewards validate records using a card-based interface, while analysts explore tables and charts. AI-driven suggestions and streamlined bulk edits simplify data management. All of these capabilities are underpinned by security and governance through various certifications, access control mechanisms and masking/encryption capabilities.

Informatica is a major player in the MDM market, competing against other enterprise vendors like Stibo, Ataccama, Reltio and TIBCO. Its positioning within a broader suite of tools that includes a data catalog, data quality and data and application integration means that it is a broad data management solution for customers that prefer to opt for an integrated solution from a single vendor across these categories. Informatica improved the overall end-user experience of operational and analytical use cases, whether business or IT, to ensure that the solution meets the expectations of today’s data steward, data scientist or business analyst. Although Informatica’s MDM product originally had a strong heritage in life sciences and healthcare, it has since expanded to a broad range of industries, including financial services, insurance, manufacturing, services and hospitality, and has a broad customer base across a wide range of organizations of all sizes.

The bottom line

Informatica is one of the leading master data management vendors in the market, with a well-established solution that has been deployed in a large number of industries and countries. Informatica continues to invest in the technology, as seen by the recent new features extending its CLAIRE AI to use generative AI, and to lay the groundwork for agentic AI applications. With the strong integration capabilities of Informatica’s other software, it is easy to connect to a wide range of data sources and applications. It should be on the shortlist for most enterprise MDM applications.