Customer MDM and the SMB

Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) face several core challenges when adopting enterprise Master Data Management (MDM) solutions, whether this be a Reltio, Stibo, Profisee or one of the even bigger multidomain solutions. These challenges are often due to a misalignment between the complex nature of these tools and the more limited resources and simpler needs of SMBs.

The main challenges are these:

• Cost and Complexity: Historically, MDM was seen as prohibitively expensive with lengthy deployments. While modern cloud native SaaS models reduce upfront hardware costs, the total cost of ownership (TCO) and consulting fees can remain high for many SMBs with limited budgets and IT expertise. SMBs often find the full scope of features and complexity of enterprise MDM to be overkill for their simpler needs, such as basic deduplication or customer 360, leading to them paying for advanced features they don’t use.
• Time to Value: Implementations of enterprise MDM solutions can stretch for months or even years, which strains SMB patience and expectations for return on investment (ROI). New features and customizations may also have to wait for product-wide releases, delaying time-to-value for SMBs.
• Resource Burden and Skills Gaps: Enterprise MDM typically requires deep organization-wide data governance, custom data stewardship, and significant post-launch maintenance, which can be overwhelming for lean SMB teams. Effective use of these tools demands specialized training for administrators, developers, and data stewards, a stretch for smaller teams not solely dedicated to data management. SMBs particularly feel the pain of vendor-dependent workflow changes, as they often lack in-house MDM experts.
• Support Responsiveness and Vendor Dependency: SMBs often experience support delays, sometimes waiting days or longer for vendors to deploy or fix critical system components. Even basic customizations, like workflow updates or expanding data domains, frequently require vendor action, slowing SMB agility and innovation.
• Usability and Integration Issues: Complex features such as survivorship configuration, match rules, and large data exports can be cumbersome for smaller IT teams, especially when technical resources are limited and the user interface or documentation falls short. Slow large data downloads and JSON formats as default outputs place extra strain on SMBs who lack robust Business Intelligence (BI) or integration resources. SMBs need simple, pre-built connectors and quick integrations, and solutions requiring heavy customization can leave them behind.
• Unpredictable Operating Expenses: Many SaaS MDM offerings including Pretectum CMDM, impose quotas or API call limits, which may force SMBs to incur extra costs as their own data volumes and integrations expand, creating unplanned operational expenses.

Despite technical advancements in SaaS solutions, SMB customers commonly complain about excessive complexity, a high reliance on the vendor, support delays, and a fundamental mismatch between what enterprise MDM offers and what SMBs truly value. The “DNA” of enterprise MDM, with its inherent complexity and resource demands, persists even in “SMB-friendly” SaaS wrappers.

This is why we think Pretectum may present as a generally better fit for the SMB market with its equally complex needs for Customer Master Data Management (MDM), but less resources.