4 Frequently Asked Partner Questions About To-Increase’s MDM Suite of Solutions

STAEDEAN’s partner network helps us reach out to customers globally across industries. They are trained and well versed with the STAEDEAN portfolio of solutions for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations/ Supply Chain Management, as well as Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. In our conversations with partners, we try to understand partner and customer questions that might come up to help us understand challenges within their Microsoft ERP and how STAEDEAN can help fill in the gaps.

We have recently launched Data Entry Workflow for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations/ Finance and Supply Chain Management (D365 F&O/F&SCM) as part of the master data management suite while upgrading existing solutions, such as MDM Studio for D365 F&O/F&SCM with a new Dynamic Field Security feature. We try our best to keep our partners informed and up to speed and are excited about our new offering, as are they. In recent conversations, we had a lot of questions, especially about our MDM Suite of solutions that help organizations execute their data governance goals and improve the quality of their data.

Therefore, to help both our partners and customers, our blog explains the most frequently asked questions about our MDM Suite. If you still have questions, that we may not have answered in this blog, we recommend reaching out to our experts.

First, what is the MDM Suite?

The MDM suite comprises three solutions; MDM Studio for master data management which is powered by Connectivity Studio that helps you manage integrations of your applications and business systems with the ERP. And for data entry management and data quality management, we offer Data Entry Workflow and Data Quality Studio for D365 F&O/F&SCM respectively. Additional to these solutions, we also offer a performance monitoring application – Connectivity Monitor (part of Connectivity Studio), to help you track the health of your integrations.

All our solutions are built using the same business logic as Dynamics 365 and are embedded within the ERP; therefore, our customers find it familiar and easy to learn. This also means you can see our solutions in the D365 dashboard, so there is no need to log in and out, and data transfer between the ERP and our solutions is seamless and quick without any manual need for you to copy data between systems. As we have already done all the heavy lifting, all our solutions are built keeping our business users in mind, so you do not need any development experience and can simply configure rules, validations, workflows, and much more using our MDM suite.

Using the MDM suite, you can transform your data processes within your ERP.

• Manage and control the distribution of your master data securely centrally or de-centrally.
• Improve the quality of your data by adding data rules, data patterns or validation through web services.
• Design data workflows and assign specific fields as part of different steps to responsible individuals or team(s). Also, assign a time limit to complete the steps.
• Ensure data is approved by the right people by assigning fields to data owners in a workflow.
• Secure your master data by adding field security to sensitive information.
• Integrate our applications with D365 to avoid any data silos and easily transfer data between systems.

To learn more about the MDM Suite download our factsheet.

FAQs about the MDM Suite from partners

Q1. What is the cost of the MDM Suite of solutions?

The total cost of solutions would include licensing fees, implementation and training support, and any additional long-term support. Our four solutions are licensed very differently; however, implementation and training support, and long-term support have fixed prices based on your requirement and the region you are based. We offer a tiered pricing model for most of our solutions, which means the more the number of companies or users you add, the better the pricing we offer.

For MDM Studio and Data Quality Studio, the solutions include a base price and is priced based on the number of companies (or legal entities). The base price for MDM Studio is €1600* and Data Quality Studio is €1500*. Additionally, the cost for 1-10 companies is €450* for MDM Studio and €100* for Data Quality Studio per company, per month.

You can use Connectivity Studio for MDM purposes only when you purchase MDM Studio but if you would like to purchase it separately and integrate your application network, you can do so too. The cost for Connectivity Studio includes a base price of €1300* per month, and the cost per company, for 1-10 companies is €350* per month.

Data Entry Workflow licensing is priced by the number of base users. This means this does not include team members that do not configure the workflows but could be entering data in those workflows. The licensing fee is priced at €750* as the base fee and the cost per user is 20* per month for the first 50 users. And €15* per user, per month for the 51-150 users. 

Data Quality Studio licensing cost is based on the number of companies. The base price is €1500* per month and for 1-10 companies the cost is €100* per month, per company. And the cost for 11-20 companies is €60 per month, per company.

Pricing for the Standard training is chargeable on an hourly basis and you can factor about 20 hours minimum for all three solutions. Besides training, our team needs to understand your business requirements, so we need some prep time and project coordination time which is also billable. The number of hours required for project coordination and preparation depends on the complexity and scale of the project. We also offer customized training, and while the rates for the Consultant will be the same, the number of hours will vary based on the business requirements.

Besides training, we offer consulting services for implementation assistance, workshops and Q&A sessions when required. Please note, that a markup will be charged when our Consultants deliver services outside of working hours. The cost currently includes Essential services with minimal tickets. For companies that want extended support, we offer different packages for support.

*Please note: For dollar pricing, it is a direct currency conversion. For any other questions, please reach out to our experts/ partner management team.

Q2. Do you have special pricing or discount if customers buy one or more solutions of the suite?

There are no special predefined packages, but we do offer tiered pricing for most of our solutions which makes them very cost-effective. Since every project is different and unique, and our Master Data Management suite caters to organizations across industries, we can work on tailored pricing whenever an organization decides to sign up with us for a bundle of more than one solution. However, if our customers decide to purchase MDM Studio and Connectivity Studio at the same time, we offer a 50% discount on the latter. When subscribing to the complete MDM Suite in one order a 20% discount will be applied on the solutions.

Q3. Can we buy individual solutions, or do we have to buy the whole suite?

The beauty of having individual solutions for data entry and data quality is that you can implement them together or in a phased manner if the need arises for the other solution. All our solutions are embedded in Dynamics 365 F&O/F&SCM, so they work independently as well. However, since MDM Studio is built on our integration and data migration platform, therefore Connectivity Studio can be used for MDM purposes only unless you purchase both solutions.

Q4. On which version of Microsoft Dynamics should the solutions be implemented?

If you are using Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&O/SCM, you can opt for all of our solutions in the MDM Suite, including Data Entry Workflow, Data Quality Studio, MDM Studio. However, for Connectivity Monitor, the integration monitoring app of Connectivity Studio, the prerequisites are power platform licenses including Power Apps and Power BI. The application can be used on mobiles and tablets and has been built on the Dataverse, harnessing the technology of the Power Platform and Microsoft Teams.

Connectivity Studio also works on other versions of Microsoft ERPs, such as D365 BC, AX, and NAV. In fact, our integration platform can also be used to migrate data from older ERP systems such as Microsoft Dynamics 2009, and 2012 to the latest version, which is Dynamics 365 F&O/F&SCM.

Do you want to partner with STAEDEAN for MDM Solutions?

As our solutions are built using the same business logic and code as Microsoft Dynamics ERPs, the user experience is easy with a quick learning curve for our customers. And since all our solutions are embedded and built within the Dynamics environment, they are easy to integrate and use without logging out of the ERP and can be found in the Dynamics dashboard. This gives us an edge in the Microsoft ERP space, and we are constantly working to better our solutions whenever we receive feedback from our customers.

If you are keen to partner with us and see the potential of our solutions for not just master data management, then reach out to us. As a STAEDEAN partner, you will receive documentation support, product support, training, and sales coaching to be on top of your game and will be fully equipped to reach out to your customers with confidence. 

Once you are ready to take this forward, visit the page shared below and fill out the form with your details and someone from our partner alliance team will get back to you soon.