What Does MDM Studio Cost? Total Cost of Ownership for a Microsoft D365 Master Data Management Solution

In the Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions, 2021, Gartner shares some important insights that organizations can learn from. By 2025, 50% of CDOs will achieve digital acceleration goals using augmented data management practices across MDM, data hubs, data quality, and integration. Although, more than 75% of MDM programs will fail to meet business expectations because of a failure to connect MDM value to business value.

So, while you might be evaluating solutions and looking at the investment it is important that you already have a data governance strategy or a master data strategy in place. You also need to have data stewards clearly define accountabilities and responsibilities for several functions prior to the implementation of your shortlisted MDM solution.

At STAEDEAN, we have solutions that have helped several organizations move towards their data transformation goal. We offer an MDM solution – MDM Studio for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (F&O)/ Supply Chain Management (SCM) a data entry management solution – Data Entry Workflow for D365 F&O and a Data Quality solution – Data Quality Studio for Dynamics 365 for F&O.

Investment in solutions that help you execute your data governance strategy provide a long-term value-add. As these solutions help you consolidate your data, maintain consistency, improve your data standards, enhance data security, and give you a holistic picture to draw better business insights from.

Our customers usually ask us questions about the cost of an MDM solution, so in this blog, we have tried to cover the price of our solution and all the factors that affect the cost of MDM Studio. So, we are hoping that this blog, along with this honest review of MDM Studio, will help you decide whether MDM Studio is a good fit for your organization or not.

What is the average cost of an MDM Solution?

While some of you might understand that MDM stands for Master Data Management and it is a solution to help you manage your data between companies and applications and ensure the uniformity, management, and distribution of your data. Some of you might be new to the concept of master data management. If you are new to the concept of master data management, please do check our related reading below.

From our experience and industry research, the average licensing fee for MDM Solutions starts at $550 per month, per feature, or $1,500 per company, per month. However, this cost does not include storage, implementation, customization, training and maintenance, and support. 

The upper limit based on our research for a Cloud Managed solution is $80,000 per month for a large integration inclusive of licensing fee, 10 TB storage, and configuration. Additionally, there are other costs as add-ons such as backup fees for any loss/theft/breach of data.

What factors affect the cost of MDM Studio?

It is a known fact that the price of a solution is the determining factor for most customer decisions. If it were easy to answer this question, then we wouldn’t have written a blog on it! The price of a software solution depends on various aspects since it is not a one-size-fits-all kind of response. We understand our customers want the most bang for their buck and are looking for solutions that add value and complement their existing setup.

It is important to consider the below factors to arrive at your total cost of ownership:

How many companies do you have in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for F&SCM?

When you are budgeting for an MDM solution, you need to budget not just for the licensing fees, which could be a per-feature or per-company model, but several other factors. A per-feature model fee could get expensive, therefore at STAEDEAN, we offer a per company model. However, the more companies you add, the better the pricing gets and the more you save. We have explained this in detail in the section detailing our licensing fees.

What kind of deployment are you considering?

You also need to account for the kind of deployment, as on-premises deployments are costlier than cloud-based deployments. If you are looking at an on-premises deployment, you are looking at infrastructure cost, while for cloud deployments you would have to consider cloud storage costs.

What kind of training and support are you looking at?

We provide a one-day workshop and a fixed training package for most of our customers. However, if you are looking at a large-scale project you might need more training. Additionally, we offer Essential services for all our cloud customers. However, if you are looking at specific maintenance and full-time support then you would have to budget for that as well.

What are the investment requirements for MDM Studio?

Now let’s get to the most important part of this blog.

What is the cost of our licensing fees?

Our solutions’ maintenance and upgrades are included in our monthly licensing fees. And since MDM Studio is an embedded solution within Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM, every time Microsoft upgrades, our solution works without the need for any development. And every time we release a new feature it is included in the monthly license(s) fees.

The cost varies based on the number of companies inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&SCM. The base fee for MDM Studio is €1600* per month, and for 1-10 companies, the price is €450* per month, per company. It is important to note that this price includes the Connectivity Studio Solution for MDM purposes.

For example, the price for 11-20 companies, per month, is €200* per company, per month. So, the price for 11 companies comes up to €1600 + €4500 + €200, which works out to €6300* per month.

If you want to use our integration solution to integrate all your applications and business systems, it can be purchased separately. When you purchase MDM Studio with Connectivity Studio at the same time, we offer a 50% discount on our integration tool. Connectivity Studio is a powerful tool for data mapping, integrating your MDM solution to your ERP and business systems, as well as a data migration platform. Additionally, a feature of the integration tool, Connectivity Monitor, allows you to monitor your integrated application landscape.

Since we follow a tiered pricing model, the more companies you buy at the same time, the more cost-effective the pricing becomes. Our prices as listed are applicable as a unit of measure pricing per order.

*Please note: For dollar prices, the cost is a direct conversion.

What training costs can you expect?

Our solutions are DIY based on configuration, so with just a few hours of training your team should be able to get started with MDM Studio and Connectivity Studio.

We offer a Standard training package for solutions that are part of the Master Data Management Suite. For MDM Studio and Connectivity Studio, you can expect training time of about 12- 20 hours. Additionally, since our team needs to understand your requirements prior to the training, you have to factor in some time for project coordination (approx. 2 hours) and prep (about 5 hours).

Training for our solutions is billable based on the region, on time, and material. Please do consider a markup in case our Consultants need to deliver services outside of working hours, if at all.

We also offer customized training for customers that have a larger project requirement. The prices for the Consulting services will not vary but the time for the project might be longer and that will affect the cost for training and implementation.

For our customers that need implementation support, we offer consulting services, workshops, and Q&A sessions when required. The time for the implementation depends on a project-to-project basis.

What kind of costs do you need to account for during software implementation?

Through our training, workshops, and implementation sessions, we try our best to enable our customers to be able to use Connectivity Studio and MDM Studio on their own. During these sessions, we cover analysis, functional design, functional testing, interface handover, interface mapping, and interface rework.

So, on average, for simple projects, we conduct 16-20 hours of these sessions for implementation and 1 day is spent on project management. If the project is extremely complex, then we can share more specific examples once you share your requirements with our experts.

The cost for implementation depends on a few factors. If you have these factors clarified, your implementation costs could be reduced.

• The number of interface messages or the kind of data that you want to share with one or multiple applications
• The number of entities involved
• The people who own different entities, which includes the target and the source of the data
• The business processes outlined for master data management

What other costs do you need to consider?

Although we offer Essential services for all our cloud-based customers. Some of our customers prefer dedicated support for quick resolutions to issues that might crop up. We offer additional packages for support.

You can purchase support incidents in batches that are mutually defined by STAEDEAN and customers and if you do utilize the allocated incidents within that set period, you could top up if needed. If you have questions about our support offerings, please contact Joost Marchal, Support Coordinator.

We recommend analyzing your organization’s requirements before you finalize a support contract with STAEDEAN.

How much is bad data costing you?

If you are still on the fence about investing in an MDM solution, read this report published in Harvard Business review that states that bad data costs the U.S. $3 trillion per year. Therefore, if you do not have an MDM solution implemented to manage, control, and distribute your data, then you are probably contributing to this number. Keeping that in mind, it is important to analyze what your bad data is currently costing you and how much it is holding you back before you budget for an MDM solution.

If you are looking to achieve data transformation, then an MDM solution is a good start to your data management journey. We also offer solutions for data quality enhancement – Data Quality Studio, that can help you improve the decision-making process and achieve unparalleled business results and accelerated growth.

We recommend you align with all your teams, make a note of all your organizational requirements based on your data governance strategy and reach out to our experts with your questions.