Mistaken Identity Resolution Part II: Identity Resolution vs. Master Data Management (MDM)

By Bob Barker, Infoglide Software Senior Vice President & CMO

In a recent post, we talked about how the relatively new technology of identity resolution is often confused with other areas. One of those, master data management (MDM), is receiving lots of press attention these days. So how specifically does identity resolution (which Gartner terms “entity resolution and analysis”) differ from MDM?

Rather than being a specific technology or set of technologies, MDM is an overarching discipline that has a clear goal: achieve consistency of computing across varying IT systems by sharing master reference data. MDM seeks to manage data through various means to achieve this desired consistency.

MDM is a very broad term spanning multiple data domains, use cases, and industries. Gartner correctly points out that only two data domains have yet emerged to become viable – “customer” and “product” – and their emergence has been driven by the consistency requirements of specific industries, i.e. “customer” is driven primarily by financial services and healthcare and “product” is driven by manufacturing. Thus MDM currently has two identifiable submarkets called “customer data integration” (CDI) and “product information management” (PIM), each being served by multiple software vendors who help create more consistent customer and product data.

So how does identity resolution differ from MDM?

• Rather than demanding data consistency, identity resolution technologies derive significant value from the inconsistency of data drawn from multiple sources.
• Identity resolution solutions like Identity Resolution Engine (IRE) resolve multiple identities into one and frustrate those who purposely alter their identity in order to fool existing computer systems.

Literally billions of dollars lost each year due to fraud could be saved by implementing identity resolution applications to support retail, financial services, and other industries.
Is there an implicit antagonism between MDM and identity resolution? The answer, of course, is definitely not. Each is applied to solve a specific problem and at a different point to achieve a positive result.

MDM identifies and manages master reference sets of data to increase consistency and thus productivity within transaction systems. Identity resolution finds fraudsters and highlights their hidden relationships in real time by analyzing data systems that capture and hold identity data, cross referencing them with watchlists and other data sources. (MDM output can even serve as a data source for identity resolution!).

So what do they have in common? Both MDM and identity resolution are important contributors to a stronger bottom line.