Customer Data Integration: Introduction

Companies large and small invest heavily in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications. They have also increased the number of touch points (800 numbers, URLs, email, kiosks) to provide an expanded customer service structure. This has resulted an explosion of customer data spread across the enterprise. But the goal of achieving a total picture of customers has not been realized.

Enter Customer Data Integration (CDI). The industry market research firm Gartner Inc. defines Customer Data Integration as "the combination of the technology, processes and services needed to create and maintain an accurate, timely and complete view of the customer across multiple channels, business lines and, enterprises, where there are multiple sources of customer data in multiple application systems and databases."

It could also be called Customer Data Intelligence. Like another other cousin of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Intelligence, Customer Data Integration centralizes all of the information in an organization's databases. It makes it available when they want it at the touch of an Enter key.

Customer Data Integration is the nexus where all of the databases are leveraged to create a single view of the customer. The core technology of Customer Data Integration links and groups customer information. It spits back answers about customer records and matches when and where a manager needs it.

It's like a crystal ball where marketing can look in and see if the stores are stocked with the product — how much of it, models, prices, what's on the way — when the marketing blitz opens the next morning. In other words, if all of the information from all departments is not at a business owner's fingertips, then they will never know what opportunities exist and, more importantly, to seize.

Working Without CDI

Customer Data Integration is a convenience for business owners who cannot make decisions without mission-critical information. If customer data is not available instantly, a business is at risk. How can a business owner stay afloat if important information is locked and loaded, but in another database across town, the country, or the Atlantic?

Companies have been storing information on customers forever. These days it is stored in databases hither and yon. Databases are categorized according to job functions: credit department, accounting, customer service, marketing; by touch points: email, call center, point of sale, mail; and by product type. If all of this information is stored here and there and cannot be accessed immediately, then there is no guarantee that a business will ever achieve a high level of customer satisfaction, retainment or stay in business very long.

It is like working with invisible information. A business may have all of the information that it needs, including raw data non-customer records about the business, such as legal and governmental information. But not seeing it, or knowing that it exists, is not a strong foundation on which to build a business or a strategy. The issue is access and being able to leverage all of that data at once.

It's a complex world out there of relational databases, networks, and the technology to meet the next challenge. Yet, that's what businesses must face. Most of the time, a business needs help. No better example is what to do with, and how do you leverage, information. What do you do if sales data is locked away in sales? What you don't know can hurt you. Information must be available to, and shared with, all parties.

Customer information must be available to front-office employees at every customer interaction. The challenge is to eliminate the frustrations customers experience when dealing with corporations who cannot answer their questions when they have on the phone an alleged customer service rep that also doesn't know a customer's history and ends up unable to solve the problem at hand.

Some companies have a variety of systems that either are not integrated or badly connected. This is called "fragmentation." When you have a fragmented data system, you will never have a trusted single view of your customer. This is at the heart of all CRM strategy and products, from Business Intelligence to Customer Data Integration.

The goal of Customer Data Integration is to link your data from different systems to see a total instantaneous picture of your customers while enhancing data integrity. It focuses on achieving the highest and fastest levels of precise information integration no matter its volume. This helps customers experience total satisfaction whenever they interact with a company's touch points.

Most businesses cannot afford to reinvent the wheel or redesign their IT infrastructure. They just need to install a pipeline like Customer Data Integration that draws from their vast reservoirs of data into a pool of information that everyone can use.

The Goal: A Unified View of the Customer

Successfully retaining and managing customer contacts with the company is the definition of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Quality contacts are the measure of success for the customer. Recently, companies have been adding IT tools to improve the ROI on their CRM investments. However, many companies have failed to achieve a reliable, unified view of their customers.

Customer Data Integration (CDI) is an application to fill that gap by making sure that all of the information needed to complete a transaction successfully travels from the database to the touch point without a hitch. It is a system that integrates data from a variety of sources: operational systems, all databases and data stores, outside sources, the Internet and even web and legacy applications. The goal of Customer Data Integration is to get this information and insights into the right hands asap so that they can make the right decisions.

However, customers will continue to experience a lot of problems if employees at the touch points are not armed with the 411. These touch points are critical for a business, since the lack of access to data wrecks many a potential transaction, not to mention return customers. So it's a make or break situation. One mistake and a business loses a customer for life. Gambling like that with customers is not the way to run a successful business.

Yet, the Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) estimates that poor data systems accounts for $600B in losses annually. The well-respected industry analyst firm Gartner reported that more than half of this year's CRM initiatives will suffer or fail because of businesses traditional lack of interest in data quality issues.

If this is the case in your business, then it is time to integrate customers' history, whether it is segregated by departments, states or even continents. Whatever it takes to insure that whatever is needed is available 24 / 7. From the CEO to the touch point troops on the front line, up-to-the-second information about customers — their purchasing history, broken down into details about products and dates, credit history, do they respond to direct mail hits or phone — should be reliable and available.

Customer Data Integration is the answer to these data quality and access issues. An opportunity to impress a customer and retain them for life is too important to leave to chance. How can any business chance putting a blue-chip client on hold simply because some Ding a Ling Temp du Jour did not have the relevant information available, or peppering good customers with irritating, repetitive phone calls, especially during the dinner hour?

A business owner, like a NFL coach, must prepare. The key to a successful CRM strategy is the ability to create a 360-degree profile of a customer using Customer Data Integration software. A Customer Data Integration solution mixes data, high technology and business processes and delivers a holistic view of every customer. This complete, total, and holistic view of the customer is fed into a company's touch points to maintain the highest standards of customer service (and to cross-sell and close them as often as possible).