Integrating Customer Data

We loved this article by Balaji Yellavalli of Infosys, "CRM: Putting the Cart Before the Horse." It speaks about the challenges that large companies (in this case financial institutions) face in understanding the entire customer relationship. He cites typical CRM systems that wait for a customer to transact and then the system must reactively collect transaction data and is "continuously trying to catch up and build a 360 degree view of the customer." Quite the challenge...

Then, the next hurdle is to ensure that you are associating the appropriate transactional data with the right customer. This is where Customer Data Integration (CDI) becomes so very important. Yellavalli defines CDI as "the creation and maintenance of a centralized repository of core "master data" – the multiple facets (demographic, household, even updated credit-worthiness data) of information that identify a customer."

RRW agrees with his assessment that CDI is critical to successful CRM practices. We've even put together a White Paper that provides an overview of CDI tools, and relates some of our personal experiences building a 360 degree view of the customer. We'd be happy to share this with you.