Customer Data Integration: Reaching a Single Version of the Truth

COMPONENTS OF CDI

Regardless of the type of CDI, the CDI hub is really an integrated source of customer data that incorporates automation of data quality, correction, and correlation prior to availing access of individual customer records to systems and users. The customer data hub is also known as the “master customer reference database,” or even simply the “one true view.”

As we saw in Chapter 1, customer data living in disparate silos across the enterprise is a serious business problem, imperiling strategic business imperatives like customer loyalty programs and target marketing. But it’s also an IT problem, since it jeopardizes the deployment of new operational systems and packaged applications. CDI aims to resolve this problem by enforcing repeatable and sustainable processes for acquiring customer data.

Exhibit 2.7 illustrates a CDI ecosystem, at the center of which lies the CDI hub. The following sections briefly describe each part of the ecosystem.

Data Sources

A data source is technically any application or system in your company that generates new data. Your CDI solution will get its data from systems that are generating new customer data records. These records can originate from so-called operational systems that run the company, like the billing system, or even more focused sources like small Access databases that departments or individuals use for specific purposes. Data sources are not necessarily always monolithic legacy systems, they can also be something ...