Win with Advanced Business Analytics: Creating Business Value from Your Data

CUSTOMER DATA INTEGRATION AND DATA MANAGEMENT

As mentioned throughout this chapter and reflected in our Customer Knowledge Framework, organizations are getting customer data from multiple sources, both internal and external. Yet to be useful and meaningful, customer data from multiple sources must converge into one place. In fact, customer data should be integrated to ensure a “single view of the customer.” If the data are not integrated, there will be multiple conflicting views of the customer, and it will most likely lead to weak analytics and conflicting perspectives and recommendations. Your company should integrate data from multiple sources in one place to enrich the customer insight and market knowledge, ultimately offering the right services to the right customers in the right markets via the right channels. As Jill Diche said in her great book Customer Data Integration: “There is no excuse for an executive to fly blind. Customer Data integration is a must, not an option.”11

Note that customer data integration is a continuous process, one is never done. Data quality, of which integration is a component, can make or break your business. As a result and as we have discussed, your data need to be understood, defined, and managed using formalized processes and skill sets.