Customer Data Integration - How to sell

CDI as it is usually called is achieving a single holistic view of the customer. Integrating, cleansing, standardizing and de-duplication of customer data and propagating it sounds an easy sell to the business. Apparently it is not. Most companies have not yet realised the business value and cost they lose associated with this.

Take an example. Company A has two sub divisions with their own silos of data. Once a Month I get a promotion mailer from them. Of course I get two envelopes of the same information.
Consider the cost savings associated with de-duplicating the customer data. The focused marketing that can be achieved by identifying an entire household.

Data Flux talks about the right way to sell CDI to the business. Dont scare them by telling how bad your data is. Instead focus on the benefits CDI brings in.

"........'We need CDI, and we’ll be at risk if we don’t adopt it soon. Our existing systems can’t cut the mustard – they’re all operating on different versions of the data. Our data warehouse was designed for analytics, our ODS is read-only, our ERP system has no customer detail, and our operational applications don’t talk to one another, let alone share data. Oh, and we need to put some governance mechanisms in place, meaning we need time from executives. And by the way, we need to hire skills we don’t have. And auditing our current systems would be a good idea…'

Such statements – while probably painfully true in your organization – are simply too scary for most managers to hear..... ..... All too often, that means your CDI program will be dead in the water. A better approach is to begin with the business impact of not having CDI. Have your facts straight, be unemotional and be ready to produce proof. Here are some statements that are non-threatening yet provocative. Each has proven very effective in getting management’s attention.

'12 percent of our accounts don’t have an associated account holder name. And we’re using this data in our financial reporting. Some day, someone’s going to notice and ask questions.'


'Our Siebel system was built to recognize a customer as anyone with an address. Our SAP system considers a customer to be anyone with a shipping address. And we have 72 other systems with their own business rules. The one that wins is the one that generated the data most recently. Which one are you using?'

'Of our 568,000 business customers, 23,452 of the monthly statements were returned by the post office. This represents $1.6 million in delayed or lost revenue.'
...............
Providing these facts is not fear-mongering. Instead, you need to understand and measure existing business problems that affect (or are affected by) inaccurate, unsynchronized, duplicated, missing or contradictory customer data. And if your company is like most companies, those problems proliferate. "

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