The Value behind Integrity

Achieving high performance through
customer data quality

etnasoft.com

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 Executive Summary

Customer data is a
comprehensive representation
of a client within multiple
channels, business lines, and
enterprises. Properly gathered
and analyzed information gives
mission critical knowledge on
how to attract, retain and
motivate customers.
In a large-scale company client relative
information is typically distributed across multiple
application systems and databases. As companies
become more relied on information technology for
managing customer data, the new challenge
comes up - to provide seamless customer data
integration (CDI) between heterogeneous IT
systems within a single IT infrastructure. For
example, in the financial services industry it
becomes common for large banks to run separate
checking, brokerage and insurance customer
systems with no visibility to track a customer from
one system to the next. This leads to missed up-
sell and cross-sell opportunities, inconsistent and
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 often poor customer service, inability to
differentiate profitable customers from less
profitable ones, and an overall loss in brand value.
Once the right CDI solution is found, operations’
efficiency and business performance soar.

WHAT ARE THE STRATEGIES FOR ACHIEVING CUSTOMER DATA QUALITY?

According to Gartner research, through 2010, the creation of an

accurate, timely and rich single view of the customer across
channels and lines of business will be a key enabler for reducing
costs, managing risk, and increasing revenue and profitability in
customer-centric organizations and as soon as by 2008, 50
percent of large organizations with a heterogeneous customer
data environment will begin to implement a solution for CDI.

An easy to use, web-based Recent Gartner’s report has

master data management identified some enterprise
system is the missing link clients utilize up to 26
Three types of between different business
information systems that operational/transactional intelligence technologies
are essential for normal systems, business within a single IT
business operation of large intelligence and infrastructure. Clearly it is
enterprise include ERP, DSS Performance Management hard to control customer
(Decision Support Systems) systems. data consistency in such
and MDM (Master Data systems.
Customer and product are
Management). The last, but two most common MDM To establish a single view of
not least important, refers domains. CDI (or CDM) is a customer companies adopt
to the practice of subset of Master Data either CDI initiative or full-
synchronizing and Management that refers to blown MDM strategy that
standardizing critical data synchronizing and includes CDM as well as
across organization. Master standardizing master data product, location,
data management is not within customer domain. employee, asset, and
only required to coordinate financial entities
different ERP systems, but

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 also necessary to supply Today big companies’ management.
meta-data for aggregating investments in CRM and
and integrating ERP solutions backfire in the Buy VS Build
transactional data. form of millions of records Organizations that respond
created everyday that to the challenge have 2
Master Data Management should be properly options: to buy a packaged
solutions tackle the rapidly processed and correlated. customer data integration
escalating issues of As more and more product or build custom
dimension coordination, information is gathered developed solution in-
integration and around the company, what house. In general,
reconciliation that was critical customer data companies find that
enterprises face with each The Market
packaged is Booming
solutions provide
is gradually transformed
incremental year of systems Accordingflexibility,
greater to Gartnerofferreport, a
into information silo.
evolution. in
lowerthe past
total twocost years,of
higher return on interest
ownership, in CDI
and has
generategrown a
investment. As a recent higher dramatically as
Forrester report highlights, organizations revisited the
“Emerging packaged need for a single view of the
customer data integration customer and their
HOW COMPANIES IMPLEMENT CDI SOLUTIONS?
solutions offer a new, capability to achieve it. On
faster-to-deploy option for the supply side, an
customer integration increasing number of
projects.” In some cases, vendors, with their own
Researchinterpretations
from Forrester found that as
of meeting
in-house CDI projects are
much as 40% of an IT project budget
the is spent on
requirement, integration.
are
abandoned after a few
years of design and offering value propositions
development, without ever around CDI and CDI hubs,
being put into production. and the more widely
embracing concepts of MDM
While for some time build- and EIM.
yourself approach was
popular, today, as Through 2008, the CDI hub
What is MDM? information technology market will continue to see
MDM is the consistent systems become extremely major changes, including
and uniform set of complex, companies opt for more acquisitions and
identifiers and
HOW SINGLE VIEW OF CUSTOMER BOOSTS PERFORMANCE?
so called CDI Hubs. changes of vendor
extended attributes direction; this will cause
that describe the core These software products problems for end-user
entities of the support the global organizations that want to
enterprise and are identification, linking and make a strategic
used across multiple
synchronization of commitment to the market
business processes.
customer information before it settles down,
Some examples of core
What across heterogeneous data Gartner says.
entitiesisare
EIM?
parties,
EIM is an
places organizational
and assets. sources; create and
commitment
Groupings of to define,
master manage a database-based In Gartner Magic Quadrant
secure and improve the system of record, and for Customer Data
data include
accuracy and integrity
organizational enable the delivery of a Integration Hubs (2006) the
of information assets. most successful application
What are the
hierarchies,
EIM
sales
solves semantic
territories, and product
single
Supplied
customer
by
view.
big infrastructure vendors
inconsistencies
roll-ups, pricing across
lists, infrastructure players as include IBM (that has
benefits
all boundaries thus of well as smaller vendors, acquired DWL and, later,
supporting the
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Assential), Siebel andpg. 4
high quality
technical, operational
and business objectives
these products often are
highly optimized for a leaders
Whitepaper
among best-of-
breed specialists are
customer
in a company’s
enterprise architecture
certain vertical.
Initiate, Siperian.
strategy. GARTNER
                                Organization­wide improvements
Both back-office and front-office operations can be
significantly improved through a comprehensive CDI
strategy. Unified billing and credit management,
accurate revenue accounting and contractual billings
together with reduced mailing costs boost back-office
performance, while accurate transaction and account
information facilitate sales process.

How                           High Quality direct marketing
With high quality customer data it is easier to focus
organizations direct mail/marketing campaigns on those who really
pays off. Through CDM organizations get most up-to-
get return on date information and end up spending less money for
more impact.

their
investment in     New Cross­Marketing Capabilities
technology? To keep up with the pace, customer-driven business
must constantly offer clients attractive deals. More
reliable customer data enables effective up-selling and
cross-marketing through aligning human resources,
operations and technology with clients’ needs.

                   Faster Billing Procedures
Consistent customer data means the information is
updated centrally and everyone in the enterprise has
access to the new address. This guarantees invoices
and mail get to customers in a timely manner

                Better customer service
Organizations that adopt CDI strategy benefit from
better relationships with customers. With one master
copy of customer information, there is less chance of
errors such as name misspellings and incorrect
addresses and phone numbers and less opportunity to
alienate the customer base.

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 ACHIEVING CUSTOMER DATA QUALITY IN LEGACY IT SYSTEMS

Legacy Challenge However, while in the short-

Large enterprises are often term cost-efficiency might
trapped into using legacy be the major outcome, what
solutions as a core of their really drives company’s
ETNA Software offers
cost effective solutions IT infrastructure. Despite long-term value is the
that help companies that these systems are ability to align IT with
focus on core considered to be potentially business processes through
competences and
problematic and might not comprehensive outsourcing
improve business
support full CDM strategy.
Application integration, organizations
Development have compelling reasons for Smart CDI Solution
Services
keeping status quo. World’s largest financial
We strive to services provider,
continuously reduce
cost and risk while The problem is prominent headquartered in Germany,
creating business in financial services sector enquired to develop data
value and improving where high availability reconciliation solution that
operational efficiency systems cannot be taken would match customer
in a configurable,
measurable and out of service even for a information from
controlled way. relatively short period of heterogeneous systems. By
time and the cost of the time the project had
Re-engineering & redesigning is prohibitive started we have already
Migration Services
Maximize the value of because current legacy delivered enterprise-wide
legacy applications systems are large, document management
while transitioning monolithic and complex. solution to the client and
clients’ applications
had in-depth knowledge of
quickly and efficiently As BankTech industry
to modern platforms. client’s IT infrastructure.
Target platforms publication puts it, legacy This contributed greatly to
include optimized systems are the the speed of the
.NET cornerstone of business – development.
and J2EE/UNIX, as well the dinosaur codes that
as source platforms
from Oracle and IBM. have survived the ages and Originally started as a re-
continue to crunch out the engineering project, it later
CRM & EDM numbers. Enterprises strive involved complete redesign
Solutions to squeeze all the value of existing application and
ETNA Software custom
tailored solutions they can out of this it’s underlying architecture.
support the full technology. In order to stay We delivered CDM solution
spectrum of business cost-effective they turn to that integrated seamlessly
processes, including
outsourcing. with the customer’s
mammoth IT infrastructure
Outsourcing of application based on Lotus
development as well as Notes/Domino, IBM DB2 and
business processes has proprietary systems.
become extremely popular Strategic outsourcing
Etnasoft.com due to the cost-efficiency ETNA Software helpedpg. 6
relationships
and fast time to market. Whitepaper
multinational cut cost and
increase customer data
quality within short
timeframe.
About the Author About ETNA Software
Alexey Linkov is Vice President ETNA Software is a rapidly growing
of Marketing at ETNA Software, software development company,
rapidly growing application specializing in application
development outsourcing outfit development, system integration
headquartered in St. Petersburg and business automation tools. Our
(Russia). For further outsourcing services range from
information, contact the author complete design and development
at alinkov@etnasoft.com of custom software applications to
the re-engineering of existing
solutions. Technology - wise the
company is focused on Microsoft
.NET and SUN Java/J2EE, but also
has rich practical experience with
Oracle, IBM and various open
source technological solutions.

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Email:
info@etnasoft.com