DQ Global’s outlook on “ The single customer view – fact or fiction”?

July 12, 2011 - PRLog -- A true SCV should be dynamic, so as any piece of data changes anywhere the business can see all data linked to the single customer instance they are interested in.

What bureau appear to be selling is simply a deduped and merged file, which they are now labelling a single customer view; this is not a living and breathing representation of the data.  It’s more akin to a company’s audited accounts which are only true at one specific point in time.

Furthermore, this typically only delivers name and address data, leaving important linked transactional data, product information, contact history etc. out of the equation.

Some might say it’s impossible to achieve the SCV.  There’s no magic route to this utopian vision, but perhaps we should consider a few different approaches:

•  A centralised customer master database, linked to multiple disparate data sources.  Only the master database is managed and updated, changes are propagated out to the other sources

•  A message based system where data changed in one system alerts all other systems which are then updated via a messaging protocol
The two approaches above are very costly and remind us of when the US Space mission spent millions of dollars to develop the space pen to write under zero gravity for their astronauts, whilst the Russian cosmonauts took a pencil!

At DQ Global we believe we’ve got a very different approach to solving the SCV question which will be far less costly, involve less IT resources and fast to deploy…

•  An internet search engine lookup, where data is left in their separate database silos and an interface used to intelligently search and link data across systems.  The user can then dynamically view consolidated data in the form required for their specific use

There’s been plenty of discussion on SCV over the years.  CRM promised to deliver this mythical vision, but the truth is that data is still dispersed in disparate silos across the organisation.  The SCV is a constant challenge – and it goes far beyond assembling all a customer’s information in one location.

To find out more about how DQ Global Software can help with SCV contact us at:
marketing@dqglobal.com
Contact Person:  Martin Doyle
Tel: +44 (0) 2392 988303
Website: www.dqglobal.com

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We have worked with over 500 businesses worldwide on a variety of data quality projects. Our deduplication software, address verification and email verification (data cleansing software suite of solutions) provide our clients with improved data quality.