To increase competitive advantage throughout business processes, organisations need to have a single database.
This is according to DataDelta CEO Ed Allburn, speaking at a single customer view experience conference in Sandton yesterday.
He said recent Forrester Research found that 92% of companies rate a single view of customers as very "important" or "critical", and that 82% of Fortune 500 companies have started or will initiate a multi-channel customer relationship management (CRM) project.
Allburn said a single customer view boils down to unifying different aspects of a business, leading to better interaction with customers.
"For a single customer view system to work, organisations must be able to identify and differentiate their customers, by being consistent across the entire enterprise," explained Allburn.
He says the biggest challenges for companies include rogue databases and people continuing to utilise ineffective private databases, leading to customers contacted at multiple times with conflicting messages.
"As much as a single database is of relevance to an organisation, critical support from top level managers and putting emphasis on project milestones are required, or else a company could end up with conflicting messages for customers," said Allburn.
Agreeing with Allburn, Silofox MD Craig Martin said: "The way to a model business is to integrate all the data from different departments into a single database."
Martin said that, for example, if the marketing and sales departments viewed a customer differently, then the entire company would have problems dealing with customers.
"Single customer view increases business agility by improving overall operational efficiency, having all aspects of a business aligned on the same page, as well as reducing complicated burdens, by meeting regulation requirements, quickly, cheaply and reliably," said Allburn.
However, he added that a recent Readers Digest case study found that a single view of the customer view cannot dramatically improve business on its own, as other aspects within a business have to be given attention too.
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