Before our organization developed our Customer Data Integration (“CDI”) application, SingleVision, we were value added resellers of Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) software. In the early 2000s, the claim in the CRM industry was that if you implemented customer relationship management software then you would have a single view of your customer. However, is your CRM system the ideal place to develop a single customer view?
CRM systems are designed for sales and marketing purposes. The address information in a CRM system is usually based on the individuals that you are selling. There may be other information in financial systems, external marketing files, and other systems that would also help sell customers and prospects. However, many times these other systems will have different address information. The accounting system may have the billing and shipping department addresses, but not the addresses of the sales and marketing key contacts. So how does the CRM system know that the record in the accounting system that has a different address is related to the CRM record?
In order for a system to be an effective central data repository for all the customer and prospect records, the system needs the ability to match records based on many criteria and then link these records with Common IDs. While a CRM system may have the ability to store multiple addresses for an account and even indicate hierarchy relationships once identified, these systems do not have the ability to properly match disparate databases, organize hierarchy relationships, and sufficiently identify duplicates.
Utilizing a separate customer data integration application, criteria can be developed that is able to match and link separate data systems on an initial and on-going basis. Then, a view can be created in the CRM system that accesses the CDI match without bogging down the system with storing information that may be unnecessary and possibly confusing for sales and marketing goals. Further, this view can be customized so the rep only sees relevant information. Marketing can run reports directly from the CDI application. Views and reports that are not necessarily sales and marketing focused can also be generated for others such as the CFO from the CDI central repository. A CDI approach can also match multiple data systems that can further enhance the benefit of using a CRM system. For example, a match could include CRM data, accounting data, and external marketing data that can be viewed in the CRM system to assist reps with up-selling and cross-selling.
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