We used to look forward to emails. When we received a “you’ve got mail” alert, we were eager to see who it was trying to communicate with us. Now, outside of work, most of us receive email overload and rarely want to open them. Vendors have it rough. If they want to engage with us, whether it be on the phone, by email or via the ads we see online, it better be worth our while. Consumers of today want personalized messages and offers, and if vendors can’t keep up with those demands, competitors are easily accessible and just a few clicks away.

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To reiterate what Tom Redman – aka the “Data Doc” – discussed in his Customer Data: Conquering the 360-View of Your Customerswebinar, the lifeline to business success lies in building customer loyalty and retention as they generate higher revenue. This seems self-explanatory; however, he went on to tell attendees that to achieve this loyalty, “… best-in-class organizations must have a complete 360-view of their customer data in order to respond accurately and intelligently to their customer demands, trends and expectations.”

As marketers, we are constantly challenged to create superior customer experiences that can leave a positive impact on the brand. That is no easy task because customer data and the related information needed to understand them is often located in disparate/siloed systems that prevent us from seeing the whole picture. Thanks to the explosion of the digital economy, we no longer need to convince the C-suite that a 360° customer view is necessary to provide the experience that consumers demand. The real challenge lies in creating that all-encompassing customer view, as a large majority struggle to establish this holistic view.

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In my previous post, I discussed the challenges of being a chief marketing officer (CMO) today. Whether your organization targets consumers or other businesses, your current and prospective customers are bombarded with more information from more numerous sources than ever before. And, I covered the first two of five top challenges that CMOs face (content and clarity) and how customer master data management (CMDM) can help overcome them. In this post, I cover the remaining three challenges.

 

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Being a chief marketing officer (CMO) today is one of the most challenging roles in the C-suite. Whether your organization targets consumers or other businesses, your current and prospective customers are bombarded with more information than ever before. And, the sources of information available to research their options are more numerous than at any time in history. Consequently, breaking through the noise to win customers, and then maintain their continued loyalty, can seem an impossibly daunting task.

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For any business initiative to be a success, it’s important that initial preparations and considerations are in place. That, of course, also applies to your master data management implementation. These are the initial steps you as a business should focus on to create the foundation for a successful master data management journey.

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Apple’s Steve Jobs famously said, “A lot of times people don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” and this couldn’t be truer when it comes to meeting the expectations of the hyper-connected customer. Today, they increasingly expect a personalized, relevant experience during every interaction with a company, regardless of the channel. This has led to the concept of personalization, or personalized marketing, which is a marketing strategy by which companies leverage data analysis and digital technology to deliver individualized messages and product offerings to current or prospective customers.

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A colleague recently bought a new car. He was thrilled and anxious to have it delivered within a couple of weeks. Not long after delivery, he received an email from the car manufacturer, featuring a promotion for the exact same car, only at a drastically reduced price.

Within a matter of seconds, the manufacturer had turned my colleague from a brand advocate to a dissatisfied customer.

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“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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In the global marketplace, where data is a critical business asset, industry leaders struggle to maximize back-end IT, including CRM, ERP, e-commerce, marketing automation, and point of sale. Organizations deploy these IT systems to meet customer expectations, differentiate on digital experiences, streamline operations and achieve regulatory compliance while still delivering growth strategies and competing, in many cases, in a global market.

The challenge facing companies is how to get the most out of back-end systems, which often operate in silos and result in impartial or duplicate data that is low quality and costly. In fact, the cost of inadequately performing enterprise systems is significant, with the Harvard Business Review reporting that poor-quality data in the U.S. alone cost businesses $3.1 trillion annually.

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Your organization, and organizations of any size, depends on the accuracy of its data to gain financial insights and improve marketing, sales and customer service. In fact, pretty much every department within your company will rely on data in some way. 

And if that data is inaccurate, hard to access or only tells part of the story, it can severely hamper operations across the business. Data errors can seriously impact relationships with customers, suppliers and business partners and result in significant financial loss.

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