Will Retailers succeed with e-Commerce because of Data Quality?

The retailers have multiple points of sales, and multiple point of customer data storage. Point of sales can be Telephone/Customer Service, Customer Clubs, Physical Stores and customer data storage can be in CRM, ERP and logistics system. In addition they will have several brands where also the customer data is stored in. When they then try to do multichannel marketing, it is impossible with the structure they have today.

Multichannel seems a little challenging in this picture

The solution the chains choose is to make a Master Database, with one customer ID with link to each brand. When you have the Master Data, you can start analyzing for cross selling opportunities. If you are a customer of Brand one, you are also a likely customer of brand 5. In addition you have tools to filter the information from the multiple points of sales and data. When customer data is entered in one of the point it is checked for duplicates, matched to the right record, checked for fraud. In addition you can set up error tolerant CRM search for the point of sales and enrich the data with Reference data.

Gut skizziert, wie viele unterschiedliche Datenquellen und Ausgabemedien mit Produktinformationen bedient werden müssen. Das Beispiel bezieht sich zwar speziell auf den Einzelhandel, ersetzt man jedoch “Brand” durch “Produkt” und fügt als Publikationskanal Kataloge hinzu, ergibt es eine Datensituation, die auch in produzierenden Unternehmen vorherrscht. Ohne zentrales Produktdatenmanagement ist es mühselig bis nahezu unmöglich, hochwertige und valide Produktdaten zu publizieren.