Digital transformation depends on effective customer data management

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There has been an incredible amount of technological change that impacts our everyday lives. The advent of the internet, social media, mobile and more, have changed how customers interact with brands, hence the need for change from brands.

It is the need for that change, that drives effective digital transformation.  

Digital transformation can mean different things for different organizations. It can mean launching e-commerce or a mobile app. For some, it could be about improving the web experience.

Whether you’re already an online business that needs a transformation initiative to engage markets that have not been targeted or an offline brand that realizes that a negative digital brand experience can be damaging to customer experience, loyalty, and reputation, you’ll be considering some kind of digital transformation, even if you don’t refer to it as such.

One of the many goals of digital transformation is to create insights and data points that will improve the customer experience with the intent of increasing sales, loyalty, and brand advocacy. A defined data strategy works to connect all your data, online and offline and defines the steps needed for advanced digital transformation. 

You’ll need to keep in mind, though, that tools or platforms don’t automatically make for an effective digital data strategy.

Some 70% of all digital transformation initiatives do not attain their intended goals, and close to $900 billion has been witnessed in potential wastage as a result of initiative failures.

So it’s not enough to simply say you’re going to implement a digital transformation. To yield results, you need a holistic transformation approach to identifying where the right digital tech is needed, fed with the right unified accessible data, accompanied by a clear data strategy. How could you possibly achieve this?

This is where customer data management could make a grand entrance. 

Customer Data Management, Benefits 

It is said, data is fuel for digital transformation initiatives. Superior customer data management, in particular, ensures the supply of that data fuel is enabled and activated. If your customer data is consistent, well managed, and directed to the right place, at scale and in real-time you have a better chance of achieving an all-around improved view of each customer. 

  • A single source of truth– Your organization likely has several different systems that store different data. Without effective customer data management across these tools, you’ll be required to enter data manually, which oftentimes leads to data capture inconsistency. A customer name might be entered in a system in the format “CAMERON LEE” and in another system as “LEE CAMERON” – which one is correct? This kind of transposition inconsistency and possible errors can lead to a lot of wasted time and a potentially poor customer experience, as you might end up sending multiple marketing emails to slightly different names, yet ultimately the same person. It is therefore important to converge on a single system model or a single source of truth where each customer data is managed centrally and shared or accessed by the surrounding systems. This ensures consistent, enriched, and up-to-date data information, no matter what system the customer data appears in. 
  • 360-degree view of each customer– Customer data management can help build a 360-degree view of key business information about the customer to allow you to take full advantage of your organization’s data, for better business outcomes that include; 

A compliant digital customer management strategy

Optimized and correctly calculated lifetime customer value

An improved and customized customer experience 

Improved customer onboarding and retention management

If you adopt customer master data management, your business is likely to do better, statistically, it has been found that digitally mature firms are 26% more profitable than their peers, they generate 9% more revenue, and achieve 12% higher market valuations than other large firms in their industries.

Getting ahead in terms of improving your relationship with your customers and dominating the markets in which you operate requires effective customer master data management. Having the pole position at the start of the race allows you to get ahead of competitors. With an ever-evolving digital world, you don’t want to delay your execution plans until later, the time has never been riper to evaluate what a CMDM can do for your business today!

Contact us for more information on the Pretectum CMDM solution.