Data Integration
Customer data integration can be seen as the practice of collecting, collating and then managing customer information that may have come from a variety of sources available within your company. Once this data has been consolidated will includes the details of the customer, customer valuation data, as well as information that has been acquired using direct marketing or interaction, such as campaign that require a “call to action”.
If customer data integration is performed correctly with targeted data models then this results in the relevant departments within the company to have constant access to the most current and complete customer information available. Therefore customer data integration is itself a significant element of the total Customer Relationship Management. Customer Relationship Management allows you to use methodologies; software and contact capabilities that enable an company manage customer relationships effectively.
A proper data integration strategy minimizes risk and ensures the delivery of projects on time and within budget. But data integration is not just about matching and linking data but is also about being able to access correct data sources when it is required. Data integration is about working within the scope of the current application structure so that it results in high quality information.
There are five major levels of integration that most public and private sector organizations in UK use data integration for:
The ability to be able to integrate data using data integration techniques reduces such time-intensive processes such as data entry, printing of reports, and the manual consolidation of data produced by different applications.
Point of sales systems, payment processing solutions and bookkeeping systems can also be interfaced via the use of data integration techniques meant to eradicate the need for duplicate entry saving you loads of time and money. Planning for automation and data integration will enable you to enhance your business.
About the Author: Mike has more than 15 years ox experience designing and implementing Data warehouses based on Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySql, PostgreSQL and more he is currently working for DB Software Laboratory
