Improving customer data quality means capturing customer information from multiple sources in a standard, error-proof way, then merging it with detailed demographic and lifestyle information, says Wayne Eckerson, an analyst at the Patricia Seybold Group. "You need a single source of clean and consolidated customer information to do customer- relationship management and E-commerce well," he says.

The concept isn't new. But there's a new urgency to it now that companies increasingly deploy customer-relationship management, marketing automation, and other front-office applications.

The survey findings suggest that, with Y2K work mostly behind them, companies can usher in the era of customer-centric IT priorities and build the infrastructure they need to support it. "Companies that want to better serve their customers and generate more business from them are increasingly realizing they first need to spend on technology to create a solid IT infrastructure foundation," says Eckerson. For instance, Y2K preparations are still the No. 1 priority at $8.4 billion snack food maker Nabisco Inc. in Parsippany, N.J. But the company recentlylaunched an organization to "pull together all our independent Internet-related business initiatives as part of a broader E-business strategy," says Sharon Fordham, president of the new unit.

The need for high-quality customer data is becoming apparent as companies increasingly make use of that data. Since last quarter, organizing and using customer data jumped from No. 11 on the list of most strategic technology and business priorities to No. 6.

The number of products and services for data cleansing, translation, mapping, and analysis is growing as well. Among them are Vality Technology Inc.'s Integrity and Evoke Software Corp.'s Migration Architect. Major database vendors such as SAS Institute Inc. and Sybase Inc. also offer products in this area.

Worldwide revenue for these software packages was slightly more than $100 million in 1998, according to the Aberdeen Group. The research firm expects that to increase to $150 million by 2001. But many companies today do that work themselves, says Guy Creese, a senior analyst at Aberdeen. "These vendors are competing with users who want to develop these tools themselves," says Creese. And while the need to cleanse data is apparent, business IT is only slowly realizing how to transform customer data into bottom-line benefits.

Headache Medicine
Just the thought of the work involved in improving data quality is enough to give CIOs like Entergy Corp.'s Phil Orton a headache. That's because information about customers at large companies comes in many forms-phone calls to call centers, E-mails, faxes, and customer visits to stores and Web sites. It's often stored in standalone databases, with varying detail and in different formats.Entergy, a $6 billion regional utility in New Orleans, serves 2.5 million customers in four southeastern states.

"We absolutely have to improve the quality of our customer data, because once deregulation of the utility industry in our region begins, we'll be competing with other power companies and we will need to know what services we can bundle to retain our current customers," says Orton. Entergy will also have to share consistent and complete billing customer data with rivals who sign up their customers.

In about six months, Orton will dispatch a team of more than 10 IT staffers to clean the data in all of Entergy's databases. Though details of the initiative, such as its cost, aren't set yet, the staff will sample customer records, check fields, and solve any discrepancies, he says. It's a major effort that will include validating customer addresses and eliminating alphanumeric information from text fields. "If we were to share dirty data with other utilities, we'd have problems," Orton says.

continued...page 3, 4

return to page 1