Customer data integration, or CDI, is the process of gathering customer facts, combining, and managing them from many sources from all across a business into a single, unified view. This allows the company to get a deeper understanding of the customer experience. This will help all departments to make better decisions based on this info.
You can learn more about this process if you do some research online. You would need to put Customer Data Integration in your search engine and you can find info that way. There is a lot of information that is available.
This article will also help you to learn more about this process. It will give you some ideas about what it is all about. As mentioned above, you can also do more research to get the evidence that you need.
Table of Contents
Customer Data Integration Benefits
- Reduce Data Silos – An info silo is a composite of facts that are in the control of a specific department so that it becomes isolated from the rest of the company: https://blog.hubspot.com/service/data-silos. These do not happen intentionally because the different departments use specialized tools, systems, and processes. Even though this happens unintentionally, fact sets that are incompatible may cause an internal disorder.
- Increases Info Security – When using CDI, the customer’s info is kept in one spot in the company, controlled by the decision-makers in the company. The info is then given out to those who need it and no one else. This keeps the info more secure and helps ease the customer’s peace of mind.
- Ensures Info Accuracy –Information freshness is important for all efforts to get a successful figure-based lead generation. CDI allows B2B marketing and other sales teams to do info segmentation successfully. This means that the records for the prospects can be updated continuously. It also means that certain traits such as industry, location, budget, and technology usage can be used to narrow down your target market.
- Predicts Customer Behavior – You can analyze your target market through a structure that is organized and fact-based. This allows you to identify new opportunities on how to engage the next crop of prospects. This helps in lead generation and allows you to work more closely with new prospects.
Types of Customer Data Integration
- Data Consolidation – The most efficient type of integration is data consolidation. This takes in many sources of your figures and combines them into a warehouse that is centralized. You can automate the extraction and placement of facts from one place to another, maximizing their usefulness.
- Data Propagation – This is the process of getting a copy of a set of facts. This means that the facts will live in two different places at once – the original source and the new destination. Learn more about propagation here. This is used when the info needs to be used at the same time but with different pieces of information.
- Data Federation – Although similar to consolidation, this allows the user to have one view of all the facts that are available. Federation keeps the sources of the facts segregated making it more difficult to disseminate and customize the information. This is a way to keep the info separate but still be able to work with it.
Best Practices
- Identify Your Info Sources –You can search for information in many places such as emails, transactions, reviews of content, forms that are filled out, and direct messages. Not all these sources are as valuable as others, but you can get valuable info from each source. Marketers can make ICPs and buyer personas.
- Define Info-Driven Objectives –Your objectives need to be outlined before you begin to mine the facts. If you do not do this, there will be too much information to sort through. You will need to set up both short-term and long-term objectives.
- Choose Your Implementation Plan – Key elements for successful CDI strategies are processes and rules. You will need to select between data consolidation, propagation, and federation because it will have a major impact on the way that your facts are distributed. Choose carefully because once you have chosen your path, going back is expensive.
- Select Information Users – You will also need to determine who will be using your information so that you can disseminate it to them. This is a key step so that you can figure out how to narrow down the facts. Once you have figured out who will use the information and it is in the data warehouse, you can add filters and categories so that the users will be able to manage it.
Conclusion
CDI is customer data integration and helps businesses to disseminate information that they need to produce leads and prospects for their business. This helps to reduce data silos, increase information security, ensure fact accuracy, and predict customer behavior. This is done in different ways depending on the facts that you need.
