1. WHITE PAPER: CRM
WHITE PAPER /
High Data Quality in the CRM
(Customer Relationship Management) System:
the proverbial icing on the cake
The goal of introducing a CRM (Customer Relationship Manage-
ment) system is to optimize and stabilize the relationships with exist-
ing and future customers in the long-term. The key to a satisfactory
relationship for both sides is not only an intelligent CRM system but
also the high quality of the data it contains.
There are indications of sub-optimum customer data quality if the
return rate of mailshots is relatively high as a result of incorrect or
incomplete addresses, or customers complain about multiple deliver-
ies of the same advertising mail. For good measure, it is embarrass-
ing if discriminatory comments can be read in the address line of a
customer, because importance was not attached to the „hygiene“ of
the name and address components. Even if the in-house staff have
no confidence in the database and manually check each entry be-
fore the customer is contacted, this should also be considered as an
indication of poor data quality. On the basis of points stated here,
it becomes evident that data quality in the CRM system is just as
important as the system itself. If this is not the case, the hoped-for
effect of long-term customer bonding combined with an increasing
efficiency of the work carried out with customer data will not arise.
Various use scenarios of a CRM system are considered in the fol-
lowing. The areas of focus are the relationship of the data quality
and the consequences of poor data quality. Furthermore, a practical
solution approach for providing a newly created or existing CRM
system with high-quality data and maintaining this status quo is pre-
sented.
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All company and product names and logos used in this document are trade names and/or registered trademarks of the
respective companies.
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