What is the right approach and right SCV (Single Customer View) to underpin a customer-centric strategy?

The SCV and its central role in customer data quality

Providing genuine continuity throughout the customer journey is now essential, and the quality of the experience really is a potent differentiating factor. And for customers, using different channels to gather information, purchase and then pick up their goods is now commonplace. Usages have changed a great deal and the number of contact points has expanded.

For businesses, this trend further emphasises the importance of adopting a customer-centric philosophy.By initiating contact at the right moment, it is possible to hit the customer’s sweet spot. But to know where and when your potential users or buyers should be approached, having full knowledge of their usages is vital. Customer data must be both exhaustive and accessible if it is to effectively guide brands’ commercial strategies.

The issue looms all the larger as customer data is nowadays scattered across many business applications (CRM, WMS, e-commerce websites, etc). In the absence of a centralisation mechanism, collecting and making full use of this data is both vital and more complicated.

So while CRM has quickly become crucial to understanding and operationally managing all dealings with customers, the Single Customer View (SCV) focuses all customer-related information in one central point.

This master data repository must make it possible to:

• automate the intelligent collection and sorting of customer data to support marketing
• determine a single version of the customer truth that can be distributed across the entire IS
• manage data and compliance despite developments in both software and in relevant regulations

What are the expected benefits from using an SCV?

In the first instance, the SCV meets the need to unify, structure and ensure the quality of data arriving from many different sources. To this end, it carries out tasks such as:

However, the Single Customer View should also allow functional users to extract more value from data by means of:

The SCV also plays an important role in data governance, and how data is circulated around the IS. Data streams can then serve as input to business processes at the right time. Improved aggregation of customer data in reports and scenarios means it provides better support for decision-making.
Lastly, a SCV makes both the data and access to it more secure, helping with GDPR compliance.

Implementing the right single customer view

Implementing an SCV needs a plan, and the technology chosen for this data hub must be consistent with the internal organisation.

Implementation of a single customer view follows a series of precise steps that should ensure the subsequent quality of data and data streams:

1. Determine the data collection points (through a data collection plan, which is used to improve collection techniques and channels)
2. Map the Information System
3. Determine SCV use cases
4. Select the appropriate software by producing a specification then examining a shortlist of publishers’ products
5. Roll the software out, which requires thorough coordination, configuration and a testing phase

While it is possible to choose a tool that is integrated into a CDP or CRM system, there are advantages to implementing a separate system.
The Master Data Management module enables your SCV to be a fully business-wide tool, providing a single version of the truth serving as input to all processes with the same data quality, regardless of the business applications concerned.

Your single customer view platform with Blueway

Blueway’s Master Data Management module is a key solution to centralising SCV data. It unifies the views the different business departments have of data, and controls each stage in data update and confirmation. In addition, MDM introduces a strong collaborative dimension, ensuring that all parties concerned are working with a single version of accurate data.

Communication between the SCV and business applications also needs to be managed, as well as MDM itself. By combining MDM with ESB and BPM systems, Blueway’s single customer view platform can maintain data and circulate it around the whole IS:

• The ESB application bus plays a coordinating role by improving communication within the information system. The ESB provides better supervision of data traffic between applications and accelerates data transfers to and from the SCV.
• Lastly, BPM plays an essential additional role for all users of customer data, by supporting the putting in place of business processes, portals and user interfaces.

Linking these three applications means that the platform is not limited to unifying data. Together, they provide a business-wide view embracing users in functional departments and the IS architecture, throughout the customer data lifecycle.