I urge you to read this post on Forrester Blog before going further on this article, without it if you continue to reading here you may not be able to get the crux of the points discussed.

In the last five odd years, whenever I have presented strategies and recommendations for customer management, enterprises I have worked with often requested us to build a strategy without having to relook into the customer data.

Organizations that played the Data Warehousing Game in the last half-decade without attaching tangible and intangible roles of the warehouse are too skeptical to give the deserved importance to look at the customer data for tangible values – In my opinion, warehouse Solution vendors and importantly some Enterprise Marketing Management Solution vendors are one of the key stake-holders to blame for this.

Amidst of meeting their quarterly figures, they went on a binge to sell software licenses without bothering to address the true needs of Customer Management.

I always requested the enterprises that consider walking the warehouse pathway, to hold their horses before boarding the bandwagon and think over how warehoused data would assist them in making meaningful business decisions, which touches either the top or bottom line of the business. Likewise, urged enterprises to be cautious to deal with Enterprise Marketing Management Solution vendors without adequate Customer Data Management Capabilities.

Sure, you already have substantial data that can be leveraged in customer management but not without some massaging – Fact is, the data that you have as is might not provide value it ought to in customer management, you definitely have to prune it a bit to realize its unseen potential in business.

Always, I repeat, always evaluate how the Customer or Enterprise Marketing Management solution you are considering handles the Customer Data – Firmly insist a demonstration of the solution’s capability around customer data management. In a warehouse scenario, proactively assess what you do once the data is organized in the warehouse pertaining to customer management and other business values it can provide.

In absence of this, you might end up automating some part of Customer Management, but it is surely not complete – Sad part in most of the cases is, you may not even realize the solution is incomplete.

In the world of effectice customer management, data management is one of the crucial steps and not to be ignored..