IDG
News Service, Buenos Aires Bureau
BUENOS AIRES
–
The factors
contributing to the high failure rates of CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
implementations are manifold, the speakers at the first CRM South America Conference held
here said. Among these reasons are the poor coordination between the various departments
and, above all, the failure to view CRM as an enterprise-wide commitment, a change in
philosophy, from the CEO downwards, permeating all the levels of the company. There is an
additional underlying factor: the quality of the data available for CRM operation.
This should not
be taken for granted, said Rick Field, one of the keynote speakers at the event, and
consultant to Acxiom Corporation, a customer data integration company based in Little
Rock, Arkansas. In fact, he said, many CRM and data-mining projects fail because of the
poor quality of the supporting data. In most projects, data is just taken for granted what
is a big mistake, that may lead to wasting money and resources, and to even to memorable
embarrassing blunders.
The fact is
that most companies have an unwarranted confidence in their data; and often do not realize
how corrupted, incomplete or just plain useless it may be. This applies both to internal
data, and to data from external suppliers. In many cases, the external vendors cannot not
offer any guarantee as to the ownership rights and legality of its use.
However, Field
said that there is good data both in Latin America and North America, including clean
traditional mailing lists, business lists, and consumer lists. He recommended renting the
data, rather than buying it, for this keeps the supplier responsible for keeping the data
up to date.
Even with
internal corporate information, many attempts to drill into existing data warehouses are
flawed by bad source data. This is frequently not integrated from the many different
sources, a it is frequently even on separate platforms across a company, which makes
developing a single customer view impossible, he said.
Field's
concerns were echoed by most other speakers at the Conference. "The cleansing and
qualification of the existing data bases should be a primary concern", said Luis
Cudmani, partner of Ordoņez, Bianco Consultores, an Argentine consulting firm. It's only
after that data-mining and data modeling systems can be implemented, he said.
For Mary Teahan, a representative of the Argentine
Association of Direct Marketing (AMDIA) being assured of the legality of the data is
essential. "A direct marketing strategy cannot rely on stolen or illegal data",
he said. And prospects or customers should be given a fair opportunity to
"opt-out" of the marketing lists, if they are not interested. Keeping people in,
if they want to be out, can only be described as counterproductive, the spokesman said.
The data
quality issue is an ongoing concern, the speakers said. Even with the most sophisticated
and careful cleansing and validation methods, it can be expected that there will remain
about 5 per cent of invalid data in every database. For high level personnel, this
percentage climbs at a rate of about 30 per cent per year, if the databases are not
carefully maintained. At this rate, an uncared for database will become almost useless in
about two or three years.
So data is a
valuable company asset, but it requires developing a corporate culture for both data
gathering and maintenance. It is not to be taken for granted.
There is more
information on the CRM South America at http://www.canaltecnologia.com/informacion/crmsouthamerica2001.
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