PROJECT OVERVIEW

Somewhere along the line, "data" became a four-letter word at your financial services company. You're awash in customer data, and too much of it is redundant, out of date or just plain wrong.

The causes are many, and not easily corrected. You have multiple sales units using multiple customer resource management databases, all of which need to integrate with marketing, forecasting and general ledger systems. This lack of coordination spawns lots of unwanted outcomes, from botched sales leads to returned mailings to dead-end phone numbers—all of which cost your company money.

Comprehensively integrating those systems and cleaning up their data would take years—and a massive investment. Focus instead on creating a smaller-scale system that can produce a solid "golden record" for each customer.

The heart of this hub will be a stripped-down database that pulls disparate customer profiles into a single record. To make sure this new system doesn't simply throw bad data after bad, data architects will meticulously clean and map data onto the new platform using tools that help them identify inconsistencies—phone numbers with too few characters, for example, or a that help them identify inconsistencies—phone numbers with too few characters, for example, or a customer listed as "Jim Wilson" in one record and "James Thomas Wilson" in another. The system also will provide a single official view of information on a customer, to whatever application calls for it. This is the "golden record" your downstream users—from call-center staff to data warehouse analysts—also will see on their screens, when they ask for it.

In the end, 4 million customer records from a variety of databases will be consolidated into a single system with just 1 million customer profiles. "The best information from multiple sources is the only data that survives," says Anurag Wadehra, vice president of marketing for Siperian Corp., a customer data integration specialist based in San Mateo, Calif.

To see the details behind this Planner and fill in your own estimates, click on the "Get the Tool" icon above and download the interactive worksheet.