A decade ago, companies itching to uncover secrets stored deep in data depositories tediously developed analytic applications from scratch. Today, numerous vendors offer prepackaged analytical applications that significantly cut development and installation time. As enterprises shift from internal to external focus, analytical tools that profile and analyze customer behavior are considered choice investments. Although CRM has played a major role in elevating the profile of analytical tools, it might just be its biggest roadblock.
Analytical applications require a clean store of customer information to perform at full potential.
Maintaining data quality and consistency is where many a CRM implementation goes awry. And if the data warehouse isn t in order, information compiled by analytical tools is of little value. Data warehouses extract, clean, transform and integrate vast amounts of data from disparate systems. These pieces of data are then compiled to create a historical record of all customer interactions across multiple channels and applications. Once a robust information infrastructure is in place, it s time to leverage and enhance that data by adding an analytic component.