According to Ted Friedman, an analyst from Gartner, though many organizations have at last acknowledged the importance of customer data quality, only few of them have actually implemented data quality tools or any data quality initiatives throughout the enterprise. Moreover, even those organizations that actually use the tools still do not use them enterprise-wide.

Among the reasons some analysts name the fact that that most companies collect and store customer data in numerous data sources spread throughout the organization with no way to connect them. Organizations fail to apply data quality tools enterprise-wide by reason of lacking a single view of the customer through a master data management (MDM) system or customer data integration (CDI) initiative. Some may have up to 10 different customer databases with no single schema for collecting customer data.

As an effect, poor or siloed data lead to missed cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and can even deter potential customers who usually expect personalized interactions.

It’s high time for the companies to start thinking broadly about data quality in the context of enterprise information management and MDM/ CDI initiative.

Experts advise companies with simple customer data quality needs to start with tools embedded in their existing applications.  However most organizations will need to invest in more specialized tools for sophisticated tasks like data parsing and standardization.

Though the adoption of deploying customer data quality tools enterprise-wide is still lagging, the experts predict it will shortly gain momentum as more and more companies recognize the advantage it can provide over competitors.