Build An Agile Customer Data Support Organization

November 4th, 2013

Boris Evelson Vice President, Principal Analyst

Srividya Sridharan VP, Group Director

With contributors:

Michele Goetz , Mike Gualtieri , Diego Lo Giudice , Holger Kisker, Ph.D. , Kurt Bittner , Clay Richardson , Nasry Angel

Summary

In a customer-centric world, designing, architecting, building, and deploying processes and applications based solely on business requirements no longer works. Leading organizations need to take an outside-in approach that puts the overall customer experience (CX) front and center and doesn't treat it as a byproduct. But CX is a very fluid environment, and organizations need to react almost instantly. Customers demand prompt responses to their ever-changing inquiries and comments in social media; competitors try to leapfrog each other with a better CX on a daily basis. Customer data management (CDM) is the foundation on which CX rests, but yesterday's centralized CDM support organizations no longer work; they're too big, too monolithic, too inflexible, and too focused on an unattainable single version of the truth. Business workers rightly demand more control over customer data; they can no longer wait weeks or months for IT to turn around customer data requests. This report provides best practices for building a successful CDM support organization and shows application development and delivery (AD&D) pros responsible for CDM how to interact with all stakeholders in a truly customer-centric enterprise.

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