Auria Moore

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies are making a digital transformation. With the ease of delivery services today, more consumers purchase grocery and CPG products online than ever before. In fact, according to the Food Marketing Institute, in the U.S. alone 49% of consumers shop primarily online for consumer packaged goods. This is big news for CPG enterprises, which represents one of the largest industries in North America, valued at approximately $2 trillion annually. While packaged goods have traditionally been sold at brick and mortar stores, customer expectations have spurred companies to reach out to consumers across digital channels. In addition, manufacturing and supply chain processes have become data-intensive.

In my previous post, I discussed the next evolution of CRM, which involves using master data management (MDM) as the foundation to provide a comprehensive understanding of your target audiences. I covered data issues present in many CRMs today, including missing, antiquated and inaccurate data, and how MDM can help overcome them. In this post, I reveal the many ways complete, unified customer data improves business outcomes and delivers value to organizations and customers alike. 

“The purpose of a business is to create a customer.”
- Peter Drucker

Every day, businesses around the world deploy customer relationship management (CRM) in the hopes of selling faster and smarter, building engaging experiences, delivering personalized messages and more. Gartner estimated CRM software revenue reached $39.5 billion in 2017, overtaking database management systems revenue to become the largest software market globally. 

We used to look forward to emails. When we received a “you’ve got mail” alert, we were eager to see who it was trying to communicate with us. Now, outside of work, most of us receive email overload and rarely want to open them. Vendors have it rough. If they want to engage with us, whether it be on the phone, by email or via the ads we see online, it better be worth our while. Consumers of today want personalized messages and offers, and if vendors can’t keep up with those demands, competitors are easily accessible and just a few clicks away.

To reiterate what Tom Redman – aka the “Data Doc” – discussed in his Customer Data: Conquering the 360-View of Your Customerswebinar, the lifeline to business success lies in building customer loyalty and retention as they generate higher revenue. This seems self-explanatory; however, he went on to tell attendees that to achieve this loyalty, “… best-in-class organizations must have a complete 360-view of their customer data in order to respond accurately and intelligently to their customer demands, trends and expectations.”

As marketers, we are constantly challenged to create superior customer experiences that can leave a positive impact on the brand. That is no easy task because customer data and the related information needed to understand them is often located in disparate/siloed systems that prevent us from seeing the whole picture. Thanks to the explosion of the digital economy, we no longer need to convince the C-suite that a 360° customer view is necessary to provide the experience that consumers demand. The real challenge lies in creating that all-encompassing customer view, as a large majority struggle to establish this holistic view.

Apple’s Steve Jobs famously said, “A lot of times people don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” and this couldn’t be truer when it comes to meeting the expectations of the hyper-connected customer. Today, they increasingly expect a personalized, relevant experience during every interaction with a company, regardless of the channel. This has led to the concept of personalization, or personalized marketing, which is a marketing strategy by which companies leverage data analysis and digital technology to deliver individualized messages and product offerings to current or prospective customers.

A colleague recently bought a new car. He was thrilled and anxious to have it delivered within a couple of weeks. Not long after delivery, he received an email from the car manufacturer, featuring a promotion for the exact same car, only at a drastically reduced price.

Within a matter of seconds, the manufacturer had turned my colleague from a brand advocate to a dissatisfied customer.

Oh, how times have changed for retail. 

Some of the biggest retailers we know have been in distress, either filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy or shutting their doors altogether. It’s not (all) Amazon’s fault, although they get the brunt of the blame. The truth is, modern consumers are savvy and have increased expectations. They demand that retailers know more about them, what they want, and what they don’t want.  

2017 is soon coming to an end, which means that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will arrive very shortly. This leaves companies with just a few months to get their final GDPR preparations in place to avoid economic sanctions and public scandal. But how far are organizations really in their preparations? Will they be ready? And what about the non-European companies? How much will they all invest in the new personal data regulation and what are their biggest challenges? Will consumers even use their new rights?

Master Data Management (MDM) is a BIG topic. Especially since it encompasses many moving parts. You’re not just mastering data; that data touches multiple systems, affects people, overlaps with other projects, and changes or creates processes that may or may not have previously been in place.