Customer data management (CDM) is the ways in which businesses keep track of their

customer In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea - obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange for ...

information and survey their

customer base The customer base is a group of customers who repeatedly purchase the goods or services of a business. These customers are a main source of revenue for a company. The customer base may be considered a business's target market, where customer beha ...

in order to obtain feedback. CDM embraces a range of software or

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

applications designed to give large organizations rapid and efficient access to

customer data Customer data or consumer data refers to all personal, Behaviorism, behavioural, and demographic data that is collected by marketing companies and departments from their customer base. To some extent, data collection from customers intrudes into c ...

. Surveys and data can be centrally located and widely accessible within a company, as opposed to being warehoused in separate departments. CDM encompasses the collection, analysis, organizing, reporting and sharing of customer information throughout an organization. Businesses need a thorough understanding of their customers’ needs if they are to retain and increase their

. Efficient CDM solutions provide companies with the ability to deal instantly with customer issues and obtain immediate feedback. As a result,

customer retention Customer retention refers to the ability of a company or product to retain its customers over some specified period. High customer retention means customers of the product or business tend to return to, continue to buy or in some other way not defe ...

and

customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction (often abbreviated as CSAT) is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of c ...

can show marked improvement. According to a study by

Aberdeen Group Aberdeen is an international marketing intelligence company. Aberdeen's headquarters is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States, with an additional US office location in Wilton, CT, as well as three European offices in Versailles (France), ...

inc.: "Above-average and best-in-class companies... attain greater than 20% annual improvement in retention rates, revenues, data accuracy and partner/customer satisfaction rates."

Customer data management and cloud computing

Cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

offers an attractive choice for CDM in many companies due to its accessibility and

cost-effectiveness Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a form of economic analysis that compares the relative costs and outcomes (effects) of different courses of action. Cost-effectiveness analysis is distinct from cost–benefit analysis, which assigns a monetar ...

. Businesses can decide who, within their company, should have the ability to create, adjust, analyze or share customer information. In December 2010, 52% of

Information Technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

(IT) professionals worldwide were deploying, or planning to deploy, cloud computing; this percentage is far higher in many countries.

Uses for management

Customer data management * should provide a cost-effective, user-friendly solution for

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

, research, sales,

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include m ...

and IT departments * enables companies to create and email online surveys, reports and newsletters * encompasses and simplifies

customer relationship management Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information. CRM systems compile data from a ra ...

(CRM) and customer feedback management (CFM)

Background

Customer data management, as a term, was coined in the 1990s, pre-dating the alternative term enterprise feedback management (EFM). CDM was introduced as a software solution that would replace earlier disc-based or paper-based surveys and

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in cel ...

data. Initially, CDM solutions were marketed to businesses as software, which were specific to one company, and often to one department within that company. This was superseded by

application service provider An application service provider (ASP) is a business providing application software generally through the Web. The ASP model The application software resides on the vendor's system and is accessed by users through a communication protocol. Altern ...

s (ASPs) where software was hosted for

end user In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrat ...

organizations, thus avoiding the necessity for IT professionals to deploy and support software. However, ASPs with their single-tenancy architecture were, in turn, superseded by

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is con ...

(SaaS), engineered for multi-tenancy. By 2007 SaaS applications, giving businesses on-demand access to their customer information, were rapidly gaining popularity compared with ASPs. Cloud computing now includes SaaS and many prominent CDM providers offer cloud-based applications to their clients. In recent years, there has been a push away from the term EFM, with many of those working in this area advocating the slightly updated use of CDM. The return to the term CDM is largely based on the greater need for clarity around the solutions offered by companies, and on the desire to retire terminology veering on techno-jargon that customers may have a hard time understanding.

References

{{Reflist Data management

Customer data management and cloud computing

Uses for management

Background

See also

References