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 (business), client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a Good (economics), good, service (economics), service, product (business), product, or an Intellectual prop ...

information and survey their customer base in order to obtain feedback. CDM includes a range of software or

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

applications designed to give large organizations rapid and efficient access to customer data. 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 customer base. Efficient CDM solutions provide companies with the ability to deal instantly with customer issues and obtain immediate feedback. As a result, customer retention and

customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing to evaluate customer experience. 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 ...

can show marked improvement. According to a study by Aberdeen Group, "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 "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

offers an attractive choice for CDM in many companies due to its accessibility and cost-effectiveness. 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 a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

(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 act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce. Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...

, 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 ' ...

and IT departments * enables companies to create and email online surveys, reports and newsletters * encompasses and simplifies customer relationship management (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 c ...

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 providers (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 administrato ...

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 cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike o ...

(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 Customer relationship management Data management

Customer data management and cloud computing

Uses for management

Background

See also

References