| Dirty Data is a Business Problem, Not an IT Problem
Over the next two years, more than 25 percent of critical data in Fortune 1000 companies will continue to be flawed -- that is, the information will be inaccurate, incomplete or duplicated, according to research and advisory firm Gartner Inc. Gartner expects that three-quarters of large enterprises will make little to no progress towards improving data quality until 2010. To gain competitive advantage from information, organizations need to identify ‘data stewards’ in the business and manage information as a corporate asset.
Gartner research shows that poor-quality customer data leads to significant costs, such as higher customer turnover, excessive expenses from customer contact processes like mail-outs and missed sales opportunities. But companies are now discovering that data quality has a significant impact on their most strategic business initiatives, not only sales and marketing. Other back-office functions like budgeting, manufacturing and distribution are also affected.
Compliance and transparency are now at the top of the list of most companies’ data concerns, according to Gartner. Legislation such as the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the European Basel Accords and the Privacy Act in Australia now demands that information is accurate and managed appropriately.
According to Gartner, data quality has many facets, including: existence (whether the organization has the data); validity (whether the data values fall within an acceptable range or domain); consistency (whether the same piece of data stored in multiple locations contains the same values, for instance); integrity (the completeness of relationships between data elements and across data sets); accuracy (whether the data describes the properties of the object it is meant to model); and relevance (whether the data is the appropriate data to support the business objectives).
The first two of these aspects of quality represent a good starting point for improvement, as they can be measured fairly easily and will help identify major gaps in the data. From there, organizations should look at including other attributes in their definition of data quality.
According to Gartner, the market for data quality tools is currently small (approximately US$300 million in annual license revenue) but growing. Large vendors, such as Business Objects, IBM and Pitney Bowes, have entered via acquisitions, while numerous small vendors have developed their own data quality technology.
In Gartner’s annual survey of 1400 CIOs worldwide released this month, business intelligence was again ranked the number one technology priority, as organizations increasingly rely on data to drive growth and innovation.
More...
Financial Services Customers Want Personalization
Nearly three-quarters -- 74 percent -- of respondents indicate they would be more likely to buy products and services from their financial services companies if the offers were relevant and personalized, according to a new financial services customer satisfaction survey from StreamServe Inc. The results show that firms are missing a tremendous opportunity to enhance customer value by failing to communicate with their clients in a relevant, personal manner.
The goal of the online survey was to understand how customers perceive account and promotional communication materials (letters, brochures, email, etc.) received from a range of financial services companies. Two hundred financial services customers in the United Kingdom participated in the survey.
Survey results indicate that the majority of financial services companies fail to effectively communicate and market products and services to existing customers, causing these organizations to miss an opportunity to increase revenue and improve customer service. Seventy-four percent of respondents indicate they would be more likely to buy products and services from financial companies if the offers were highly personalized, relevant and treated them as individuals.
Financial services customers regularly receive communications for products or services that are not relevant to their needs, or even worse, communications that promote products and services they already have through that company. Consequently, 59 percent of financial services consumers who responded to the survey claim they don’t feel valued when it comes to the communication of products and services from their existing providers.
Among the key findings:
- 88 percent of financial consumers claim to receive regular communications for products and services that are not directly relevant to them and their circumstances.
- 64 percent of financial consumers claim they are more likely to stop using companies that regularly send them inaccurate or irrelevant communications material.
- 65 percent of financial consumers don’t feel like they are being treated as an individual with regard to the communications they receive.
- Well over half (56 percent) of all financial consumers say they are less likely to buy from companies that send them information on products and services that are irrelevant to them.
- More than half of financial consumers (58 percent) claim to regularly receive communications selling them products and services they already have with that company.
- 71 percent of financial consumers claim to regularly receive documents from the same company at the same time in different envelopes.
More...
Pricing Exceptions, Demand are Top Concerns for High-Tech Execs
A recent survey sponsored by Model N, a provider of revenue management solutions, and conducted by Yankee Group, provides a comprehensive look at a broad range of issues related to the sales, pricing, quoting and channels price and inventory management processes of semiconductor and electronic components companies. The survey has revealed significant areas of concern among the respondents and strong agreement on several of the top issues such as visibility into demand and the challenges of pricing exceptions. The survey highlighted that without a comprehensive approach to managing the revenue life cycle, revenue leakage caused by inconsistent pricing across channels and regions, internal bidding wars, non-compliance with contract commitments, and inaccurate reconciliation of POS data can cost semiconductor and electronic component companies up to $30 million in margin erosion on every $1B in sales.
The survey covered a broad range of critical business processes including price determination, price management and publishing, quoting, opportunity management, design registration and channels incentive management. When polled on their perceived top challenges for revenue and price management, the results were:
- 62% cite frequent exceptions to standard pricing.
- 59% cite visibility and tracking design activity and opportunities.
- 57% cite timely response to customers and partners.
- 46% cite visibility into profitability at the customer or transaction level.
More...
IT Services Revenue and Marketing Budgets Rising in 2007
ITSMA, a membership organization that helps companies market and sell technology services and solutions, has released findings from its annual survey on services marketing budgets and trends. The survey, which was conducted with 44 participants from ITSMA member companies including Cisco, Dell, IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP, shows that services marketers are optimistic about the year ahead, predicting increased budgets, increased gross margins, and increased headcount in their departments.
ITSMA members reported services revenue growth of 21% in 2006, which is more than three times the amount the IT market grew as a whole. And the survey respondents expect that growth to keep right on going, predicting 19% services revenue growth for the year ahead.
Meanwhile, after a serious dip in services marketing budgets to just 1% of services revenue in 2005, survey respondents reported that, in 2007, services marketing budgets are expected to average 1.5% of services revenue. Furthermore, fifty percent of respondents reported that their budgets will grow in 2007, with only 7% saying that their budgets will decrease.
Average services gross margins at ITSMA member companies hit 33.9% last year, up from 31.6% in 2005 and 29.3% in 2004. Sixty-eight percent of survey respondents believe that services gross margins will increase again in 2007; only 9% believe gross margins will decrease.
In addition, 54% of survey respondents reported that they expect to increase headcount over the course of the year. Only 15% indicated that the size of their department will shrink.
More...
|
