The biggest capital in companies is not the stored products or the property values. If you add the potential for growth to a company, it is the customer data that secures success for the future.

In consideration of this fact, the maintenance of the customer data gets a special meaning. In many companies today, customer data is considered to be set after the first contact. Possible changes are therefore often only enforced on proactive notification by the customers themselves. How valuable the proactive maintenance of one’s own customer data is, is often underestimated.

If information concerning a customer is initially incorrect, it may be difficult to update the information. If, for example, a customer moves or changes his e-mail address, it can be extremely labour- and cost-intensive to process the incorrect information. Sustainable data management can provide support that prevents potential additional work for address determination. The value of data as the foundation of modern business processes or entire business models is increasing. Thanks to the next generations of business applications, social media, cloud computing model or the Internet of Things, data sources are also increasing. On the other hand, thanks to the use of modern analytics or streaming processing, the usability of already available information increases. At the same time, in view of the growing complexity and dynamics of business processes, effective use of data requires systematic elimination of barriers in the channels of access to business functions and data.

A further, hardly noticeable error is the incorrect addressing of customers. By consistently using the wrong form of address, a certain disrespect may be signalled to the customer. In most cases, this error is hardly noticeable, because most customers do not report a wrong salutation.

Successful enterprises demonstrate it: A careful care of the customer data is the basis for several successful marketing measures. This does not always require the establishment of a separate department. So-called master data management can also be outsourced.

The outsourcing of master data maintenance offers additional advantages. The establishment of an internal department is very cost-intensive and must be kept up to date regularly in our fast-moving times by modern software. If the data is maintained by an external partner who specializes in this area, a sustainable quality of the customer data is ensured.

The services of such partners range from process consulting and process design to the creation of a maintained customer database.