Three Drivers for an Effective Customer Reference Data Foundation – Part 2

As we saw in my first post of this series, our recent surveys with data leaders in both North America and Europe revealed an increased focus on improving customer reference data. Sharing excerpts from the survey results, we continue to look at the three key drivers and investment priorities across both regions.

Driver #2 – The Need for Speed

Real-time access to quality data is key to improving field performance, providing timely insights, and maintaining compliance but many companies are constrained by slow data access and lengthy update processes.

In Europe:

• 66% struggle to close-out events quickly and accurately because of unsatisfactory access to the customer profile data needed from their legacy data provider.
• 49% find the data change request validation process slow.
• Four business days is the average time for data providers to process data change requests. This is a considerable improvement from the average of eleven business days reported by our survey in 2016 but is still more than double the time that respondents would prefer.

In North America:

• 49% say it takes 2-5 business days to resolve DCRs and 27% cite durations of 6-10 business days.
• Only 24% feel that their organization currently has the ability to offer timely, actionable insights to field reps.
• 56% cite recency and frequency of data updates in their top three data quality priorities.

Slow access to data and lengthy data change request processes impact field force effectiveness, increase compliance risks, and impede digital transformation efforts. Renaud Sermondade, former VP global head of insights and analytics at Sanofi, perfectly highlighted the path to success when he said, “We are asking a lot from our field force. We need to be able to give them access to real-time data to help them be efficient and react quickly to changes in customer data or territory updates.”

Accelerating customer data improvements

The survey reveals an increasing focus on improving the accuracy and speed of customer reference data to better support digital transformation efforts.

In Europe:

• 88% of respondents identify improving customer data as a top priority for their organization.
• 78% are currently undertaking or planning a customer data enhancement initiative.
• 77% of initiatives aim to provide better data access to improve sales force effectiveness.

In North America:

• 26% are planning to switch to a new primary provider for customer reference data.

Read Part 3 – Harmonizing data for a single customer view

To gain more insights into the state of customer reference data, download the full reports for North America and Europe.

Originally posted on LinkedIn