Customer data integration can be defined as the process of collecting or assimilating and managing customer information from all the resources that are available. The data so consolidated includes the details of the customer, customer valuation data (the process in which a company evaluates its past data and on its basis selects quite a few customers to augment its profits) as well as information garnered via direct marketing or interaction (for instance through advertising campaign that seeks to obtain an action from specified group of consumers in response to an interaction from the marketer).
Adequately performed customer data integration results in important sections of the company to have constant access to the most current and complete view of customer information available. So customer data integration forms a significant element of customer relationship management. Customer relationship management stands for methodologies; software and often Internet capabilities that enable an enterprise manage customer relationships in a systematic way.
While poor integration of data can endanger ERP, CRM, data warehousing and business intelligence initiatives for the data at the foundation of these efforts does not provide a correct picture of your business.
In order to minimize risk and ensure the delivery of project on time and within budget, it is important to have a proper data integration strategy. Data integration is not confined to matching and linking of data but is also about having an access to right data sources at the right time. Data integration is all about working within a current application atmosphere that leads to good quality information received at new data targets during data migration or combination efforts.
Data integration helps public and private sector organizations in UK to get the most out of their communications infrastructure. There are five major levels of integration that most businesses try to deal with-