CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: OASIS CIQ MAILING LIST

[Norbert Mikula <Norbert@DataChannel.com>]

      CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: OASIS CIQ MAILING LIST

      The membership of OASIS is hereby notified that the OASIS
      Advisory Committee on Technical Committees (ACTC) has
      authorized Ram Kumar (rkumar@msi.com.au) to institute a
      mail list for the purpose of organizing an OASIS technical
      committee to be called CIQ (Customer Information Quality).  
      A statement of purpose appears at the end of this message.

      All individual and institutional OASIS members and all
      employees of OASIS member organizations are hereby invited
      to join the new list.  Directions for subscribing to the
      list are given following the statement of purpose.

      Discussions on the list will begin April 4th, 2000. At that time, 
      persons who have subscribed to the list will be asked to file
statements
      of their ability and desire to engage in the work at a level
consistent 
      with the operation of an OASIS technical
      committee.  At a date not less than one week following the
      call for affirmations of commitment to the work of the
      proposed committee, a list of those agreeing to the
      conditions of participation will be submitted to the ACTC
      as prospective members of the committee.

      Statement of Purpose

In this customer-centric world, the quality of data within information
systems has emerged as one of the main keys to success.

As companies move to establish closer customer relationships, the need to 
achieve a precise and thorough view of customer dealings and transactions 
is recognised as critical. A direct result of this is the development of 
company-wide customer relationship management strategies, representing a 
combination of business processes, information management tools and 
importantly, data.

Essential to any effective customer focussed strategy is the need for
customer information that meets the highest possible standards in both
quality 
and integrity.  This is the foundation block used in building effective
customer
relationships.

Often, it is only when attempting to unify customer data from disparate
business  systems that the impact of poor quality customer information 
is fully understood.  While data within individual databases may be fit 
for the purpose for which it was  collected, combining data with different 
structures threatens the effectiveness of  entire customer relationship 
initiatives. Adding even further to customer information  quality
degradation 
are discrepancies which can occur at the point of data entry.  
As each error occurs, the ultimate effectiveness of customer data is
degraded.

Utilising customer information firstly requires that it be as close to 100
per cent  error free as possible. Only then, can processes such as verifying
and
matching  customer information, do organisations have the ability to obtain
a total
picture of every involvement they have with any particular individual,
household or
company.  Such information is the basis for a better understanding of
customers' needs
and buying motives. It establishes the foundation upon which to build
effective
one-to-one relationships.

The bottom line is that reliable and accurate customer information is now
more than ever essential in establishing effective customer relationships.

Therefore, customer information quality management is very critical and
hence, the need to develop a standard way of describing Customers (e.g.,
Identity,
Name, Address, etc.) is a compelling one. 
 
As a data quality company committed to solutions for customer information
quality with more than 12 years of experience in this area, Cognito, Inc. (a
business unit of MasterSoft International) has initiated a discussion within
OASIS about
forming a Technical Committee dedicated to the development of a Customer
Information
Markup Language.
 
Cognito has developed the following two markup languages, and would like to
submit these as part of the work in this OASIS TC :
- NAME AND ADDRESS MARKUP LANGUAGE (NAML) and
- CUSTOMER IDENTITY MARKUP LANGUAGE (CIML)
(See http://xml.org or http://www.ozemail.com.au/~sakthi/dtd/dtd.html for
more detail).

      Subscribing to the list

Please participate in the discussion by subscribing to the mailing list
"CIQ":

send an email to majordomo@oasis-open.org with the following in the MESSAGE
area: subscribe CIQ

If you should have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Ram Kumar
(rkumar@msi.com.au, Tel:+61-2-94128315) of Cognito, who is leading the
discussion.

----------------------------------------------
Norbert H. Mikula 
Chief Technology Officer/DataChannel
Norbert@DataChannel.com 
Chief Technical Officer/OASIS
Norbert.Mikula@Oasis-Open.org 
DataChannel, 600 108th Avenue NE 9th Floor, Bellevue, WA 98004
Phone: 425.462.1999 Fax: 425.637.1192 <http://www.datachannel.com/>