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Subject: INFORMATION AND UPDATE: OASIS TECHNICAL DISCUSSION GROUP: Customer Information Quality


Dear OASIS Members,

This message comes to you from Ram Kumar (rkumar@msi.com.au) of Cognito,
Inc., an OASIS member. Ram is the Discussion Group Leader for the Customer
Information Quality discussion group. Please read further for detailed
information on the intent and scope  of this group.  If you should have any
questions, or if you should wish to join the group
(ciq@lists.oasis-open.org), please contact Ram directly.

Regards,
Laura


Laura Walker
Executive Director
OASIS
============================
laura.walker@oasis-open.org
Tel: +1 978 667 5115 x201
Fax: +1 978 667 5114




CIQ: THE OBJECTIVE

The objective of OASIS Customer Information Quality (CIQ) discussion group
is to initiate an OASIS Technical Committee to establish and promote a
uniform, unique and identifiable customer profile, carrying elements to find
and reach the person/company behind the profile.


THE NEED FOR CUSTOMER INFORMATION QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Research tells us that it is much more cost effective to retain and invest
in our existing customer base than to build or buy market share. One
customer lost through ineffective marketing means a massive expenditure on
acquiring new customers to make up the lost revenue. This is more apparent
as we move into the e-business environment. As companies move to establish
more effective relationships with their customers, the need to achieve a
complete view of each customer's dealings 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, customer data. Customer data forms the
foundation to build effective customer relationships. To be effective,
customer data must meet the highest possible standards of both quality and
integrity.

Often, it is only when attempting to unify customer data from disparat
ebusiness 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 is collected and used, combining data from a range of
sources for a new and different purpose poses a real threat to the
effectiveness of entire customer relationship initiatives. The bottom line
is that reliable and accurate customer information is now
more than ever essential in establishing effective customer relationships
and therefore, customer information quality management is critical.

The Internet threatens to turn customer marketing on its head. While it has
created tremendous opportunities for relating to customers on a one-to-one
basis, it has also
created a nightmarish challenge for companies struggling to understand this
new way of interacting with customers.

Despite the tantalising opportunity it represents, e-business is still an
inefficient way to attract and retain customers. Customer acquisition costs
on the Internet have
skyrocketed to US$65-250 per customer. Churn is up because more than 50% of
Internet companies cannot respond to their customers. Despite the promise of
the Internet, companies do not know and cannot relate to their customers due
to the poor quality customer data they maintain. To make matters worse,
Internet customers are a global audience. Global customers require
24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week service, have language
differences, multiple data and shipping formats, and vast differences in
demographics, tastes, preferences and so on.

The general belief is that the more we know and understand about each
customer the higher the chances they will purchase and return.Therefore,
retaining e-business
customers by maintaining reliable and accurate information about them is now
the most critical problem in an e-business environment. Customer information
quality management is the answer to this problem.


NAME AND ADDRESS DATA MANAGEMENT STANDARD

Customer data consists of many components. However, a person or company's
name and address is the key identifier of a "customer". Name and address, as
a data type, is
very difficult to manage. This data is often volatile… customers come and
go, addresses change, names change. This data is often cluttered when
entered. Name and address fields on data entry screens are usually free
format and ripe for users to enter comments without any edits. Name and
address is subjective…it can be written in a number of different ways and
still be the same. There is no application independent standard to represent
name and address data and to measure its quality. This problem
is further compounded by the different ethnic backgrounds of name and
address data in a global market.  An application independent XML standard
for name and address data management called Name and Address Markup Language
(NAML) has been developed and this will be discussed and further developed
by the CIQ committee. Though NAML does not include all the address
components throughout the world, it is a good start. NAML will evolve as
more additional name and address components are identified. Businesses
dealing with name and address data (eg. mailing houses, address verification
and management services, name and address data quality vendors, etc) can use
this standard for managing name and address data.


CUSTOMER INFORMATION QUALITY MANAGEMENT STANDARD

Although name and address data is the key identifier of a customer, other
data helps to uniquely identify a customer. Customer addresses frequently
change and it is not trivial to link the customer across multiple addresses
with just name information. In the example below, a customer can have two
completely different addresses and it is nearly impossible to uniquely
identify the customer with the name alone. Customer
centric data such as telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, account numbers,
credit card numbers etc. will be necessary to achieve this. It is therefore,
important to define a
standard for representing all forms of customer data that forms the basis of
customer information quality management. An application independent XML
standard for customer information quality called Customer Identity Markup
Language (CIML) has been
developed and this will be discussed and further developed by the CIQ
committee. CIML provides a framework for representing different data about a
customer and as a result, helps to uniquely identify a customer. Given that
name and address is a subset of customer data, NAML is a subset of CIML.
Businesses dealing with customer data can use this standard.



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