Before going into any details on the different capabilities, let me first discuss the persona involved with CDM. It is important to understand who contributes and benefits from a customer data management system in order to better understand the value it offers.
Individual Contributors
Individual contributors are those users that take the time to verify the data quality of the information they are adding or changing in their applications. This verification happens immediately, in real time, as the new information is being entered.
Oracle Sales Cloud CDM supports real time data management in multiple ways e.g. when a salesrep is creating a new account, CDM can upon creation verify addresses or show that similar existing accounts already exist and hence propose a choice to the salesrep to reuse the already existing information rather than creating a possible duplicate.
Data Steward
But not all data can be checked in real time (e.g. upon data import by administrators). And even with real time verifications, errors or duplicates might sneak in. This is where the data stewards come in. Data stewards are those users that spend their time at work worrying about data quality for everybody else’s data, not just for the data they use or own. Their job is to make sure nobody using customer data has to worry whether or not the data they use is correct and up to date. All they have to do, because of data stewards, is to just use the data.
Data stewards therefore do not check data record per record, but in large batches on a regular basis. They will not handle them in real time as the data changes come in, but rather in the background. And in order to handle large volumes of data, as many of the data management activities are automated. Therefore data stewards only intervene where automated decisions cannot be made.
The Unaware
But the largest group of people benefiting from a Customer Data Management system are the unaware. Those users that no longer need to worry about the quality of their customer data. Those that can design marketing campaigns, quotes and proposals or try to analyze the total customer value without having to worry whether the data they use is unified correct and up to date.
