Why bother with business information management?

One very good reason is customer satisfaction.

If your customer have more knowledge than you, you are not in a good position. If he or she think that you should know but you don't, then you have a serious issue. The customer satisfaction will be low if this happens and your only hope is that your competitors ain't better than you are. More often than not, CSI for telecom operators is not something to brag about.

Let's give three examples of situations that friends and I have experienced.

• Delayed trains are rather common here in Sweden. A few years ago, the staff on the train didn't have information about traffic-congestions, but as a customer I could get the latest information from Trafikverket. 
• We ordered ADSL last year to our house and it would be delivered a few weeks later. When the installation girl came to the house, she found out that there were no cables to the house. They had not the correct information in their IT-systems and we couldn't be a customer.
• A friend ordered a new iPhone last fall together with a mobile subscription, but the phone was not in stock. A few weeks later, without getting any information about delivery from the operator, he went to the store. They couldn't find which model he order, neither when it would be delivered. He bought his new phone and subscription and phone at another operator.

Whats the lesson learned from these examples? If you lack information about your customer interactions and if there are any issues with their services, then they will leave you if there are any other alternatives.

What you need is to manage information about your customers, your users (they may not be the same individuals), what services they have ordered and what is used. Keep track of any problems etc. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

The problem for many large companies is that they have to many systems,  out-dated integrations, lack of common business processes and non-existent masterdata management. Their challenge is that it's to expensive and to risky to do all changes to the problems at once.

With a Masterdata strategy and a transformation plan that both look at business and the IT is it much more manageable to improve the customer experience.