Despite investments in data warehouses and CRM systems, many companies still struggle to create a consolidated view of the customer. Customer Hub applications offer business services that act as a broker between systems requesting customer data and the actual data. This allows for a complete and real-time view of the customer. While some companies have custom-built real-time data warehouses, pre-built Customer Hub applications from vendors provide functionality more quickly and affordably. The Customer Hub approach focuses initially on business needs before selecting technology and implements functionality incrementally in phases.

1. Fulfilling the Promise of “Customer 360 Degree view” - The Customer Hub Way - Sierra Atlantic CRM & MDM
Competency Whitepaper
Fulfilling the Promise of “Customer 360 Degree view” - The Customer Hub Way.
Dears,
Despite multi-million dollar investments in data warehouses, ERP’s and CRM systems, many companies
are still struggling to create a consolidated view of the customer and deliver the right data, to the right
person at the right time. As a matter of fact, many sales and marketing executives still identify
incomplete and inaccurate customer information” as their biggest obstacle when attempting to optimize
customer interactions across all channels.
The goal of Customer Data Integration
“To provide a combination of technologies, processes and services to develop and maintain an accurate,
timely and complete view of the customer across multiple channels, business lines and, potentially,
companies, in which there are multiple sources of customer data in various applications and databases.”
Will Customer Hub be the final enabling technology which allows companies to reach the Holy Grail in
customer management and create a truly consolidated view of the customer?
Before answering this question, it is necessary to answer two prerequisite questions?
• Why have ERP and CRM systems been unable to allow companies to create a consolidated view of the
customer?
• What is different about CUSTOMER HUB that will allow it to succeed where data warehousing has
failed?
WHAT ABOUT ERP AND CRM SYSTEMS?
In most organizations, ERP and CRM systems have been unable to deliver the complete view of the
customer because 100 percent of all customer information is rarely stored within the walls of a single
application. It is common practice for companies to use ERP applications from one or more vendors for
Back-office functions, a combination of custom-developed applications and packaged CRM applications
for sales automation and customer service and custom-built applications for other customer touch
points such as the Web. While technically possible to standardize on a single vendor for all Customer-
related applications today, it remains highly impractical for most organizations.
As a result, many organizations build a data warehouse to achieve a complete view of the customer.
Unfortunately, not many data warehouses are real-time, which is a critical requirement when creating a
complete view of the customer to support the enterprise. In addition, data warehouses require a
substantial development effort and do not include a business services layer to encapsulate and protect
the customer data from direct access by external systems.
The unique feature of the new breed of Customer Hub applications is that they offer a layer of business
services, which act as a broker between external systems requesting customer data and the actual
customer data. In reality, it is more appropriate to think of CUSTOMER HUB as a data governance
platform than as an application. Typical business services within a CUSTOMER HUB application suite
include the following:
By: Dinesh Chandrasekar, Practice Director CRM, BI & MDM CoE

2. Fulfilling the Promise of “Customer 360 Degree view” - The Customer Hub Way - Sierra Atlantic CRM & MDM
Competency Whitepaper
Administrative services which allow administrators to do the following:
• Define ‘trust levels’ for each source system that request to insert/update individual customer records
and/or attributes
• Define security levels for each source system and user when accessing customer records
• Approve the addition of new customer records
• Review and correct customer data that is incorrect
• Data manipulation services which receive requests from source systems to insert/update customer
data and apply the previously discussed ‘trust levels’ when doing inserts/updates
• Data access services which receive requests from source systems to read customer data
• “Publish and subscribe” services which publish new/updated customer externally so that customer
data in external application which are subscribers can be updated
• Data quality services which perform such tasks as name and address validation and standardization,
duplicate identification and house holding
In reality, some companies have been able to custom-build a real-time data warehouse which includes
all or some of the above functionality to deliver a complete customer view. However, due to the high
cost of this approach and because numerous vendors, such as Oracle’ Siebel, SAP and Siperian to name a
few, are delivering pre-built Customer Hub applications with some or all of the above functionality, it is
our opinion that the custom route for creation of a customer repository to deliver the complete
customer view to the enterprise should be the path of last resort.
We at Sierra Atlantic believe that Customer Hub represents a natural next step beyond data
warehousing, and will allow many companies to achieve the goal of a complete customer view more
quickly and at a more affordable cost than before.
The most common customer hub architecture is referred to as the “Coexistence Style”
Within the “Coexistence Style,” external applications with customer data communicate with the
“customer master” via the business layer, which provides all the services previously discussed. Ideally,
whenever an external application needs customer data not stored locally, it queries the “customer
master” instead of interfacing with another external system that may have the data. This avoids creation
of a spider web of interfaces between source systems, which are difficult and expensive to maintain. As
a result, the “customer master” becomes the hub in a hub-and-spoke architecture. Once this approach
has been successfully implemented, a new philosophy towards the storage of customer data can be
realized. Going forward, whenever a new customer attribute is needed, the new data element can be
stored exclusively in the “customer master.” Over time, this will allow an organization to not only create
the complete customer view, but also provide architectural separation between their application layer
and data layer. As a result, they ultimately achieve a CUSTOMER HUB architecture style referred to as
the “Transaction Hub Style”
Within the “Transaction Hub Style,” all customer information is stored centrally within the “customer
master.” None of the individual applications store customer data locally - they simply access the
customer information stored centrally. Although it is impractical for most organizations to focus on this
CUSTOMER HUB architecture style initially (because it requires substantial enhancements to most
source systems), it is still noteworthy to be aware of this style, since this should represent a desired end
By: Dinesh Chandrasekar, Practice Director CRM, BI & MDM CoE

3. Fulfilling the Promise of “Customer 360 Degree view” - The Customer Hub Way - Sierra Atlantic CRM & MDM
Competency Whitepaper
state for most organizations. In addition, having this style as a desired end state will impact ongoing
packaged application selection and development.
Although CUSTOMER HUB initiatives ultimately involve implementation of new software and hardware
platforms, technology is definitely not the starting point for a CUSTOMER HUB initiative. Alternatively
we at Sierra Atlantic advocate adherence to our ‘Data-to-Intelligence “ assessment methodology which
initially focuses on the needs of the business community.
The typical sequence of events within our ‘Data-to-Intelligence’ methodology is as follows:
• The first step is to conduct interviews with relevant end-users to understand key business issues and
determine CDI-specific capabilities that a “customer master” must support. Capabilities can be either
transactional or analytical. Transactional capabilities are supported by creation of process flows while
analytical capabilities are supported by defining metrics. In addition, a parallel activity to develop a high-
level understanding of the existing systems is also conducted.
• After finalizing the CDI-specific capabilities that must be supported, the next step is to create a
conceptual data model (entity-level) of customer data to be stored within the “customer master” In
addition, this deliverable should estimate data volumes, insert/update rules, etc. This deliverable will
also be of value later when selecting the CUSTOMER HUB package, since the data modeling flexibility of
CUSTOMER HUB tools vary.
• The software/hardware components should be finalized as part of the ‘Solution Architecture’ step,
making the build vs. buy decision where appropriate. If the decision to buy the software/hard, the next
step would need to include a tool selection RFP
• Create an implementation plan which includes design, development, testing and rollout of the
CUSTOMER HUB application.
To avoid project failure, CDI implementation initiatives must begin with an assessment such as our
‘Data-to-Intelligence’ assessment described above. Since the CDI initiatives require substantial
commitment of resources, it is also impractical to pursue a ‘big bang’ project approach. Alternatively, we
at Sierra Atlantic advocate a phased approach in which CDI functionality (components of the “customer
master”) is delivered incrementally in smaller phases. Ideally, each phase should support one or more of
the following:
• Improved and/or new business processes which are now possible due to the availability of accurate
and timely customer data
• Improved and/or new analytical capabilities which are now possible due to the availability of accurate
and timely customer data
• Elimination of IT infrastructure previously focused on integration of customer data across systems (i.e.
the spider web)
By: Dinesh Chandrasekar, Practice Director CRM, BI & MDM CoE