Customer data management has evolved from paper records and software installed on individual computers to cloud-based systems that are easier to use and maintain. Effective customer data management provides insights into customer behavior that allow companies to better target their marketing, improve customer service, and innovate to meet customer needs. By collecting, organizing and analyzing customer data, companies can segment customers into groups with similar characteristics and develop a deeper understanding of each segment to improve business performance.

1. How A Good Customer Data Management Can Get You Better
Results
I remember a Mark Twain quote. He said that data is much like garbage; one
should know what he/she is going to do with it before collecting it. In simpler
terms, data is compared to garbage here only when it’s left unused. Today,
organizations keep track of their collected information about their customers with
customer data management.
Came a long way!
Customer data management was first introduced as one software solution, in the
1990s.
Customer data management replaced the earlier spreadsheet data, paper-based.
And disc-based surveys. It used to be specific to one company initially; often to a
single department within the same organization.

2. However, soon ASPs (application service providers) took over. It operated with
much ease and avoided the need for IT professionals to support and deploy the
software.
ASPs were again replaced by Saas (software as a service), and in very less time, it
gained popularity as well. SaaS was designed for multi-tenancy and gave
businesses access to customer information that was “on-demand”!
“So what is Saas!?! And how it helps the customer data management?”
Discussing a little about SaaS was only about to establish the fact that customer
data management has become easy today.
SaaS is a software distribution model, which helps third-party providers host
applications and make them available to users over the internet. It’s a category of
cloud computing just like IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (platform as a
service)
Many renowned Customer Data Management Cloud offers customer data
management facilities on subscription-based SaaS platforms.
With SaaS, you won’t have to install and run the applications on your computers
or in your data centers. It eliminates the hardware acquisition, maintenance, and
provisioning expenses.
Customer data management underwent a lot and is now much easier! From being
a software, after evolving out of papers and disks, to now transforming to cloud-
based.
Customer data management: YOU need it!
To state the obvious: Your business can’t survive long without
consumers/customers. Therefore, data related to them is crucial for your business
as well.
Customer data management will get you accurate information about your
customers. At the same time, it will enable your marketing, service, and sales
teams to concentrate on specific customers.
Further with an effective customer data management system, you will understand
your customers in a much deeper manner.

3. Like all other businesses, you will also have to capture your customer data
through various sources and tools.
Needless to say, managing the customer data isn’t going to be easy, especially in
the retail sector. It’s because of the high volume of consumers with continually
changing transactional and personal information.
Customer data management is crucial and needs maintenance for the data
quality. These will be used for future conversions as well.
Further, data management techniques are crucial for acquiring customer insights
as well.
To acquire customer insights, you need a good customer data management
system.
Why would you need to acquire customer insights in the first
place? It’s to understand consumer behavior
You see, a company’s value depends on the expected returns beyond a period, for
which the forecasts exist. Further, the pipeline of the organization’s future cash is
affected by many factors. These factors are the acceleration of future cash,
reduction of uncertainty, sustainment of growth, and improvement on the equity
return.
All these factors ensure an incredible business performance and what happens
when you have an excellent customer insight!
Customers insights help in constant development and innovation of a good brand.
Further, customer insights help in building a healthy relationship, improving
market penetration, and developing a sound portfolio.
Therefore, inability in generating and using consumer insight in regular operations
will only lead to a directionless path!
Another benefit of customer data management is that it helps in customer
segmentation.

4. Customer segmentation and why is it important?
Customer segmentation helps in forming the core of almost all marketing
strategies. It is an essential technique that every marketer follows.
It’s important to point out that understanding your customers’ requirements will
help you deliver a better solution. Additionally, it will also help in improving your
business’ profitability.
It’s natural that every customer will have a different need (mostly). Some of them
will prove to be more profitable than the rest!
With market segmentation, you will be able to divide this heterogeneous and
large customer groups into smaller segments. Further, these smaller segments are
manageable, and you can target them efficiently.
With customer segmentation, you can also develop a sound customer value
proposition as well.
Benefits of customer data management
If I have to sum up the benefits of customer data management and put it like
bullet points, then they will be:
 Data security and compliance through centralization and standardization of
data.
 Better efficiency of the business processes by the elimination of junk and
duplicate data.
 Improvement in sales because of a deeper understanding of customer
requirements
Further, good data management techniques will also help in:
 Generating customer insights
 Customer segmentation
 Creating and building customer loyalty
 Establishing effective communications, and
 Building innovation

5. Summing it up in simpler terms
For businesses to harness massive amounts of collected data, a proper customer
data management strategy is vital.
Today, data are collected on many parameters, and the amount of data is higher
than ever! It is essential to capture the relevant and accurate data, which are
further analyzed. Further, these analyzed data will get converted to effective
insights.
Summing it all up, a customer database management process will include:
 Categorization of customer data
 Verification of the collected data for consistency and accuracy.
 Enrichment of incomplete data
 Collection of customer insight activity and data via customer feedbacks or
other sources like newsletters, customer interaction, reports, surveys,
customer support, and sales.
 Organizing the customer data and sharing across departments.
What we understood
Customer data management is thus the mechanism by which the data of the
organization’s customers is collected, analyzed, and managed.
Further, customer data management helps in resolving customer issues and
requirements. At the same time, it enhances customer satisfaction and retention
as well.
With customer data management you can take your customer data and convert it
to customer intelligence.
Tell us what you feel about customer data management and how it is helpful?
Also, share what your data management techniques are?