Why every business needs data management for identity resolution

Identity resolution helps organizations like yours connect the dots between databases, to create a singular profile of each and every customer—no matter if they engage with you through different lines of business or marketing channels.

The thing is: What if the information you are capturing for one customer is different across channels or brands under your business. You won’t know it’s the same customer.

This is risky for a variety of reasons—fraud, regulation compliance, and even duplicative targeting efforts. There are costs associated to these risks alone that impact a business.

We’re here to tell you that data management prevents these unnecessary costs and is essential when it comes to identity resolution.

Why is identity resolution important?

Identity resolution—at any level—is important because it helps you better understand who your customers are, improves marketing ROI, mitigates risky financial decisions, while streamlining communications cross-departmentally, and saving you time navigating databases.

With the drastic market shifts we are experiencing today, knowing who your customers are and their needs have become more important than ever. We find that 75 percent of business leaders say they have seen a dramatic change in their customer’s buying behavior during the pandemic, according to our 2021 Global data management research report. Having a clear view of your customer identities can help you keep up with changes in consumer behaviors, to better understand their buying patterns, demographics, and their payment preference.

Having the right customer data to create a consistent and holistic representation of each individual customer is valuable, not only to marketing, but to support, product development, finance, logistics, purchasing, and so on.

Why is data management a key component to identity solutions?

Our latest research reported that only 50 percent of businesses believe their CRM data is clean and fully leverageable, which hasn’t changed in the last few years. If this sounds familiar, the reality is that you could be making decisions off inadequate customer data.

When you are capturing data across various channels or even business units, that data is what gives you the information needed to connect identities across various databases and create a single and all-inclusive view of each and every customer.

Andrew Abraham, the global managing director for Experian’s data quality business, says in our latest research report, “From the efficiency of the customer experience online to the data that helps us analyze markets and attitudes changing at a dizzying pace, the right data has become indispensable.”

That identity not only gives you the ability to understand who your customers are and their needs on a deeper level but allows everyone across your organization to better know your customer base—to market to them, support them, sell to them, and beyond.

Of course, identity resolution supports your efforts to improve customer experience, but that’s not all. Data management for identity resolution will streamline your operations. By connecting data sets together, your business users and data professionals can more easily navigate databases for analysis and reporting. Furthermore, you can be confident your teams are pulling reports that are complete with accurate data trends.

To effectively use data management for identity resolution, you have to think about the right processes, people, and tools that will be naturally adopted by your business. This is not a one-time project but a disciple to become a data-driven business. 

How to get started

Whether you start by validating customer contact data to get an identity or implement a fully developed identity solution with data management capabilities, high-quality data is your starting point.

We find that 91 percent of business leaders we surveyed are prioritizing the improvement of data quality, on some level, over the next 6-12 months. It’s important you are working with the right information as you build your identity strategy.                       

To get started on identity resolution with data management first consider your tools:

1. Contact data validation software can be a quick-win, budget-friendly solution that will ensure you are capturing validated data at the point of entry. This sets you on the path toward identity resolution, making your data actionable and keeping you in touch with customers.

2. A data management software with profiling, standardizing, cleansing and matching capabilities can create a consolidated, consistent, and clean view across your data sets. Not only will this prep your database for a reference file, but it can also automate your data processes.

3. An identity solution with data quality capabilities can automate data cleansing so you can be confident every record your pinning is accurate.

After you determine how you want to pursue data management as it relates to your identity strategy, think about the other resources you need to have in place.

1. Hiring for data skills: Business leaders believe data will be a core competency over the next few years so many are implementing data literacy programs on some level. Our 2021 Global data management research shows that 85 percent of respondents say they are hiring data roles in the next 6 months, which could be data quality analysts and data governance managers.

2. Data as a discipline: Implementing data processes across your business creates a data-insightful culture. More and more business users want access to trusted data. When you democratize your data, make sure your business users have user-friendly technology and have the baseline skills to read, write, and argue with data.

Make data fit for purpose—for your identity strategy and your business. Identity resolution is no easy undertaking but with the right information backing your initiative, you can be confident you have a clear view of each and every customer and, ultimately, see a higher return on investment.

The time to add data management to your identity strategy is now.

Contact us today