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87 Percent of B2Bs Queasy About Customer Data QualityBy David Sims TMCnet Contributing Editor Does it shock you that 87 percent of B2B respondents in a recent survey expressed "little confidence" in their customer data? Extraprise, a B2B database marketing services and CRM systems integration provider, has announced results from the 2006 Extraprise DM Days NY Conference and Expo survey, which gauged marketers' top challenges, found that grim statistic.
One reason is simply that there's way, way too much of it swirling around. "Often times, companies are overwhelmed with issues related to the quality of their customer data and just don't know where to start," said Chad Gottesman, chief marketing officer, Extraprise. As noted business process and management philosopher Frank Zappa said once, information is not knowledge. Oh, and don't eat the yellow snow. More than half (54 percent) of B2B companies surveyed indicated that the lack of sales and marketing collaboration is their most important challenge. Only half (52 percent) of companies surveyed claimed to have integration between their sales and marketing systems. Slightly more than one-third (39 percent) of respondents indicated that data-related issues were the next challenge facing their marketing efforts. The survey findings are based on responses from a sample of attendees interviewed at DM Days New York Conference and Expo 2006. Other topics covered within the survey included how many disconnected data sources cover some aspect of their customers (59 percent have data in at least four different locations whereas 18 percent cite between 5-10 locales and 23 percent claim to have data in more than 10 systems). David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page. |