Gaining control of enterprise customer data

At a glance

For a large SaaS provider, lack of a single source of truth for enterprise customers hindered them from capitalizing on cross-selling and upselling opportunities. That’s why they contacted Logic20/20.

Customer Challenge

Our client’s enterprise customer information resided in siloed databases located across numerous departments, making it impossible to get a complete, current, and accurate view of each customer. Not only did each line of business maintain its own product-specific customer records, but each had its own definition of what an enterprise customer is. Even simple tasks—like finding out which products a company owned—often took several weeks to manually complete, with little assurance of accuracy.

When Logic20/20 began work on this project, we uncovered the reason why the client had been unable to integrate their customer data: they did not have a distinct identity for each customer. Over the years, multiple accounts had been created for different variations of the same company (for example, “Acme,” “Acme Company,” “Acme Widget Company, Inc.,” etc.) and for different locations, creating mass confusion around our client’s largest and most profitable customers.

As a result of this confusion, it was difficult for customer service reps to pull up the right record when taking a customer’s call, and it was nearly impossible to calculate the total revenue coming in from each enterprise.

Our client had also begun transitioning from licensing agreements to a subscription model, which requires an accurate accounting of each customer’s product inventory. Without a single source of truth for each customer, the only way to achieve this would have been through a manual process, which would have required a huge commitment of time and resources.

Approach and Solution

Logic20/20 had a long history of successful projects with this client that began more than a decade earlier. Our partners in the organization were familiar with our expertise in master data management and digital strategy, and they knew we were the right choice for this project.

When we documented the client’s current state, we identified 200,000 enterprise customer records that required consolidation. We also created an inventory of more than 100 applications that handled customer data and mapped them to individual departments within the company.

Once we had painted a clear picture of the client’s current situation, we developed a common definition of an enterprise customer and obtained buy-in from key stakeholders. We then proposed a future state, creating a model of what an enterprise customer’s record should look like and how it should function. From there we designed a solution to achieve this vision in a way that integrated seamlessly with the client’s present architecture.

Value and benefits: “The Wins”

At the end of the project, the client had a clear goal—a vision of how to handle enterprise customer data—and a detailed plan for achieving it. After implementing the strategy we developed, they had a single source of truth for every customer, which enabled them to move forward successfully with the transition to a subscription model.