A single customer view is an
aggregated, consistent and holistic
representation of the
data
In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete Value_(semiotics), values that convey information, describing quantity, qualitative property, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of sy ...
held by an organisation about its customers that can be viewed in one place, such as a single page. The advantage to an organisation of attaining this unified view comes from the ability it gives to analyse past behaviour in order to better target and personalise future customer interactions. A single customer view is also considered especially relevant where organisations engage with customers through
multichannel marketing, since customers expect those interactions to reflect a consistent understanding of their history and preferences. However, some commentators have challenged the idea that a single view of customers across an entire organisation is either natural or meaningful, proposing that the priority should instead be consistency between the multiple views that arise in different contexts.
Where representations of a customer are held in more than one
data set A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more database tables, where every column of a table represents a particular variable, and each row corresponds to a given record of the ...
, achieving a single customer view can be difficult: firstly because customer identity must be traceable between the records held in those systems, and secondly because anomalies or discrepancies in the customer data must be
data cleansed for
data quality. As such, the acquisition by an organisation of a single customer view is one potential outcome of successful
master data management. Since 31 December, 2010, maintaining a single customer view, and submitting it within 72 hours, has become mandatory for
financial institution
Financial institutions, sometimes called banking institutions, are business entities that provide services as intermediaries for different types of financial monetary transactions. Broadly speaking, there are three major types of financial inst ...
s in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
due to new rules introduced by the
Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
See also
*
Data warehouse
In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. DWs are central repositories of integra ...
References
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Identity management
Business intelligence terms
Data management
Data warehousing