Integrated Data — One Step Ahead With Your Direct Selling Business

Peter Bosson and Henry Lee are two entrepreneurs and direct selling enthusiasts who have been partnering for quite a long time with their business which has improved growth rate and revenue each year. They are particular and meticulous with implementing cutting-edge features and technology into their business which will benefit their customers in the long run. They have been leveraging the power of data analytics and have implemented top-notch security measures towards protecting customer data from cyberspace.

However, they recently learned about data integration but were a bit baffled about how to incorporate it into their business. They decided to approach Andrew Gordon, their friend, and data scientist to understand the scope of data integration with their business further.

What is integrated data?

Peter — Hey Andrew, thank you for coming over to help us out. Further to our telephone conversation, we wanted to know what exactly is integrated data and how can it benefit a direct selling business like ours.

Andrew — Hi Peter and Henry, first of all, I am glad that I could help you with this because, at a time when businesses still haven’t understood and taken data analytics seriously, young entrepreneurs like you are moving fast ahead to deliver outstanding customer experience imbibing the power of data.

With customer data integration in direct selling organizations, you could identify, consolidate, and manage customer information from across the organization’s databases to conclude the collected data. This valuable data has been compiled from all of your available systems like contact details, financial data, market research data, social media, and information gathered from surveys or other direct marketing techniques. Integrated customer data will help your organization drive sales and revenue by analyzing customer preferences, behavior, demographics, and pain points with which you can improve your overall customer experience.

Data integration and direct selling

Henry — We aren’t sure if data integration would benefit our business in any way. So could you please help us understand various aspects of how data integration can be put to good use?

Andrew — Certainly. Yours is a direct selling business and hence, you could have a vast volume of data. Imagine the hassle it would cause you when you have to log into various platforms to add, delete or update information. Quite maddening, right? Whereas, with integrated data, your data can be stored in one place which safeguards your data and makes it easy for you to access from one single point.

Let me give you an example, imagine you have a customer who is unhappy because your accounts team overcharged him by mistake. The issue is being taken care of by the customer support team and the finance department. But being unaware of this, your sales and marketing team sends a promotional email or an email asking for a product review. This could further worsen the situation leading to losing the customer forever. This is why you should have only one data silo or a single source of truth.

I know as a brand you are very particular about delivering high-end customer experiences. Making customer data integration an integral part of your direct selling business could help you with

• Product refinement — From various customer feedback, you know where you need to improve from its development to manufacturing till it comes to stands.
• Sales improvement — Increase lead conversion by concentrating on consumers based on how likely they are to buy your product.
• Marketing — Get into your customer’s shoes, speak their language, and curate personalized messages from data derived from customer touchpoints.
• Increase customer loyalty — You have a large volume of data with you with which you can identify gaps in marketing communication, customer service, and even abandoned carts.
• Make meticulous business strategies — Through data cleansing and validation, discarding outdated data, removing duplicated data, etc could help you build a foolproof data-driven business strategy.

An integrated customer data will ensure your data is unique avoiding each department collecting the same data. With this strategy, you can be sure that your data is unique and updated and also clearly understand if you have missed out on anything. With CDI, you can also be sure of data accuracy and the quality of data instead of having to scroll through a hundred windows leaving yourself confused and not being able to conclude.

Data silos and data integration

Peter — Could you please elaborate on data silos?

Andrew — Well, technically, a data silo is a chunk of data owned by one group that is not fully or easily accessible by a different group within the same organization. This means different departments such as finance, HR, administration, branding, marketing, research and development, sales team, etc would require various sets of information for their work. This information thus gathered for their requirement would be stored in their specific locations, this is called an information or a data silo.

So earlier I told you that it is ideal to have only one data silo or a single source of truth, this is because siloed data could create barriers to collecting and sharing information and collaboration among departments impacting the data quality and inconsistency. Data silos also create barriers to analyzing comprehensive data at the management level. This would eventually affect the decision-making process of the organization impacting its growth, revenue, and every other factor towards success.

As a direct selling organization, you should be able to carry out informed decision-making, improve business intelligence, and get a complete picture of your customer’s journey to enhance customer satisfaction and experience with your brand. Customer data integration is imperative for all of these to have a clear-cut strategy in place for data management.

How not to do data integration?

Henry — While we are at it, I am just wondering, could we go wrong with data integration? I mean, as we begin to execute this system in our organization, what are the possibilities of it going wrong?

Andrew — Very valid question, Henry. This is something we usually tend to neglect but has huge importance. Data as we all know is very sensitive, so while we are handling data of any sort, we gotta be careful since it could create damage at many levels to the organization as a whole. Data integration could mess up and slow down your entire business process when integrated improperly.

For example, your brand has a subscription program, and one of your customers unsubscribed the same owing to particular reasons. But when you continue to send them subscription renewal reminders and offers, it could be irritating and make a negative impact on the organization. And hence, poor data integration not only hurts the decision-making process but also increases marketing costs, increasing the number of mistakes and eventually leading to lower retention rates.

Before you take the plunge, make sure that you can understand various types of data integration and identify which one to opt for your business.

Conclusion

Peter — Andrew, we can’t thank you enough for being so patient with our doubts and explaining data integration at such length.

Andrew — Come on, Peter! I am just hoping that this information turns out to be useful for you and your company because data integration has tremendous scope. It can help you identify new opportunities, reach out to target audiences, forecast prospective sales, and predict industry trends.

Let me remind you again, be very clear about how you want to adopt data integration into your business. Identify the source systems from where you want to extract data. Allocate data access based on whom and why would they need access. Outline your company’s intention towards integrating customer data. Develop metrics to measure and analyze whether your business is meeting these objectives. And finally, zero down on the processes and rules to be incorporated into your CDI strategy including data governance, protection, and quality.

Strong data is like a good friend whom you can trust, rely on, and be sure that is going to be there as and when you need it through thick and thin. You guys can always come back to me in case you get stuck somewhere with adapting to the system. After all, what are friends for!? Cheers guys, let this new giant leap take your business to places.