How do you solve the challenge of disparate data sets?

Data is both battleground and weapon

‘Information wins wars' is a saying that is as applicable to the enterprise as the battlefield. Not only do you need to know what your competitors are up to, but what your customers want and how they want it, too.

Converting one-time sales into a lasting customer relationship is one of the key aims of customer experience programmes, but making the change is difficult without the right information - or if it's in the wrong place.

Liaison recently helped a pharmaceutical company to collate its siloed data systems in order to gain a holistic view of its customers. Sales and marketing teams in particular were being held back by disparate CRM systems and inconsistent communications with healthcare providers.

Two siloed CRM systems meant that it was difficult for the client company to differentiate between customers and anticipate their needs. To solve this issue, it opted for a Customer Information Management Solution (CIMS) to connect separate systems together, and chose Liaison to handle the software, hosting, operations, support and stewardship.

Liaison explained to us how it rolled out a cloud-based CIMS (the Alloy dPaaS platform), which included a commercial data warehouse, master data management, data integration and business intelligence components, in several phases.

As well as taking a data-centric approach, the system is integrated with the client's existing enterprise systems, including SAP, Veeva, SalesForce and Tableau.

Liaison said that its experience in the life sciences industry enabled it to develop the entire solution for the client, with no need to go to third parties. The company's familiarity with the market enabled it to complete an important phase of the project four months earlier than expected.

Both sales and marketing teams now have that much-desired 360° view of the customer, with the ability to gain a deeper understanding of their needs. The client said that this has helped it to increase its revenue through cross- and upselling.

Information certainly does win wars, and it's up to you to ensure that your employees are equipped with it - not locked down in a bunker awaiting rescue.