Today, Danilewitz says ABSG’s system satisfies users from the sales, call center and marketing sides. And because these business units understand the data’s worth, Danilewitz says, they take pains to ensure that they don’t add data that will "adulterate" their own systems. "The business users check the data, run reports on the data to make sure it’s accurate, and run technical applications to check quality," Danilewitz says.

Data stewards from the business, as well as gatekeepers from IT, compose a CRM team charged with driving new data management solutions. But the business users are always in front.

Describe, Define, Govern
Similarly, when Scott Sullivan joined Pitt Ohio Express, a $238 million mid-market transportation company, as its VP of IT and services, one of the first things he did was sit down with his business users and help them define what exactly the term customer meant to them. Sullivan helped the business narrow its list of customers from 450,000 to 10,000 active consumers of its services. Sullivan also pulled the plug on an ERP system rollout because he thought it wasn’t going to satisfy the company’s needs and was going to take longer than had been originally projected. (The project was greenlighted before Sullivan joined Pitt Ohio in 2001.) Since then, Sullivan has integrated an assortment of existing applications to form a customer management system for the sales and marketing group and the operations department. (For more on the integration challenges confronting mid-market CIOs, see Midsize Companies Have Fewer SOA Plans Than Large Companies, but Need It More.)

Sullivan also spent time ensuring that Pitt Ohio Express’s customer data was clean. Dirty data is hardly a new problem, but the fact that CIOs are still complaining about it, analysts are still noting its prevalence, and vendors are still selling solutions to address it indicates that it hasn’t gone away. Dirty data problems are amplified by the number of systems and users that touch customer data, especially if there are no established governance processes or technology safeguards. For example, Sullivan points to the disconnect in address requirements between the sales and marketing department and the operations division. The sales and marketing group needs exact addresses, whereas drivers can get by with more inexact data. "If the address is ‘the back gate at the Kmart plaza,’" he says, "that’s OK for the driver, but not so great for sales and marketing." And if no one takes ownership of making sure the data is consistent, "there can be up to 10 to 15 different versions of your customers [within your company]," says Tom Reilly, IBM’s VP of master data solutions.