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Embracing Social: The Next Step for Master Data Management Social networks have emerged as a vast repository of conversation and information that can be used in conjunction with an organization’s internal master data to greatly improve business analytics, customer service and operational efficiencies.
• Cognizant 20-20 Insights
Executive SummaryThe world has gone social — from election campaigns to political protests, and from vaca-tioning tips to shopping recommendations. As a result, social media and social media marketing have become key trending topics in any discussion about IT and marketing. The importance of social networks from a marketing perspective can be gauged from the fact that people are increas-ingly seeking feedback from their social networks about various products and services that they plan to purchase.
Indeed, the advent of social media and its adoption across the globe is a phenomenon that is not just evolutionary but also transformative — one that opens up a host of opportunities for businesses that are willing to listen, act and adapt. With the proliferation of social networking platforms and tools, marketers must look at a new source of customer data: social media Web sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (see Figure 1). These three are not the only possible sources of social data, but they are by far the biggest, and marketers ignore them at their own peril.
This white paper addresses the use of master data management (MDM) to leverage the data
scattered across multiple social media sites, as well as the common pitfalls and possible strategies for success.
The Value of MDMTraditionally, businesses have collected customer data by using some or all of the following approaches:
• Sales force automation tools, where a sales representative enters prospect data that then moves through the sales funnel.
• Data feeds from third-party data providers.
• Data provided by prospects and customers via company Web sites.
• Inquiries by prospects and customers via other channels such as the call center, etc.
• Consolidating existing customer data in multiple business units of the same organiza-tion.
When this data is acquired by the enterprise, it is often of poor quality, lacking standards, fragmented and redundant. The accepted wisdom has been to build an MDM solution around this data. With MDM, the enterprise is able to make sense of its vast reams of data and get access to
cognizant 20-20 insights | january 2013
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accurate and consistent customer data across the different channels. This helps the business increase customer lifetime value and decrease acquisition costs by more effectively targeting potential customers; it also opens up opportu-nities for up-sell and cross-sell to the existing customer base.
MDM Strategy for Social MediaThe information on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn or MySpace can be of utmost importance in terms of understanding the needs of customers. While companies have created brand or product pages on Facebook and Google+ to advance product promotion or customer service, there have been few initiatives directed toward integrating social media as a new channel for identifying, acquiring and servicing customers. To pursue this, organizations need to integrate social media platforms with their existing MDM strategies so that data from the social platforms enriches the customer data acquired from other internal or external sources. Doing so can open up more ways to direct relevant marketing campaigns at the right customers and to enable seamless interaction with customers on their medium of choice.
The business case for such an initiative can be built easily when one considers the fact that there are more than 900 million profiles on Facebook (direct value for B2C opportunities) and over
150 million profiles on LinkedIn (think business contacts for B2B opportunities).
Tapping into Social NetworksOnce an organization decides to add social media as a source of customer data, the key question that arises is how to obtain this data. Unlike other sources of customer data where a sales repre-sentative can contact prospects or data can be purchased from third-party sources, tapping data from social media is altogether a different ballgame. There are four ways to gather this information:
1. Scan social media platforms and match the collected information with that of the existing customer base.
2. Ask users of social media to like or follow the organization/brand on different social media platforms.
3. Add social media information about a customer or prospect when he or she uses social media to contact your company for information or a service, or to provide feedback about their experiences.
4. Proactively ask customers for their social media touchpoints.
Option 1 is a sure way to find trouble. There are never-ending concerns about data privacy on social sites, and hence any attempt at trawling this data stealthily is sure to result in damaged
Social Media’s Ever-Growing Reach
4
Source: zdnet.com
90 million total users.
Source: thenextweb.com
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Source: thenextweb.com Source: thenextweb.com
100 million monthly active users.
Sharing via mobile devices grew 6 times in 2011.
Facebook accounted for 52.1% of all online sharing in 2011,
although Twitter and Tumblr are catching up fast.
901 million monthly active users, 526 million daily active users (as of March 31, 2012).
Others Facebook
Figure 1
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reputation and public backlash. In addition, this approach may yield poor-quality data full of duplicate, fake and inactive profiles.
Option 2 is something that many companies already follow by creating profiles on Twitter and Facebook and providing a link on their Web sites so that visitors can connect with them on social media. However, this is more of a hit-or-miss method; while it may work in some cases in a limited manner, companies need to be more strategic in their approach to maximize the benefits that social media can deliver.
Therefore, we are left with Option 3 and Option 4 — two approaches that add social media data, captured as part of a customer acquisition and maintenance process. MDM can help match data acquired from social media and identify it with a customer profile that already exists within the enterprise. This way, the company can truly know what a particular customer really thinks about the company’s products, verify if the product positioning is correct and increase cross-sell opportunities by suggesting what his connections or friends are purchasing.
Another important point to remember is that with MDM, organizations are not interested in static information about the customer. MDM uses the concept of cross-referencing to ensure the organi-zation is aware of the updates made to a customer record in any of the source systems. With social MDM, the aim is not to use the social media user
name acquired via Options 3 and 4 to capture all the available customer information once. Doing so is fraught with the same type of risks avoided by discarding Option 1. The target should be to establish an active connection so that up-to-date information about a customer’s social network is readily available to the enterprise; importantly, the user should be asked explicitly for permission before doing so.
Many companies have built Facebook apps to enable interactions with social media users (see Figure 2). Many Web sites have started to give users an option to log in with their Facebook, Google or Twitter credentials. When a user accesses these apps or sites using social media credentials, the apps ask for permission to access basic information: name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, a list of friends and other public information. Some apps even ask permission to send e-mails, access location information and obtain other information such as interests, likes and news feeds. Once access is granted, the link between these apps or sites and the social media user is created and remains active unless the per-missions are revoked by the user.
Mastering Social DataWhen a company captures a customer’s social data, not all components are important. If the company has a robust MDM hub in place, it is possible that the company is already aware of most of the information captured from the social
Figure 2
Facebook Apps Can Deliver Tremendous Data Access
4cognizant 20-20 insights
sites. Figure 3 lists some of the data elements that are captured by Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn about their users, in addition to conversations and status messages.
While most of these data elements are valuable to one company or another, we think the real value of social sites comes from understanding the relationships between customers; this is the secret sauce of social MDM (see Figure 4). Under-standing how customers are related would help
an enterprise understand how recommendations and word-of-mouth can help drive better sales and enable it to identify customers who wield influence on social media sites.
Knowing the size of a customer’s engaged audience of followers and friends who actively subscribe to his or her online messages and assessing the likelihood that these messages will generate actions (comments, likes, etc.) is bound to be invaluable to the marketing team.
Facebook Google Twitter LinkedIn
Friends Family relationships Subscriptions Educational backgroundEmployment historyPhotosCurrent locationContact informationCheck-insPages you likeInterestsMusic you listen to*News articles you read*Games**Via social apps
Friends & circlesSubscriptionsEducational backgroundEmployment historyPhotosCurrent locationContact informationCheck-insPlaces residedInterestsArticles you likedGames**Via social apps
Short bioFollowersPeople you followCurrent location
Educational backgroundEmployment historyConnectionsGroups and associationsCurrent locationContact informationInterests
Figure 3
Typical Data Elements Captured in Various Social Sites
Figure 4
Integration of Social Media with the Existing MDM Enterprise Architecture
CRM
Gold Copy Record
Jane
Jane
Based on the new information from the social networking sites, MDM in conjunction with CRM systems can post relevant ads on the social networking profile, influence friends with similar mindsets, etc. Some brands have even started stores on Facebook.
MDM can match the customer profile it has against the profile coming from the social networking sites, therefore enriching the existing profile by adding or updating relevant attributes.
The MDM hub stores the individual profile, and combined with the transactional data, the organization has complete information about the customer, the products the customer buys, the locations where the customer shops, etc.
Friends, relationships, likes, interests, locations, music, books etc.
Social Media Profile
Other Source Systems
cognizant 20-20 insights 5
Another trend that has gained traction on social media platforms is that of check-ins. Sites such as Foursquare, Google+, Facebook and many others want users to share the physical place they are located. This functionality is often seen as a way by which a social media user can inform his friends and followers about where he is traveling and perhaps plan a meeting or get-together with nearby friends.
However, there is a real business value in user check-ins. Once the organization has integrated social media with its existing MDM system, knowl-edge of user location offers a tremendous oppor-tunity to marketing teams to reach out to the on-the-go user, who is ready to buy and consume, and direct him to the nearest point of sale.
Groupon, a popular deal-of-the-day Web site, has launched a new service that gives users the ability to find local deals in real-time. This is accomplished by mapping a list of time-specific daily deals in the user’s vicinity.
In addition, a customer’s check-ins on social sites can drive better sales through word-of-mouth advertising and also help a company understand
spending habits. Therefore, the benefit is not just limited to targeting the right offers to the right customers, but also the ability to measure the effectiveness of such campaigns by using the statistics around check-ins and sales. These benefits will likely lead companies to location-based services, as well as define specific places or locations on these sites for advertisers to target.
From an MDM perspective, knowledge of places frequented by a customer can represent a location association within the MDM hub. If the company’s MDM strategy includes plans for collating these social locations with the actual physical locations maintained within the company, using standard MDM concepts of matching and trust-based con-solidation, the resultant location master can help to more precisely leverage social check-ins for real-world marketing campaigns (see Figure 5).
For example, if a fast-food company builds a location master where store locations are tagged to nearby social hotspots, it can offer deals and coupons to customers who check in at these social hotspots and direct them to its nearest stores.
Figure 5
How MDM and Social Media Enhance the Customer Experience
Interests, likes, preferences, etc.
+
Trigger
Stores
Deal Codes
Deal C
odes
Deal 1 - Store A
Deal 3 – Store C
Deal 2 - Store B
PurchasesDeal 2
A B C
B
MARY
Selected fields u
pdated
Data Data
Names of Stores
Stores may be physical (location update) or virtual (preference update)Social Media Analytics
Customer Preference
Mary’s friends with similar interests & preferences
Customer Transaction
History
Product Master
Hey friends! Exciting deals on
your way..
Great! Let’s check out..
Updates, Location/ Likes/Interests, etc.
AB
C
Store Master
Customer Master
From Social Networks
From SourceSystems
CRM — Deal Builder
Customer Name
Purchases Deals from
Stores A/B/C
cognizant 20-20 insights 6
Social Media for B2BWhile it is true that the B2C side of social media has seen greater traction so far, the impact of social media in the business-to-business (B2B) space is just now being felt. A recent study by
Business.com reveals that 55% of B2B survey respon-dents search for informa-tion using social media. Approximately 53% of B2B companies actively use Twitter in their marketing efforts, while 90% use Facebook, according to a report on Mediabistro. However, it is LinkedIn that rules the roost in this segment, generating more
leads than Facebook, Twitter and even blogs. A Wisconsin Hospital has reported a 15% conversion of leads to sales using live tweeting during orthopedic surgery, the same Mediabistro report noted. These findings demonstrate that social media can create opportunities in both the B2C and the B2B spaces.
Integrating MDM with social initiatives can lead to even better results when organizations provide all channels with clean, consistent and trustworthy data. The benefits may be more obvious for B2C companies right now, but B2B companies should focus on aligning their social and MDM strategies to avoid being late to the party. These companies should get started by enacting Options 3 and 4 — adding social media information about a customer or prospect when he or she uses social media to interact with the company or to proactively ask customers for their social media touchpoints.
ConclusionMaking MDM systems social networking-aware is not going to be easy. Social networks evolve very quickly; only an agile organization can keep pace with them. The data on any social network
grows at a very rapid rate (for example, there are over 60 million updates on Facebook everyday), and not all the activities and conversations may be relevant. Making sense of the vast amounts of unstructured data on these platforms can be a daunting task. Understanding moods and sentiments from comments, survey responses and other social activities will be critical to under-standing the relationships between customers and gaining an insight into customer behavior.
Social MDM should be treated as an extension of the MDM hub that an organization has in place, and it cannot work in a silo. However, adding social sites as a data source to the MDM hub is not sufficient. A shift in mindset is needed to ensure that social sites are not seen within the organization as a broadcasting or advertising tool but as a medium of interaction through which the company and the customer learn a little more about each other.
CRM processes need to change to ensure that social media credentials are requested and captured proactively during the customer acqui-sition phase and at each customer touchpoint. Privacy considerations need to be top-of-mind; for instance, information should not be trawled recklessly but always requested from the customer. Relationships among customers, location information and customer sentiment are critical data elements. The strategy should focus on making sense of these data points rather than getting lost in the vast sea of unstructured data that social platforms contain.
In a business environment where innovation is a must, not for competitive advantage but for survival, companies must venture into uncharted territories. That may make social MDM a bit of a challenge for some organizations; however, the opportunities are immense and the rewards highly enticing for those willing to stretch outside their traditional comfort zones.
Integrating MDM with social initiatives
can lead to even better results when
organizations provide all channels with
clean, consistent and trustworthy data.
About CognizantCognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process out-sourcing services, dedicated to helping the world’s leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 50 delivery centers worldwide and approximately 150,400 employees as of September 30, 2012, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.
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© Copyright 2013, Cognizant. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission from Cognizant. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.
About the AuthorsAbhinay Verma is a Senior Business Consultant with Cognizant’s Customer Solutions Practice. He has eight-plus years of IT industry experience and has managed challenging engagements for clients in phar-maceuticals, biotechnology and banking industries in North America and the UK. His primary areas of focus include MDM strategy, assessment and roadmap creation; MDM implementation; business process modeling; data governance and data quality. Abhinay has a bachelor’s degree in electronics and com-munication engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, and an MBA in marketing and finance from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. He can be reached at [email protected].
Tushar Sinha is a Senior Business Consultant with the MDM Sub-Practice within Cognizant’s Customer Solutions Practice. Tushar has eight-plus years of experience in the IT field, with rich domain experience in healthcare and retail. He has executed multiple strategic projects in the areas of MDM strategy, data governance consulting and implementation; MDM assessment and roadmap creation; business process modeling; vendor evaluation; gap analysis; and MDM implementation. He also leads multiple business development activities. Tushar has a bachelor’s degree in telecommunication engineering from the BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore, and an MBA in systems and operations from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar. He can be reached at [email protected].
References
• “Gartner Highlights Three Trends That Will Shape the Master Data Management Market,” Gartner, Inc., May 4, 2011, http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1666414.
• Beth Schultz, “Social Media Data and Your Single Source of Truth,” All Analytics, August 2, 2011, http://www.allanalytics.com/author.asp?section_id=1411&doc_id=231958.
• “The Future of Sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus,” Mashable, Feb. 15, 2012, http://mashable.com/2012/02/15/future-of-sharing-facebook-twitter-google/.
• Shea Bennett, “How Social is B2B?” AllTwitter, March 28, 2012, http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/b2b-social-marketing_b20019.
• Emil Protalinski, “Facebook Has Over 901 Million Users, Over 488 Million Mobile Users,” ZDNet, April 23, 2012, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-has-over-901-million-users-over-488-mil-lion-mobile-users/12105.
• Rosa Golijan, “Consumers Reports: Facebook Privacy Problems Are On The Rise,” NBCNews, http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/consumer-reports-facebook-privacy-problems-are-rise-749990.
