Last month I came cross a discussion paper by Experian. It's their Global Data Quality Research 2015. For this paper they interviewed representatives of more than 1200 organisations in the UK, the US, Australia, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. These interviews resulted in some interesting facts: 
- 91% of the organisations are using data and data quality to optimise their customer experience
- however: 63% lack a centralised approach to data quality 
- and 83% tell us that revenue is affected by inaccurate or incomplete data
I have seen a lot of research papers over the years that actually convey a similar message. Bad data impacts your business.
However, this paper highlights the growing trend that organisations are increasingly aware of the potential of their data and that they see data as a means to get closer to their customers.
While I was thinking about this trend and contemplating to use it in a blog post...;-), my marketing colleagues at Human Inference were working on a very interesting infographic called "Why Data Management should be on every marketeer's mind". The infographic illustrates that data management will become crucial for the success of marketing departments. Without solid customer data, marketeers cannot create appropriate content, they will continue to shout instead of listen, they are unable to connect the dots in the customer journey, and they cannot reap maximum benefits from their IT investments.
Reading along (it's only two pages, but very informative....), you will find that leading companies have a much deeper understanding of their customers. It is because they
recognise their customers better and (thus) require less already-known information to be handed over before a customer is being serviced.
And that is also the link to the trend stated in the discussion paper: Data is a very powerful means to get closer to your customers.....

Last week I hosted a workshop during the conference "Digital business & eID" in the Netherlands. The theme of the workshop was data quality and fraud prevention and three speakers and myself each held a short presentation, ending in a statement or question to initiate discussion. 
My discussion topic, for example, was: "Without a single customer view, digital business will fail to be successful......" As you can imagine, this led to some lively discussions with regard to the fact that an electronic identity will only be of use if there is a way to establish reference to the original customer data. How do you actually take are of unique identification within the concept of eID? 
Customer data is the new oil, everybody believes in the surplus value of sound data management; but how do you really achieve an actual advantage in digital business?

My co-presenters covered a range of topics  in the general theme of the workshop. Martijn de Boer of CDDN talked about a new approach to increase data quality. Erik van de Poel of BKR (the Dutch foundation for consumer credit checks) presented his organisation's policy for prevention of identity fraud. Helen van der Sluys of the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs showed the participants the consequences of of identity fraud and identity theft. She illustrated her story by showing this movie of an "amazing" mind reader in the heart of Brussels. Check it out ......