CIO priorities: addressing knowledge management, customer data, and analytics

CIO Actions

Top Three Information Management Issues

Of the many information management problems the organization has, three are the most important. They include how the company at times doesn't seem to have the right knowledge to get projects done or products built customer information that is many times wrong and incomplete, and reports that are often out of date and lack useful information. The top three information management areas are knowledge management, customer data management and analytics. Knowledge management systems depend on having the right tools in place to capture and manage it (Lopez-Nicolas, Merono-Cerdan, 2009). Our organization does not offer tools to capture knowledge, so we continually have to reinvent them and this takes too much time. Second, customer data is located all over the company. For customers to be loyal, companies need to tailor marketing programs to their needs through the use of customer data management systems (Khan, Lewis, Singh, 2009). Our customer databases are not linked together and there is no way to get a full view of any customer electronically. Third, our report writing systems and analytics applications are not getting accurate data from the accounting system. Analytics systems are critical as they provide guidance on which business strategies are working (Lieberman, 2009).

Action Plan

To make the customer data management systems work right, there needs to be a series of systems connected or integrated together so that a single customer database can be created. Once the customer data is organized together into a single database, customer data management systems applications including customer analytics applications can be used to analyze it (Todd, 2009). In addition marketing automation applications can be added to the customer data management so marketing can start running sales campaigns and measuring if they are working or not. Third, Sales will work with the information technologies department to create a customer account management and contact management series of screens that can be used for tracking their sales calls. The sales team will also work with the information technologies department to create new ways of tracking customer contacts and manage account information (O'Reilly, Paper, 2009). Next, the financial systems of the company will be integrated or linked into the customer data management system to see how much profits each customer, and also each distributor is generating.

Financial analysis is going to be very important for defining customer segments by price they are willing to pay (Khan, Lewis, Singh, 2009). Having financial information within the customer data management records will also give marketing an idea of how profitable the promotions they are running are. That is why integrating financial systems to the customer data management system is very important.

At present the company does not have the ability to measure how the distribution channels are doing from a sales and profits standpoint. Having the customer data management system include distribution and reseller accounts as part of the total system can be used for managing distribution channels including retailers and distributors (Dyche, 2009). Creating reports that rank how each product is doing from a selling standpoint would also give good insight into how best to manage the overall group of product sold through each distribution channel.

Once all the customer databases are integrated together, and financial information is included in the customer data management system including profiles of distributors and dealers, the next step is to add in better report writing and analytics applications. The use of customer data management applications as the basis of creating better reports through analytics has been shown to improve marketing and selling effectiveness (Todd, 2009). Having reports about marketing and selling progress and performance will help to also find-tune all the other programs that the company has planned. In this way the analytics applications in the customer data management system will help to provide useful information on what strategy or program to try so that customers stay loyal and buy more. Over time the company will be profitable when all of these systems work together.

In conclusion the customer data management system needs to improve for the company to stay in business. There are many other areas of information technologies that need help. Customer data management's lack of system integration today is making it very difficult for marketing and selling to bring in new sales.