Harmonized business processes, reliable data and customer-centricity
The company is an Italian luxury fashion brand with a global presence. Initially established as a producer of fine wool knitwear, it now offers complete women's and men's collections, available through an online shop and 136 retail stores across Europe, North America, China, and other regions worldwide. With a customer base of 350,000 clients, the company generated over 600 million euros in revenue in 2019, marking a 10% increase compared to the previous year.
The Context
The customer data collected by the company came from multiple entry points and was managed by several interconnected systems, though not perfectly integrated. An ERP, a CRM, a Data Warehouse, an E-Commerce platform, an order management system, and a Retail Point of Service—each system communicated with the others. However, the exchange of information followed overlapping, intertwined, and sometimes inconsistent paths. This complex network of data flows turned the company's typical operational intricacy into a tangled web of information, compromising the accuracy of customer profiles.
The absence of unique data made it likely for incomplete and duplicate customer profiles to be generated, posing a dual risk for the company. On the one hand, a customer dataset contaminated by unreliable or sparse information rendered any analysis based on it equally unreliable, depriving the business department of valuable insights. On the other hand, duplication and fragmentation undermined the company’s ability to identify target customers for focused marketing communications and initiatives while necessitating lengthy and labor-intensive manual checks.
The Solutions
Having gathered the company's needs, we pursued a course of action that would satisfy the Global Head of CRM and IT department's need for structuring customer information, laying the groundwork for the development of a data quality project capable of not only keeping pace with but also supporting, business growth.
The first step was to redesign the flow of customer information so that it converged into a single central point: the Master Data Management (MDM) system. The MDM was responsible for collecting all data from various entry points, cleansing and standardizing the information according to a unified data model, and then propagating it to all other systems. This data harmonization was essential to initiate the second phase of the project.
Once a clean, standardized, and unique "master data" was established across all the company's information systems, we focused on ensuring its reliability within business processes. To enable the continuous enrichment of customer profiles from all entry points—without compromising data quality—we implemented automated validators capable of harmonizing data formats, inferring missing information, and integrating it into customer records. We activated customer profile deduplication by defining and applying probabilistic and proximity-based rules. Finally, we developed a certification system that could instantly assess and indicate any given information's reliability.
The results
By assigning the MDM the orchestrator of flows from many entry points, the company could harmonize its information assets without sacrificing their richness. So much data from so many different points converge into a single, standardized master data and then are propagated to all systems after being cleaned and certified. The complexity of business processes related to customer data has been enhanced, becoming a resource to draw on.
Thanks to the Data Quality engine, the company now has a clear view of the reliability of its data. The de-duplication of customer profiles allows target customers to be identified from the moment they are greeted at the point of sale, and the certification of their information increases their ability to contact them with targeted communications, offers and nurturing initiatives. Unduplicated and trustworthy customer profiles mean that the marketing department can conduct in-depth analyses on which to base practical actions to acquire new customers and retain old ones.
The development of the MDM project with the Data Quality engine has helped the company fully realize its business model centered on the relationship with the consumer. Customers can now be identified when employees greet them at the point of sale. Their unique and reliable profile is constantly enriched with information from many sources. The company carefully cultivates the relationship with the customer over time and, thanks to technology, puts the customer at the center of a personalized and exclusive experience that matches the fine products offered to them.