Making use of data sources available outside the organization can significantly improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of various processes within the organization. This is why almost every business utilizes outside data in some way.
For example:
* Showing prices in local currencies have shown to increase sales globally by as much as 25%. However, there needs to be a mechanism for keeping these exchange rates current as they can become out of date pretty quickly if they are not updated frequently enough. Sadly, I've seen organizations reload their currency tables in large ERP applications as little as once a year, and one can imagine how this approach can cause a tremendous accuracy problem. In other words, using external data sources correctly is just as important as using them at all.
* Verifying shipping addresses at the point of an e-commerce sale (or any sale actually) utilizing postal reference data can prevent serious customer service problems.
* Building customer profiles of purchasers of a product or service using business demographic data sources can have a substantial impact on future marketing ROI.
* Using zip code and postal information data to pre-fill customer information forms in call center scenarios can significantly reduce per-call phone time for call center representatives, and enable more time for responsiveness to customer needs.
* Integrating state and local sales tax rates into e-commerce transactions can significantly reduce accounting efforts down the line.
These are just a few simple examples of how external data sources can be leveraged to improve business processes. However, what typically prevents outside data sources from being used as described above is the cost to acquire entire data sets, bring them in house, maintain and update them regularly, and of course the cost of the personnel to manage these things has to be factored in as well.
Now however, the traditional cost, effort and complexity of leveraging these data sources can be dramatically reduced by integrating into them over the Internet via a Web services API on a per-use basis with a simple XML-based SOAP or REST call. Because of this type of architecture, these data sources can be integrated directly into to any application or Website that makes use of this data. This approach also ensures that the data sources in use are always the most up-to-date sources available since the updating process is centralized by the providing organization, also eliminating data aging issues.
The concept of the Cloud provides the technology foundation for this to be a reality, and with a simple couple of lines of code, leveraging external data sources via API over the Web can be done by any organization, large or small.
For example:
* Showing prices in local currencies have shown to increase sales globally by as much as 25%. However, there needs to be a mechanism for keeping these exchange rates current as they can become out of date pretty quickly if they are not updated frequently enough. Sadly, I've seen organizations reload their currency tables in large ERP applications as little as once a year, and one can imagine how this approach can cause a tremendous accuracy problem. In other words, using external data sources correctly is just as important as using them at all.
* Verifying shipping addresses at the point of an e-commerce sale (or any sale actually) utilizing postal reference data can prevent serious customer service problems.
* Building customer profiles of purchasers of a product or service using business demographic data sources can have a substantial impact on future marketing ROI.
* Using zip code and postal information data to pre-fill customer information forms in call center scenarios can significantly reduce per-call phone time for call center representatives, and enable more time for responsiveness to customer needs.
* Integrating state and local sales tax rates into e-commerce transactions can significantly reduce accounting efforts down the line.
These are just a few simple examples of how external data sources can be leveraged to improve business processes. However, what typically prevents outside data sources from being used as described above is the cost to acquire entire data sets, bring them in house, maintain and update them regularly, and of course the cost of the personnel to manage these things has to be factored in as well.
Now however, the traditional cost, effort and complexity of leveraging these data sources can be dramatically reduced by integrating into them over the Internet via a Web services API on a per-use basis with a simple XML-based SOAP or REST call. Because of this type of architecture, these data sources can be integrated directly into to any application or Website that makes use of this data. This approach also ensures that the data sources in use are always the most up-to-date sources available since the updating process is centralized by the providing organization, also eliminating data aging issues.
The concept of the Cloud provides the technology foundation for this to be a reality, and with a simple couple of lines of code, leveraging external data sources via API over the Web can be done by any organization, large or small.
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