It's well known that having high quality corporate data assets at the core of enterprise systems isn't entirely about technology. However, there is little doubt that using software and Internet technology can go a long way towards improving the value and usefulness of corpate data assets.
One computing trend to emerge lately of course is cloud computing with its many forms. One of the key tenants of the cloud is the abstracting away of software and hardware complexities (and their associated cost) so an organization can focus on solutions and innovation rather than infrastructure and integration.
A great example of where this can be applied is in the area of improving data assets. IT systems are only as good as the data within them. Phone numbers, physical addresses, email addresses, and other contact record data elements can all be inaccurate, incomplete, or out-of-date. This can cause serious problems with IT systems and the analysis done within those systems, can result in missed opportunities, and can also cause poor customer service and customer communication problems.
One way to combat these issues is by using external reference data (such as that supplied by the post office or telephone book data aggregators) to check and verify the accuracy of internal customer information and other contact data, ensuring the contact data is not only recognized and matched to the external reference data, but also complete and current.
Traditionally, this reference data always had to be purchased, installed on internal software and hardware, integrated (typically without using standards), and periodically updated and maintained using human capital. All of this comes at a tremendous cost, but one that was previously unavoidable to achieve high quality data internally.
However, when leveraging a cloud-based architecture, the above costly steps go away. With more modern, emerging cloud-based solutions, all verification occurs via the Internet “as-a-service”, eliminating costly and time-consuming software and reference data maintenance and update processes.
An example of this is StrikeIron's cloud-based Contact Record Verification Suite that verifies, corrects, and enhances customer contact data over the Web in real-time to ensure that contact information such as physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses are accurate, complete, and current. The components of the solution are all integrated into applications and data-collecting Web sites with standards-based SOAP and REST APIs, interfaces to the solution living in the cloud. This requires no internal software or hardware, and eliminates the costly and time-consuming data maintenance and updating steps, as all referenced data used during the verification process is updated within StrikeIron's data centers. This means customers no longer have to worry about managing these reference sources (it has been abstracted away).
Now, an organization can have much better corporate data assets at the core of their systems with greater simplicity and cost-effectiveness than ever before, all by leveraging the benefits that the concept of the cloud has been built upon.
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