Build a successful business case
for a Single Customer View
An Experian whitepaper
Page
1
Foreword






03
2
Introduction






04


2.1 About this whitepaper


2.2 What is Single Customer View (SCV)?
3
With or without you — the benefits of SCV


05


3.1 The customer’s perspective


3.2 The business perspective


3.3 SCV in the UK
4
Gain executive buy-in to build an SCV culture

07


4.1 Gain executive buy-in


4.2 Building an SCV culture
5
Conclusion






09
Contents
2 - Build a successful business case for Single Customer View 2012
1. Foreword
An effective SCV gives you the
platform from which you can do a
great deal; detangling overwhelming
information flows into a single, focused
stream of business-driving data;
uncovering deep insight into customers
and their behaviours; and applying this
understanding for targeted engagement
that translates investment into
demonstrable bottom-line returns.
It’s alarming to note that, despite this
potential, just one in six UK businesses
report that they have an effective
SCV in place. Given the gap between
appreciation and realisation, you could
be forgiven for thinking that achieving
an SCV is out of reach.
The good news is that it isn’t magic, and
this whitepaper uses fact to dispel the
myths and point you towards a practical
and effective business plan. It will take
you through what an SCV can actually
achieve, how to gain buy-in across the
organisation and the practical steps
you can take to create a business and
data culture that fosters it. Essentially,
the effort invested in building the SCV
will be handsomely repaid in enhanced
customer understanding and improved
ROI.
Achieving an SCV isn’t easy (good
things rarely are), but it is there for the
taking for those organisations willing
to make the journey. And it’s a road
worth travelling; in the information
age, attaining competitive advantage
will rely as much on the quality of your
customer understanding as it does
on the quality of your products and
services.
Jonathan Westley
Consumer Information Managing
Director
Experian
3 - Build a successful business case for Single Customer View 2012
Single Customer View — could it be magic?
It’s clear that UK businesses are aware that they need to create a Single Customer View(SCV)
if they are to thrive. However, as the Experian research profiled in this whitepaper shows, this is
where the clarity ends.
2. Introduction
2.1 About this whitepaper
In 2012, Experian commissioned
independent market research
company, Dynamic Markets, to carry
out interviews with: 400 cross-sector
UK organisations into attitudes and
actions towards the Single Customer
View; and 2,000 consumers exploring
their attitudes to engagement with
businesses.
Questions covered areas including
consumer responses to good and bad
engagement approaches, and how
organisations viewed performance
with and without an SCV in place.
This whitepaper breaks findings down
into three key areas:
1. What an SCV can achieve and the
costs of failing to implement one
2. How an organisation can focus
resources towards creating a business
plan that achieves an SCV
3. How organisations can build a culture
that continually fosters an SCV
2.2 What is a Single Customer View?
Before exploring the benefits and
actions needed to achieve an SCV, it’s
important to be clear about what it is.
An SCV is a readily accessible
summary of a customer relationship
with an organisation, combined with
essential customer data such as name,
address, date-of-birth, and credit
information.
Achieving a SCV requires a customer’s
product relationships to be brought
together, usually by matching name,
address, and date-of-birth, and applying
a unique identifier or customer PIN.
This identifier is then appended to every
item of data relating to that customer
– allowing all data on an individual
customer to be matched and brought
together to create a single view or
record of that customer.
Of course, customer’s details and
circumstances are constantly changing,
so the data itself never remains static,
the one constant will be the customer
PIN.
4 - Build a successful business case for Single Customer View 2012
“Central to an SCV
is capturing and
maintaining high
quality data, and
effectively managing
this data from
disparate sources.”
5 - Build a successful business case for Single Customer View 2012
3.1 The customer’s perspective
When it comes to data, the Experian
survey picked up some clear
messages from customers on how
they respond to their treatment at
the hands of organisations. There
are some important lessons to learn
for businesses wanting to retain and
grow their customer base.

LOSE (their attention) — LOSE
(their custom)
Well over 84 per cent of consumers
would take their custom elsewhere if
they experienced the negative effects
of poor customer understanding.
These effects cover a variety of sins,
with customers walking away if they
are: faced with companies that don’t
listen (84 per cent); bombarded with
marketing messages for irrelevant
products (52 per cent); contacted
through channels they have specified
as out of bounds (45 per cent);
pestered with offers of products they
have previously refused.

The stark reality is that, if an
organisation fails to engage
appropriately with its customers,
customers will simply refuse to
engage with the business. The
information age is a double-edged
sword; while customer data is
easier to gather, failure to learn
from it means that it’s far simpler
for customers to access and engage
with competitors that do. In essence,
if you lose a customer’s attention,
you lose their custom.
WIN (their trust) — WIN (their
business)
The survey shows that the reverse
of this customer experience delivers
far more desirable outcomes. Three
quarters of all customers would
take positive action in response to
experiencing the benefits of an SCV
— and this rises to 80 per cent in the
more affluent AB social demographic
grouping.

Positive responses encompass
a range of actions, including:
recommending the company if asked
(57 per cent); pro-actively engaging
with others to tell them about their
experience (45 per cent); leaving
a positive review on the company
website (26 per cent); and forwarding
email offers from the company to
family and friends(12 per cent). Around
one in 10 consumers would proactively
post recommendations on social media
sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Benefits from SCV engagement
continue, with customers actively
signing up to company communications
(44 per cent), including loyalty schemes
(32 per cent), promotional emails (22
per cent) and newsletters (12 per cent).

Generating a consumer feel-good
factor also generates sales. More than
40 per cent of consumers surveyed said
that they would either seek out these
companies to purchase goods in future,
use them as their first port of call when
looking for new products — or both.
3.2 The business perspective
Business is built on its customers and
if customers are unhappy, business is
going to suffer. UK organisations are
aware of the benefits of achieving an
SCV and alert to the dangers of not.

A bad day at the office
Signs of organisational fear of failure
around achieving an SCV are evident
throughout the survey. In the past
12 months, 85 per cent of companies
3. With or without you
- the benefits of SCV
report that they have experienced
problems that could have been
avoided had an SCV been in place.
These problems are significant
and directly related to business
success: close to three quarters of
respondents report adverse effects
that lead to financial implications;
over half (58 per cent) see that it
results in inefficiencies; half (49
per cent) believe that customers
have suffered; almost a third (29 per
cent) see that poor customer insight
delivers poor decision making; and a
fifth (22 per cent) have fallen foul of
regulators.

Inefficiency is a recurring theme,
with costs and time each cited by
roughly a third of the companies
surveyed. Lost opportunity is also
a price of a failure to implement an
SCV, with 18 per cent believing that
they have failed to capitalise on
cross and upselling opportunities.

Costs down — revenue up
With an effective SCV in place,
however, nine out of ten companies
believe that they will be able to
reduce costs across at least one
area of their business; a quarter of
these believe savings will be made
across five functions or more. The
table below details the percentage
of respondents, broken down by
department, who saw an SCV as a
cost cutter (Fig. 1):

0
10
20
30
40
50
60
General Organisational Admin
Ops/production/logistics
Finance
HR
Sales
IT
Customer Services
Data Management
Marketing
Compliance
Risk
Fig. 1 – Respondents, broken by department, who saw an SCV as a cost cutter
6 - Build a successful business case for Single Customer View 2012
An SCV is not simply an efficiency
driver, however. UK organisations
see it as a revenue generator, driving
greater value from customers. More
than eight out of 10 companies
believe that an SCV will help them to
increase sales, cross and upsell, and
improve customer retention. And this
additional value is quantifiable, with
the average expected increase per
customer, per year of more than 70
per cent.

The benefits of an SCV will bring UK
companies competitive advantage,
with lower costs, higher customer
value and increased income
generation (Fig.2).
3.3 SCV in the UK

Despite the obvious rewards, the
picture around the pursuit and
attainment of an SCV across UK
organisations is mixed. More than
half of the organisations surveyed (57
per cent) have yet to take any action
beyond the planning stage and just a
quarter (24 per cent) have a strategy
in place. Organisations’ stages of
implementation can be broken down
into six distinct groups: No Plans;
One Day; Planners; Implementers;
Unfinished; and Elites (Fig. 3).


Operational
Immediate
1. Link transactional history
2. Better targeting
3. Segmentation
Long Term
1. Better customer experience
2. Improved decision making
3. Greater confidence in data
4. Uplifted marketing results
Financial
Immediate
1. Target profitable customers
Long Term
1. Relevant up sell
2. Better ROI
3. Cost saving
4. Better retention
Fig. 2 – Benefits of an SCV
Fig. 3 – SCV maturity amongst UK businesses
4. Gain executive buy-in to build an
Experian Consumer Information Managing Director, Jonathan Westley, explores how
linking benefits with business priorities and aligning people, data and processes
drives SCV success.
4.1 Gain executive buy-in
Experian research suggests that UK
PLCs understand the value of the SCV,
but are not quite so certain as to how
to achieve it. With Gartner suggesting
in 2012 that 50 per cent of all new
programmes fail to meet their business
objectives, it’s important to understand
the pitfalls, best practice and its
realworld results.
When I’m presented with a business
plan proposal, I have a personal A-B-Cof
‘must haves’ before I’ll commit my
support:
A is for achievable
The first questions I ask are: does the
plan make me confident that we can
actually achieve this; is it simple,
wellthought through and is there
adequate resource? This is a crucial first
step, simply because everything else,
including potential rewards, count for
nothing if the plan doesn’t stack up.
There are very few boardrooms in the
land that aren’t focused on cutting
costs, increasing revenue and retaining
and growing their customer base. By
demonstrating the clear link between
an SCV and these three goals, it’s
far more likely that the board will
fund, support and help to drive its
implementation.
The project may be complex, but
develop a simple, logical narrative
that people can follow the story from
beginning to end, is a crucial first step.
B is for bottom-line benefit
Obviously, the outcomes for the project
need to be explicit and measurable.
Bottom-line metrics are crucial because,
if people within organisations are to
own and take responsibility for an SCV
project, they have to understand how it
brings them benefit.
Whilst most people would agree that
data accuracy is important, it will tend
to drop off the agenda when faced
with day-to-day business realities.
If, however, it can be shown that data
accuracy relates directly to business
benefits such as increased sales and
budget efficiencies, it ceases to be an
abstract concept and becomes integral
to the way the organisation operates.
C is for commitment
Whilst implementing an SCV is most
definitely not a top down process,
gaining board ownership and a highlevel
individual with the power to
sponsor the idea is a critical success
factor. Your board will need to know that
someone is driving this project and will
ultimately take responsibility for its
delivery.
Gaining this board-level support takes
some thought and it’s wise to look at —
and demonstrate — how its benefits
will help to drive wider business
objectives. Take the time to explore the
board’s priorities and see where an
SCV can bring value.
The buck stops with the board, so they
will want reassurance. It’s important
that an SCV project is measurable,
demonstrating success at various
points and, wherever possible, is tested
to prove the efficacy of the project’s
methodology.
Step-by-step
Boardrooms are busy places and
are presented with many projects
clamouring for funding and sponsorship.
The best way to ensure that an SCV
business case sets itself apart from the
competition is to deliver a systematic
presentation: take the board on a step-
by-step journey so that they can see
how and when an SCV will deliver the
competitive advantage they are looking
for.
Step 1:
Identify the business strategy and
the stakeholders for the project.
These stakeholders usually
include the business process
owners, IT enablers and the
financial stewards.
Step 2:
Select and define the business
performance metrics to support
the strategy being pursued.
Step 3:
Calculate baseline (current)
performance so that success can
be measured and, where possible,
benchmark performance against
that of industry peers.
Step 4:
Describe the project’s capabilities
in terms of the business processes
measured by the performance.
Step 5:
Negotiate targeted improvements
to your baseline performance
levels as measured by the metrics
selected.
Step 6:
Convert the projected
improvements to baseline
performance into financial results.
Step 7:
Develop the total cost of
ownership (TCO) to calculate the
ROI.
7 - Build a successful business case for Single Customer View 2012
SCV culture
8 - Build a successful business case for Single Customer View 2012
4.2 Building an SCV culture

Once you have the buy-in, now comes
the small matter of implementation
and the Experian survey provides
some valuable pointers on how to
do this successfully by addressing
the top three reasons why many SCV
projects fail.

People: more than two thirds of
respondents (67 per cent) identified
people-related problems as the
primary sticking point, which
encompasses issues such as lack of
resources (29 per cent), insufficient
testing and poor project scoping (23
per cent).

Data: data complexity is the next
biggest barrier, with 52 per cent
of companies recording this as a
primary reason for failure. A third
of companies list having too many
sources of customer data to manage
effectively and another third the poor
quality of the data they hold.

Process: Just under half of those
surveyed identified process
problems, including the wrong
implementation process (17%) and
dealing with legacy applications
(16%).

When building an organisational
culture that allows an SCV to
flourish, we must consider those
same commonpoints of failures to
mitigate risk.

Your people
This is primarily a case of
assessing organisational readiness:
establishing an honest benchmark
of where you are now, compared to
where you need to be to achieve
an SCV. In having a reliable
understanding of your start point and
an accurate picture of the end point,
identifying the steps you need to take
to achieve an SCV becomes clearer
and more manageable.
With this information to hand, you
can begin to assess if the right people
are assigned to the right roles and set
about re-balancing where necessary.
As well as skillsets, it’s imperative
that your people both accept, and are
given, the responsibility they need to
deliver an SCV project.
Stakeholder management is also a
part of this benchmarking exercise,
ensuring that support is in place
to drive the project through to
its conclusion and overcome the
opposition that is almost inevitable
with any change management
process.

Your data
The primary task is to ensure that
data is fit for purpose — an SCV
and its benefits will only ever be
realisable if it’s built on a robust and
reliable foundation.

As with the overall SCV business
proposition itself, transforming data
must be systematic, and Experian has
developed a seven stage process to
achieve this (fig.4):
Your processes
As with so many aspects of human
endeavour, the devil is in the detail,
and meticulous planning at the
beginning of a project will bring
rich rewards in terms of successful
delivery.
Assess risks throughout the lifecycle
of the project. Having a realistic
understanding of what’s coming, and
implementing mitigating measures
before problems arise, will be much
easier than having to deal with the
unforeseen whilst the project is in
motion. And it’s worth remembering
that, with accurate data and the right
people in place, this planning will be
much easier.
9 - Build a successful business case for Single Customer View 2012
5. Conclusion
So, is attaining an SCV worth the effort?

Well, it pays to revisit some of the figures from the Experian survey: 90 per cent of
companies believe an SCV will help them to cut costs; 80 per cent believe it will drive
sales; and the average anticipated increase to customer value is 70 per cent per year.
The answer, then, is an emphatic yes.
Even ignoring the monetary benefits,
the simple fact of the matter is that if
your company isn’t building an SCV,
your competitors are. And as the
survey also shows, customers will
migrate to the companies that listen
and respond to them in intelligent
ways.

The benefits of an SCV can
transform a business, but the
business must first transform itself.
It calls on: the latest thinking in data
collection, integrity and analysis;
genuine support across the business;
and a very clear understanding —
again, across the company — as to
how it will deliver tangible business
benefits.

The Single Customer View is within
reach, but it’s not something that
can be simply bolted on to existing
organisational practices. It takes
time, it takes commitment and it
takes specialist data, technology
and know-how. Investing in these,
however, will pay measurable
dividends.

Now may be the time for your
organisation to become part of the
SCV elite, because very soon an
SCV won’t be seen as an optional
extra, but rather the key that unlocks
competitive advantage.
“The Single
Customer View is
within reach, but
it’s not something
that can be
simply bolted
on to existing
organisational
practices.”
Experian Ltd
Riverleen House
Electric Avenue
Nottingham
NG80 1RH
CreditServices@uk.experian.com
© 2012 Experian Ltd.
All rights reserved.
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