Master data supports all data touch points an organization has with their customers, including how consumers interact with the organization via e-commerce.
Who is Impacted?
Sandra is responsible for managing orders coming from the new B2C e-commerce site, as well as returns. Sandra succeeds when they can deliver the right product to the right customer at the right time.
What is the Business Problem?
ACME Company’s online shopping experience allows consumers to create loyalty accounts by providing their contact information (name, email, shipping, and billing addresses). ACME’s infrastructure is such that their e-commerce platform which drives the web shopping experience is directly integrated with their ERP platform. When new consumer accounts are created or new orders are placed, the information is sent to ERP for processing.
However, both ACME’s current e-commerce and ERP platforms lack sufficient data validation and governance capabilities which causes low quality data to be introduced at the point of entry. Poor data quality has created several challenges for ACME Company, preventing them from achieving their goals:
- Addresses are not validated before the order is sent to logistics, leading to a lot of products delivered to wrong addresses or not arriving to the right customer at the right time.
- Sometimes customers accidentally misspell their address or leave out vital information.
- Duplicates are and will continue to be created in the e-commerce and ERP systems.
- Neither the e-commerce system nor ERP can check for duplicates, obfuscating how much a customer actually buys from ACME.
- Customers do not receive their orders in a timely manner (or at all).
- Inconsistent customer experience, as duplicate accounts may lead to orders not being associated between duplicates.
These issues result in:
- Low data quality of delivery locations leads to instances of 'return to sender' and double shipping, causing increased costs.
- Poor customer experience due to orders not arriving in a timely manner.
- Lost revenue and loss of customers. If the products are not delivered in a timely manner, customers will buy products from elsewhere.
- Increased product returns.
- Duplicate records carry operational and analytical consequences. Operationally, the correct delivery address may be available on a duplicate record. This leads to customer frustration if ACME is not considering that record when shipping. Analytically, reports may be skewed as duplicate records cause a single customer to be weighed multiple times during analytics.
Current Process
The customer places orders that are processed out of an e-commerce system. The customer and order details are sent to the ERP system for processing and to get shipments out. Currently, there are no validations being done on the provided address. This causes customers to not receive their purchases in a timely manner or not at all. Additionally, shipments may be returned to sender causing increased costs.
Future Process
The MDM solution is integrated with Loqate to verify and standardize addresses. This increases address quality, reducing instances of 'return to sender' and deliveries shipped to the wrong address. Using Loqate as a web service, the addresses can be standardized at the point of entry in the Ecommerce system. Additionally, an e-commerce administrator can manage customer accounts and have addresses standardized without directly interacting with MDM.