• Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Special Offers
Business Intelligence Info
  • Business Intelligence
    • BI News and Info
    • Big Data
    • Mobile and Cloud
    • Self-Service BI
  • CRM
    • CRM News and Info
    • InfusionSoft
    • Microsoft Dynamics CRM
    • NetSuite
    • OnContact
    • Salesforce
    • Workbooks
  • Data Mining
    • Pentaho
    • Sisense
    • Tableau
    • TIBCO Spotfire
  • Data Warehousing
    • DWH News and Info
    • IBM DB2
    • Microsoft SQL Server
    • Oracle
    • Teradata
  • Predictive Analytics
    • FICO
    • KNIME
    • Mathematica
    • Matlab
    • Minitab
    • RapidMiner
    • Revolution
    • SAP
    • SAS/SPSS
  • Humor

Why a Single Source of Truth Often Isn’t

November 22, 2019   CRM News and Info

This week, Salesforce used its annual Dreamforce mega-show to make a host of announcements, ranging from contact center partnership with Amazon to a smart speaker tool for sales.

For the most part, the keynote featured practical applications of Salesforce technology. Some Dreamforces focus on the highly aspirational; others focus on the ways to attain those aspirations. This year is the latter.

However, Salesforce did get very aspirational with the announcement of Customer 360 Truth. Last year’s event followed the Mulesoft acquisition, and
the big idea was the unification of data across various cloud-based systems in something it called “Customer 360.”

The cloud has enabled companies to become profligate in their use of on-demand, easy-to-deploy applications, which started to silo and separate information — the exact issue that CRM was introduced to combat way back when companies lacked a single source of sales data.

This year Salesforce took that idea a step further. Customer 360 Truth aims not simply to aggregate that data but to organize it across sales, marketing, service, commerce and more. The goal is to create a complete view that reflects the reality of the customer at this moment, enabling the company to deliver a trusted, personalized, customized relationship with each customer.

The Fourth Wave

Applying technology to customer data for a more accurate understanding is not a new concept. More than a decade ago, InsideView began gathering information about customers, examining it, and presenting the pieces of data that were the most current. Even back then, the term “single source of truth,” or SSoT, was bandied about with enthusiasm.

Mark Benioff took that enthusiasm to the next level Tuesday by declaring that SSoT was the “Fourth Wave of computing.” That is dramatically overstating things. We’ve spent the last 35 years using technology to collect, collate and employ data about our customers. Data was scarce 35 years ago. Now we can collect a lot of it — and sure enough, it needs to be sorted. However, the fundamentals have not changed.

What I worry about is the term “single source of the truth,” and what it implies. In the context of a business, it means the most accurate data set in its possession. That is never going to be the sole source of truth about someone, or even the best source of truth. It just happens to be the source of truth your analytic systems have decided on, based on what your data collection systems have gathered. It’s useful — but be careful.

Getting to Know You – or Not

Every day, I am exposed to evidence that the “truth” about me, as understood by the data systems of various companies, bears very little resemblance to the actual truth (no quotes) about me. I regularly receive “targeted” ads on social media that are wildly off the mark: emails touting products similar to one-off purchases of gifts, or Halloween costumes bought for my daughter years ago, or direct mail asking for my support for causes that I’m diametrically opposed to.

These ads would suggest that I’m a Republican gun owner who wears lots of T-shirts and is really into Tinker Bell. That’s about as wrong as you can get it, and businesses waste lots of money on me believing it’s a real truth.

I’m sophisticated enough to know why these false indications exist: flaws in data collection, half-baked inferences about customers, sloppy data entry, and so on. This is where the concept of a SSoT can become derailed. No matter how much you invest in technology to pull data together, when you use faulty data to determine what is true, what you think is the truth will be faulty.

The other mistake businesses make is to believe they own the SSoT about customers. In reality, we each own the best SSoT about ourselves. However, data about people is much easier to manage and deal with than data from the people themselves. So businesses spend ever more money making educated guesses about their customers, doing increasingly complex digital detective work, and kidding themselves that their SSoT is a perfect reflection of reality.

Separating specious data from accurate data is important, but unless your processes ruthlessly eradicate spotty or off-base data collection, routinely challenge inferences and assumptions about what data means, and check in with customers to see if their truth is close to your truth, your single source of the truth could be your single biggest weakness.
end enn Why a Single Source of Truth Often Isnt

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.


Chris%20Bucholtz Why a Single Source of Truth Often Isnt
Chris Bucholtz has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2009. His focus is on CRM and other topics surrounding buyer-seller relationships. He is director of content marketing for
NewVoiceMedia, and a speaker, writer and consultant. He also has written four books on World War II aviation.
Email Chris.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

isn’t, often, Single, Source, truth
  • Recent Posts

    • InfoWars Surrenders
    • Invest Your Time in the Right Skills to Become a Data Scientist in 2021
    • Facebook’s new computer vision model achieves state-of-the-art performance by learning from random images
    • Now make soup!
    • Attach2Dynamics Or SharePoint Security Sync – Choose your smart app for effective document management in Dynamics 365 CRM/Power Apps.
  • Categories

  • Archives

    • March 2021
    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
© 2021 Business Intelligence Info
Power BI Training | G Com Solutions Limited