The Data Everyone Uses

Most businesses, have tons of data. Some of it is department specific. However, there is some that crosses department boundaries. In fact this would be most data.

Most Common Data

The most commonly used and important to an organization is called Master Data. This would be data about Customers, Team Members, Products and Locations. Everyone is going to use this data at at some point, likely frequently. So its really important to do it well. It gives context to transactions, so customer X bought Y products for a total of Z.

And if you've ever heard the term Golden Record its referring to data in this area. That is the best source of truth as far as the company is concerned.

Crosses Boundaries

Data crosses department boundaries. Lets follow the data lifecycle and see how many departments it touches for an example:

• Marketing creates a campaign and directs people who are interested to fill out a form.
• Sales used the data from the form and schedules a presentation and it gets into the CRM (hopefully automatically).
• After some follow ups, the customer buys.
• The sales transaction is logged and processed by finance.
• The sales rep earns a commission on the sale.
• The customer now has an account rep for any issues they have.
• At some point they notify the rep of an issue that is resolved.
• Following resolution, customer experience sends a survey.
• That transaction is part of reporting given to the C-Suite.

So how many departments touched this same data? Marketing, Sales, Customer Support, Customer Experience, Finance, Payroll, IT and the C-Suite.

That's a lot of departments that touched the data. The point is if you get the data question right, it affects the whole business in a positive way.