“We need a single view of the customer!” Well, no you don’t, and you can’t have one anyway.
‘Single view of the customer’ is one of those easy to trot out phrases that sounds brilliantly simple and impossible to argue with when uttered with confidence. But just the slightest digging under the surface reveals a plethora of issues, whether technology, governance, ethics, data quality, affordability… the list goes on.
If anyone offers to sell you a single view of the customer for anything less than many millions of pounds, and needing at least 5 years to get working, then they are fibbing.
Instead, try bringing together the data you need about a certain type of customer, for a particular use case. All the debtors, for example. Then see if you or your software can spot trends or commonalities in that. You don’t need ALL the customer data to be able to make a difference, and trying to do so will slow you down so much that you’ll end up making no impact at all.
Another little LinkedIn post / rant, which I am saving for posterity here.