There are many different purposes to create a single customer view. All those different purposes also require different technical architectures. And each architectural design is capable of delivering its own value to the company.An analytical single customer view delivers value by supporting the company decision making via analytics and reporting. For instance: “how many customers do I really have in my focus market segments and what is the age distribution? “ An operational single customer view supports the primary business processes like sales and customer service.For instance an outbound call center employee can deliver additional value to the company if an integrated view on the customers shows which products and services from different business lines have already been sold to those customers and which customer support issues are still pending.

Regardless of the purpose of the single customer view and the associated architectural design there’s one clear common divisor: at the heart of every single customer view solution a powerful matching engine is necessary. Within the matching engine the secret of a high quality single customer view is concealed. The quality of the single customer view and the resulting business values depends on the power of the matching technology. If, for instance, the matching engine is not capable of recognizing that “BMW” and “Bayerische Motorenwerke” is actually the same customer you will still accrue unnecessary costs or miss value creating opportunities (opportunity costs) within your company. Because the quality of the matching engine is so important for the final value the single customer view solution is able to deliver, we distinguish “standard matching” from “High Precision Matching”. This whitepaper explains the need for a High Precision Matching engine at the heart of any single customer view solution.