Single Customer View

Delivering a single view of the customer across diverse business operations

The Client

A diverse retail group – Manchester, United Kingdom

My Role

Engagement Lead

The Business Challenge

The client had a diverse business including food retail, online electrical goods, pharmacy, banking, and a loyalty scheme. At a group level there was no clear view of customer demographics or behaviour. This made it very difficult to provide improved propositions and experiences for customers.

The Solution

A single customer view data solution that consolidated and matched customer data from across the various business units and provided a level of customer analytics on top of this.

The Business Benefits

The client was able to better understand customer behaviour across the business and this lead to the provision of better products and services to drive a greater share of wallet.

Generating Customer Insight

The solution was a data warehouse using Microsoft SQL Server, with customer data records sourced from the client’s multiple business units.

These multiple customer data records were then matched using purpose-written algorithms to derive a single view of each customer. In this way, three years’ worth of transactional data was combined in the warehouse, providing a complete picture of each individual customer.

This single customer view enables the client to better understand the needs and motivations of each individual customer, enabling much more targeted and effective marketing.

Improving Customer Experience

One of the associated benefits realised were new store layouts – this change was a direct result of the client’s new understanding of customer preferences.

The single view of the customer also provided insight into store geographic feeder areas and where customers were underserviced. This insight help plan store improvements and new store rollouts.

Return on Investment

The client’s management team acclaimed the project as highly successful. In the words of the client’s insight director, “The up-front investment was paid back within one year.”