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Single Customer View and IP Ownership
by Anthony Botibol, on 18/08/15 10:13
Achieving a true Single Customer View can be an expensive project and requires the redirection of resources and culture to ensure success.
So when you sign off on a £1/4 million+, three-year contract it will bring you to the attention of the Executive Board. How do you therefore make sure that the attention you receive is positive rather than risk putting your head on the proverbial "chopping board?"
What do you own in your SCV?
While most marketing decision makers will rightly assume that a Single Customer View investment will deliver the business an accurate, clean and de-duplicated database, few will realise that ownership of the complex algorithms, ETL, rules and data processing can often stop at the moment the contract ends. (This is of course to incentivise a contract renewal!)
If three years down the line the decision is made to move to another data partner then, in most cases, you will simply be handed back all your data in all its pre-cleansed state and with no ownership of the ETL or schema.
No SCV, no customer insight, no value and straight back to square one!
This is the typical ownership model you can expect from a data agency when they build your Single Customer View:
In the example above, the raw data sources are owned by the customer. That will never change but effectively every routine, algorithm, routine, model and process (that transforms your data into an enhanced, deduplicated marketing database), is owned by the agency. Any 3rd party data sources that are blended to your data using the matching routines are also at risk.
By retaining ownership in this way it makes it harder for the customer to move away from their agency but also piles on a lot of risk to what can be a very expensive investment.
The key is Intellectual Property (IP) ownership
When signing up for an SCV development, the marketing decision makers need to determine up front who owns the IP in order to be sure of the risk involved in the purchase.
Good data is increasingly considered a valuable asset in company acquisition and merger valuations, as well as providing a better platform to increase revenue and grow the customerbase. Failure to secure the IP up front could drastically undermine the overall value of both the SCV and the business.
De-risking the SCV Investment
Blue Sheep take a different approach. In addition to exploiting complex algorithms to match customers across multiple data sources and undertaking the essential Extraction, Transformation, Load (ETL) processes to create a clean, de-duped and accurate SCV, Blue Sheep also hands over the IP.
This is the Blue Sheep Single Customer View ownership model:
IP ownership changes the risk profile for the decision-maker. SCV projects are complex, expensive and gain board level attention.
If problems arise during the contract – from technical issues to changes in corporate policy or funding constraints – without IP ownership there is a risk that the entire investment could be wasted.
With the IP in hand, a company has a tangible business asset in the SCV and the flexibility to make the best decision about the next stage in data evolution once the contract comes to an end.
This is your customer data – make sure you retain ownership.
Please also download one of our latest Single Customer View eBooks: "7 Critical Considerations for a Single Customer View"
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