DELIVERING DATA QUALITY FUNCTIONALITY

Once the marketing manager has determined the nature and scope of data problems and has determined the data quality functionality needed, there are a number of options available for connecting the functionality to the data. In broad terms, those options are:

* On-premise software
* Internal hosting via Web services
* On-demand (for example, Software as a Service (SaaS))
* Service bureaus

These options range from having the greatest control and largest footprint (on-premise software) to least control and no footprint (service bureau). From a cost basis one might suspect that on-premise software would be the most expensive. However, the cost of maintaining a level of data quality is not limited to the initial expenditure. Consider that the data and its usage will extend as far into the future as the organization remains in existence. Maintenance fees, per record charges (otherwise known as click charges), or subscription fees over time will exceed initial software license fees. What becomes important when calculating the cost of data quality processing is the breadth and depth of functionality needed and the volume of records processed each month.

ON-PREMISE SOFTWARE

Next to service bureaus, on-premise software is the oldest form of data quality delivery mechanism. Early data quality software vendors such as Postalsoft began selling and distributing on-premise data quality software in the mid 1980s. On-premise software is simply that: a software application—either commercial or hand-coded—that resides in your facility and is run by IT or the marketing staff. Sometimes the software is run by third-party consulting or contracting agencies and can be operated locally or remotely via a virtual private network (VPN) or Internet connection. The advantages of on-premise software are you control the application, the parameter settings, the computing environment, processing schedule, and so on. The disadvantage is that your organization is responsible for all of the above. You need to have the system resources, personnel, and training to run the software. For most firms, however, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Basically, if a firm has grown to the size where it has any sort of customer data management system and an IT staff to match, it usually has the capabilities to host and run data quality software internally.

INTERNAL HOSTING VIA WEB SERVICES

Internal hosting of data quality functionality was made possible by the advent of Web services. Today, most commercial data quality software packages support Web services to some level. With Web services, a corporate IT group can install a centralized data quality server, such as Business Objects Data Services, and publish the data quality functionality to departments and business units within the enterprise. IT does not need to install its own software. The elegance of this approach is that the marketing department, for example, can see and leverage the customer processing rules and jobs established by the sales operations department. This business rules reuse dramatically cuts project development time and allows corporate data governance to create data standards and common definitions to be applied across the enterprise. The advantages and disadvantages of internal hosting are the same as on-premise software with the exception that the advantages are magnified by each department or operation that connects to the service. Each new connection and project leverages the single installation, thus keeping IT complexity and maintenance burdens to a minimum. Moreover, when demand begins to exceed IT capacity, rather than having to add another server or deployment, IT can increase the size of the existing server, thus keeping the installation footprint to one deployment.