Arguably the top lesson of CRM 1.0 was simply this—data matters. Though CRM 1.0 promised to deliver a 360-degree customer view, untold numbers of multimillion-dollar CRM systems fell short of expectations because they failed to address the incomplete, incorrect, inconsistent and duplicate data that proliferated across the enterprise.

Acquire & Retain Customers with Trusted & Complete Customer Data

Now companies are moving to CRM 2.0, in many cases to the cloud with salesforce.com or another software as a service (SaaS) provider. And this time, determined to get the data right, many businesses are looking to master data management (MDM) and data quality to generate a true 360-degree customer view.

John Radcliffe, a veteran Gartner analyst, believes that MDM is a key enabling technology that should be at the center of CRM 2.0, whether the system is at salesforce.com, elsewhere in the cloud, or on-premise. Interviewed for an article called “Is master data management CRM’s secret sauce?” at mycustomer.com, Radcliffe notes that the term “MDM” might sound like geek-speak to a sales or marketing manager, and that it’s important for people in those roles to recognize that MDM translates into trusted, complete customer data, more effective cross-sell and upsell, and improved customer satisfaction and retention. Ultimately, Radcliffe believes, MDM is destined to be at the heart of both cloud and in-house CRM systems.

At Informatica, we’re focused on helping our customers get CRM 2.0 right the first time by managing customer data as a strategic asset. Along with Informatica MDM and Informatica Data Quality, Informatica Cloud services (which totals 1,300 customers and growing!) answers widespread demand for cloud-based data management.

CRM 2.0 also means tapping the wealth of social media data that customers generate, from Facebook to LinkedIn to Twitter, and incorporating it into the 360-degree customer view to build more complete, actionable profiles that improve customer retention and drive revenue. For a look at how social media data figures into CRM 2.0, check out this video with Informatica’s CMO Chris Boorman.

What’s your view on MDM being an enabler of CRM? Is one of your goals to make social media data actionable? Please share your feedback in the comments section below.