CIOs are no longer expected to be mere IT housekeepers who keep the lights on in the data center. More and more, they’re expected to help drive business innovation and transformation, function as strategic partners with the business and materially contribute to bottom-line performance.

One critical area in which CIOs can make a major business impact is customer data integration. As we often hear from Informatica customers, the problem of bad customer data is rarely limited to a single application or line of business. In fact, it’s a multitude of systems that has caused the problem in the first place.

Customer data is scattered and discrepant across the enterprise, making it virtually impossible for sales, service and marketing personnel to get the complete, trusted customer view they need. Cross-sell and up-sell effectiveness, customer service and loyalty and the revenue stream can all suffer as a result of incomplete and inaccurate customer information.

A top-down approach to customer data integration, led by a CIO or other senior IT executive, is a proven and effective way to tackle the issue. The CIO’s office is ideally positioned to coordinate an initiative across multiple functions and data sources, from cloud-based CRM and SFA applications to on-premise marketing automation or service and support, and even social media data, which I focused on in a recent blog “Harnessing Social Media Data With Informatica.”

Companies are realizing tremendous benefits by addressing the customer data problem with Informatica Customer Centricity Solution, with master data management (MDM) and data quality at the core. For many, it’s a multimillion-dollar impact and leaves the company well positioned to adapt to changes in customer data and IT architecture.

How to get started? We’ve published a new executive brief, Why CIOs Need to Take Control of Customer Data, that outlines key strategic objectives for customer data and capabilities of the Informatica Customer Centricity solution, based on our MDM, data quality, and data integration technologies.

If you’re seeking executive sponsorship to tackle your organization’s customer data problem, this paper highlights how and why CIOs can and should spearhead an initiative. Download the executive brief now.