What is CDI?
CDI stands for Customer Data Integration and it refers to a process of collating and/or management of customer details from a variety of sources that may include direct interaction, customer online presence, submitted customer forms, survey data, and others. Many companies implement various data integration techniques to be able to know their customers’ profiles and behaviors in order to efficiently target them with specific products and services.

The process of customer data integration also helps organizations and enterprises become up-to-date and relevant with the existing needs of customers and/or clients. With existing and updated data on customers, businesses will be able to respond better in terms of nurturing relationships with customers and possibly getting more people to become new customers.

Most companies resort to doing data integration by means of a software or program in sorting and/or consolidating data available. Data integration by electronic means would prove much faster than consolidating data manually. But automated data integration processes may also present with some difficulties in the process. Having customers with a nickname may make it difficult for an application to identify if certain two names should be tagged as one person or not. It may also be more complex if family names have suffixes like Jr., Sr., or II for example. Having these data may also present problems in the automated sorting and consolidation of data. Not to mention that vast amounts of numeric data involved in customer data. Entries for addresses, account numbers, tracking numbers, social security numbers, and age among others may further complicate a particular automated report. Viewers of an automated report of customer data may also find some details confusing which could affect decision-making.

But despite the availability of vast amounts of information, many businesses are not able to manage them effectively. Based on research, existing customer data information for many companies involved some inconsistencies, redundancies, and outdated information.