BLWM Uses dn:Director to Improve Contact Database of 1,000,000+ Records and Streamline Customer Service and Central Government Reporting Processes.

Data Management and Compliance Screening specialists, Datanomic Ltd, today announced that Business Link West Midlands (BLWM) has deployed its dn:Director data management application to improve the accuracy of data held in its customer relationship management (CRM) system. By significantly improving the fitness-for-purpose of data flowing into and out of the system, dn:Director is enabling BLWM to improve overall customer service levels. The system also forms a central part of BLWM's reporting processes with Central Government, on which its funding is based.

BLWM provides an extensive range of support services and advice to anyone looking to start or grow their business within the region. Having assisted approximately 108,000 companies and 56,000 pre-starts in the region, with close to a million records of contacts alone, BLWM needed to ensure that all customer data held within its CRM system was truly fit-for-purpose. It also wanted to improve the accuracy of its reporting, the flexibility and scalability of the system, the speed of data migration and to reduce the significant and ongoing admin and financial costs associated with its existing manual system, the delays and inaccuracies from which were impacting upon customer satisfaction levels.

"We had recognised that duplicate data was an issue, which was impacting our customer satisfaction," said James Salmon, Chief Information Officer, Business Link West Midlands. "We needed to automate certain functions that were taking significant manual resource, including ad-hoc data matching requests, validating incoming referrals and leads, analysing key data fields, weekly profiling of key data areas, data migration and consolidation. We needed a system which could meet all of these requirements, would scale with the needs of the business, while still enabling us to enhance third party data, be it from partners or Government bodies."

Following a market evaluation of vendors, BLWM selected Datanomic's dn:Director based on its superior functionality, ease of use and intuitive interface. The application is currently used by the Data Integrity team on behalf of the rest of the organisation.

"We believe dn:Director is the most flexible product on the market," said Mr Salmon. "Since implementing, we were quickly able to profile our data to get a better understanding of the relevant data quality issues. We have significantly reduced duplicates in the CRM system, and dn:Director's automation has reduced manual effort, lowering costs and enabling the team to spend time on more effective customer service. The system provides us with in-depth analysis resulting in trusted outputs and reporting processes, negating the historic issues of fields with unverified or blank data. Consequentially, we have seen an increase in relevant and verified data."