The virtual shortcut
- Article 4 of 6
- Database Marketing, October 2005
Merging customer-referenced data into one database is no simple task. Could there be an easier way? Robert Buckley finds out
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Equally, Chris Cuffe, MD of helpIT Systems, argues that virtual views that pull in data from a number of systems are liable to fail, since most big IT implementations fail. This can prove financially catastrophic for many organisations. He also suggests that few marketing applications need real-time data: “What’s the disadvantage to most marketers of having data a week old? If you’re looking back three years, what’s changed in a week? For the price you have to pay to achieve a virtual view, I can’t say it makes a good deal of difference.”
The virtual view is best suited to marketing applications where a small number of systems are involved, the company needs quick access to reasonably accurate data as quickly as possible and where it’s difficult or impossible to create a single integrated database from the various available datasets. For normal marketing activities, its complexity and the increased difficulty of standard data cleansing makes it a poor choice for many companies.
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