“Our developers had used Vality [since it was acquired by Ascential Software], and they wanted that,” says Robert Henry, manager of e-commerce and customer-relationship-management solutions at Saab Cars USA. “But Vality was just too expensive. Same for Trillium,” the data-quality subsidiary of Harte-Hanks. “Our parent company, GM, uses [Vality], but we couldn’t afford it.”
Henry says his company instead deployed Firstlogic’s Data Quality Link to help keep data in a Siebel customer-management system accurate. The product integrates with Siebel, fixing errors in address and other information before it gets stored in the underlying customer database. But, says Henry, the integration wasn’t wholly reliable; errors slipped through. Firstlogic now knows about the problem, he says, but the fix depends on some assistance from Siebel.
For his part, Carl Nicol, a software developer at online travel-service provider Travelocity, wishes Firstlogic software ran on a wider array of hardware. Travelocity had to install a Sun Microsystems box to run the software, even though it’s an IBM shop.
Even so, IQS “more than paid for itself” over the past two years, Nicol says. Travelocity uses IQS to verify at the time of purchase whether an address entered by a customer is accurate and whether FedEx can deliver to it. Before deploying IQS, Nicol says, Travelocity would only know FedEx could not deliver to an address when the package was returned—forcing Travelocity to pay for redelivery.
Rick Matsumoto, executive vice president at marketing-services firm Astech InterMedia, says IQS has proved to be more accurate than Group 1’s DataSight at correcting errors in domestic addresses, and that IQS can scan and scrub 25,000 records in about 15 minutes.
Even Henry says he has no plans to switch from Firstlogic. “In most respects it’s working well,” he says. “Besides, the price is right.”
Firstlogic
100 Harborview Plaza, La Crosse, WI 54601
(608) 782-5000 www.firstlogic.com
Ticker: Private
Employees: 400
Eric J. Lieberman
President
Joined in 1996 as general counsel. Previously practiced law, specializing in intellectual property.
Paul J. Byrne
Chief Financial Officer
Joined Firstlogic in 1998. He previously worked on mergers and acquisitions.
Joseph Zurawski
VP, Product Development
Oversight includes software engineering, test and technical documentation.
Products
Information Quality Suite profiles, cleanses and consolidates data, and can be processed continously or in batches. An enhancement feature adds telephone numbers to customer records as well as e-mail addresses, tax-jurisdiction information and the geographic location of addresses. Offers versions that work with applications from PeopleSoft and Siebel and with software from Informatica, NCR’s Teradata and Ab Inicio.
Reference Checks
SAAB Cars USA
Robert Henry
Manager,
e-Commerce and CRM Solutions
robert.henry@saabusa.com
Project: In 2002, deployed Firstlogic Data Quality Link for Siebel to clean up data going into the customer-relationship management
applications. Subsequently, the company added Information Quality Suite (IQS) to clean data from Web and other applications.
Astech Intermedia
Rick Matsumoto
Executive VP
rmm@astech-intermedia.com
Project: Relies on IQS to clean up client customer data as part of a year-old application for automating marketing services.
Travelocity
Carl Nicol
Software Developer
carl.nicol@travelocity.com
Project: Uses a real-time implementation of IQS to verify addresses for FedEx delivery while customers are online.
CPI Corp.
Brian Jarrett
Programmer/Analyst
bjarrett@cpicorp.com
Project: Using IQS to clean point-of-sale customer data generated at the company’s 1,100 retail photo-portrait studios.
Erickson Retirement Communities
José Roig
Dir., Information Services
(410) 242-2880
Project: Uses IQS. When direct-mail campaigns generate calls from potential customers, address data is corrected before they are entered into a Siebel database.
Markettouch
J Wadsworth
VP, Data Services
j@markettouch.com
Project: Provider of database marketing services; uses both real-time and batch versions of IQS to clean data from 18 different sources.
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