The more a company knows about its customer’s wishes, needs and habits and the more that company is able to tailor its proposition accordingly, the greater the value it will eventually provide for its customers. We all know that there are countless examples where defective, fragmented, or just plain poor customer data cause unnecessary costs, decrease in revenue, employee dissatisfaction or frustation, damage of the corporate image and many other unsdesirable or painful consequences.
Customer data quality and integration problems impact every area of the value chain of organisations. Far too often companies have a multiple view of their customers. Customer Data Integration (or MDM for Customer Data) is the key to providing companies with a single view of their customer. (more…)
Just before this summer the U.S. Department of Justice filed a report about the FBI Terrorist Watchlist. This watchtlist serves as a critical tool for screening and law enforcement personnel for alerting them when they come across a known or suspected terrorist. It is used by personnel at airports, harbours and the borderline. Also when you apply for a visum you are matched against this watchlist. The Terrorist Screening Center, a subsidiary of the FBI, is responsible for maintaining the watchlist.
So once in a while I visit Amsterdam and have a drink or two in the centre. Afterwards I use the tram to get back to the hotel. This weekend I was quite surprised to find out that all the streetnames are announced in English, at each stop. The easy and obvious one is of course Centraal Station, which was translated to Central Station. I also can see how they came up with Rembrandt Square instead of Rembrandtsplein. But translating “Spui” to “Courtyard with a chapel” doesn’t help any tourists to find their destination.