Customer data lifecycle management model for an IT company

Abstract

The case company of this study has grown in its nine year existence, its business has changed and employee turnover has been high. The case company operating model is currently ad-hoc. The case company has started serving larger customers than before, and as a result the management of the case company has noticed that a more structured and controlled way of operating is needed. Making the changes should better serve the customer and facilitate the training of new employees.

To approach this problem a questionnaire was sent to the case company employees to enquire their customer data storing habits, and employees own suggestions for moving in to a more structured operating model.

The results from the questionnaire show that employees have their own way of handling the data and for example one type of data is stored in five different systems instead of one system. It also showed that an employee approximately uses 4.7 h a week to find customer data.

Based on these findings and theory framework for the thesis a customer data lifecycle model was created to handle customer data. In addition to the illustrated model, it is defined what data is stored in to which system, and who is responsible for storing the data.

Results of this thesis are general and can be applied to the case company or any other company that is in similar situation.