Building the Customer-Centric Enterprise: Data Warehousing Techniques for Supporting Customer Relationship Management

Dr. Imhoff, with this book has provided a roadmap for turning your information technology infrastructure into an invaluable toolkit for providing customer-focused applications for your company. If your company follows the guidelines provided within this text the results can be a fully integrated, single version of the truth; view of your customer base, which of course is the basis for successful Customer Relationship Management. The emphasis on integration, quality and detail data is vital, if your company is to provide the much sought after one-to-one customer relationship, which in today's volatile business environment has become a necessity. If you read only one book on CRM, be sure this text is your "bible" for building the customer centric enterprise.

If I had to recommend one book on CRM this would be it. This is, by far, the best book I have read that ties together the business and technology aspects of CRM. It does this in a meaty kind of way that leaves you satisfied but not stuffed. True, this is not a book that technologists are going to use to learn how to do dimensional modeling or build an ODS. It's also not a book that is filled with anecdotes and strategic discussions about the value of customer loyalty and retention. What it does do though, is show how the technology is related to the business, and vice versa, with a good amount of detail. If you just read the technology or business specific books there is a tendancy to see the trees and miss the forest. This book shows just the right amount of both. I particularly appreciate the fact that this is a pretty dense book content-wise. Every chapter has something of value and is related to the subject of the book. There are an appropriate amount of illuminating illustrations and the filler (endless appendixes, references, project plans, case studies, off subject topics, etc.) that is far to commonplace, is kept to a minimum. Executives, Managers and Project Leaders from both inside and outside of I/T would do well to start their education here before embarking on any CRM-type projects.

A Data Warehouse and CRM consultant I was finally expecting the industry reference that would present the role of the Data Warehousing in CRM in clear terms and with authority.In many sense, this is the right book : it provides a broad and knowledgeable overview of the various CRM tools and architecture and how they interact.The problem is that it goes slightly beyond by replacing Data Warehouse by the "Corporate Information Factory" (CIF) Inmon and Inhoff framework which is anything but cristal clear because it adds the Operational Data Store in the picture without answering the real question : why an ODS rather than process automation through EAI ? The book has a whole chapter on the ODS subject but you do not find a real answer to the "do I need one ?" questionIf you have to do a project after, you might want to read "Designing a Data Warehouse : Supporting Customer Relationship Management" by Chris Todman, very similar title but more data modeling and project oriented.