CPP Group masters data management

CPP Group is using master data management (MDM) technology to improve the value of data to its business.

The firm made the investment to better manage data held on over 10 million customers and 280 partner organisations across 26 by building a master data repository at its operational headquarters in the UK.

The firm supplies most of the world's largest banks with white-label insurance products for their customers, covering the likes of their mobile phones, credit cards and identities as well as credit, healthcare and travel services.

Charles Blyth, CPP head of business intelligence (BI), told IT PRO the strategy was to ensure data was used as an asset across the group.

"We had outsourced our customer data hub, but decided to bring this back in-house to provide the control we needed over our data," he said. "We recognised the significant cost savings available from no longer having the outsourcing deal and internally, by focusing on our own MDM, BI and application development."

Chris Robinson, CPP group data manager, added that the investment was part of ongoing IT plans to move to a more service oriented architecture (SOA): "We wanted to make the move to MDM in order to improve both the operational and analytical value of our data."

Robinson added: "We've brought in the applications that manage our call centres and CRM [customer relationship management] and are looking to bolt these on, over an SOA capability. We chose MDM, both as a means of gaining visibility of a single customer view across the group, but also to enable us to better tailor our offers to customers."

CPP Group will use the DataFlux qMDM product as a master data repository to supply accurate data to operational systems and provide CPP's customer-facing employees with a single view of customer demographic, purchasing and policy data.

"By implementing MDM with a firm focus on data quality we will ensure the accuracy of data within our analytical data marts, which support strategic business intelligence," said Robinson. "Information from our BI system is vital not just for CPP but also for our partners. This deployment also further strengthens our technical capabilities in our ongoing drive for enterprise data governance."

Linking single master records to CPP's analytical data marts, he said the BI data could also be processed with real-time data quality checks to ensure compliant and effective marketing campaigns.