Acxiom Corporation, the global leader in customer data management, today announced that it had been named the 2004 “CRM Data Quality Market Leader” by CRM magazine, the industry’s leading publication dedicated to helping companies become customer-focused organizations.
The announcement was made during the Digital Consulting Institute’s (DCI) annual Customer Relationship Management Conference & Exposition in San Francisco.
“Acxiom has made tremendous strides this year,” said Ginger Conlon, Editor-in-Chief of CRM magazine. “Acxiom has, in the past 12 months, succeeded in bringing grid technology into the mainstream with the development of its Customer Information Infrastructure (CII). This grid-based processing system redefines how data is managed, and further demonstrates Acxiom’s commitment to data quality in the CRM arena.”
As part of CRM magazine’s annual CRM Leader Awards, the publication recognized the top five market leaders in five categories; Acxiom won the “Data Quality” category. The category winners are selected based on criteria, including customer satisfaction and depth of functionality. Also examined was how each company excelled in the past year within its specific category.
Acxiom was also the only company in the Data Quality category to be rated 4 and above on a 5-point scale that evaluated customer satisfaction and depth of functionality, with five being the highest rating.
Gartner analyst John Radcliffe’s said in CRM magazine that Acxiom is the top data quality vendor from a CRM standpoint, which receives an estimated $700 million of its $1 billion in revenue from CRM-related data quality analytics.
“You can’t do CRM without data quality,” said Radcliffe, who sees Acxiom as offering the most complete package in this area. “Having data quality is vital just to pass go.”
AMR Research analyst Paul Kirby also noted Acxiom as being a strong data quality player because of its focus on CRM.
“It’s an honor to be recognized for leadership in data quality and CRM,” said Acxiom Company Leader Charles D. Morgan. “Acxiom continually strives to set new industry standards through technological innovation and has accomplished this during the past year with the introduction of CII, which is the first and largest configurable platform for data processing based on grid computing technology available in today’s marketplace.”
Technological advancements in data processing aren’t the only notable successes Acxiom has experienced over the past year, Morgan noted. To better help its larger clients more effectively market their products and services globally, Acxiom acquired two of the largest European data companies, expanding its European operations to five additional countries.
According to CRM, Acxiom is expected to continue its solid growth on a worldwide scale as it realizes some of the benefits of these acquisitions.
“The acquisitions of Claritas Europe and Consodata have added tremendous data assets and client-service capabilities, allowing Acxiom to now provide a full complement of services for companies doing business in Europe,” Morgan said.
In addition to winning the CRM Market Leader award, Acxiom was also recently recognized by CIO magazine as a recipient of the 2004 CIO 100 award for IT-enabled agility, as well as by The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) with the 2004 Best Practices in Data Warehousing Award for “Radical Data Warehousing/Business Intelligence.”
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