Introduction

The first study in The Data Warehousing Institute's 2002 report series, "Data Quality and the Bottom Line: Achieving Business Success through a Commitment to High Quality Data," concluded that data quality problems cost U.S. businesses more than $600 billion per year in postage, printing, and staff; with additional hidden costs attributed to lost customers and loss of sales base, referrals, and future revenue.

"In recent years, the failure and delay of many high profile IT projects as a result of unanticipated data quality problems is causing executives to wake up to the real cost of poor quality data," said Wayne Eckerson, director of education and research at TDWI. Gartner Inc. recently predicted that 50 percent of projects will fail by 2005 because of data quality issues.

The GS SoftMatch initiative provides data cleansing services to companies of all sizes, based on innovative technology and proven methodologies.

Business value proposition

The high price and extensive learning curve of data cleansing software forces most U.S. enterprises to either build an in-house data cleansing algorithm or ignore their data quality problem. Clean and accessible data allows companies of all sizes to maximize their marketing potential, increase customer satisfaction and facilitate smarter business decisions. The integrity of customer data is critical to the success of any Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Intelligence or System Integration project.

The GS SoftMatch solution is design to support rapid, high-quality data cleansing with affordable cost and guaranteed results. Cost savings are assured by a FREE data cleansing software license for the duration of the project, and by leveraging GSApps’ specialized offshore data cleansing factory for customized coding, data validation and testing.

GS SoftMatch is a comprehensive data cleansing solution, delivered by certified professionals, which provides implementation methodology and state-of-the-art data cleansing technology. GS SoftMatch increases revenue and reduces marketing costs by enabling single customer view, enhancing the effectiveness of CRM program, and improving the efficiency of direct marketing campaigns.

GS SoftMatch is a unique solution that incorporates services and methodology. Our fixed-bid pricing is based on the complexity of your project, and payment is not due until the solution is delivered and accepted by you. You are not charged for the tools we use. You acquire a fully-functional software application without having to buy the tools.

GS SoftMatch is a flexible business solution that provides customized data cleansing for companies of any size and any industry who transact with enterprises or individuals alike. The guaranteed success of the GSApps data cleansing initiative comes from our deep specialization in data cleansing, and our expertise in the business architecture and technical structure of most ERP, CRM, data warehouse and marketing systems.

Business Overview

Technical Overview

Relational databases are challenged since they are built on an identical matching concept —slight record keeping deviations are not recognized. For example, a simple comma can make the same address seem different. GS SoftMatch™ solves this problem by using a powerful fuzzy logic engine to determine the degree of similarity between two potentially-identical records.

GS SoftMatch's “power logic” can be used for integrating heterogeneous data sources, de-duping records in a single customer list, and weeding out unnecessary records and logical duplicates through its self-comparing data sets. It can also assign records into “households,” where it distinguishes instances of multiple subsidiaries of single companies and maps them to a headquarter. The same functionality can be applied to individual customers, matching the customer records based on available demographic data. Once built, this mapping logic can be reused automatically, assuring the clean status of your customer data into the future.