If our institutions of higher learning are the brains of a free society, then our financial institutions must certainly form the muscle. Banks, lending institutions and investment houses today maintain the strength and energy of all aspects of society – on individual, corporate and even government levels. Most first cars and college tuitions are funded through loans to students and parents; companies expand through commercial loans or by issuing stock; and governments fund new programs and expansions by issuing bonds.

As communities grow stronger and individuals achieve their dreams through lending and investments, these same banks and lenders strive to constantly improve customer satisfaction by adhering to the highest possible standards of doing business. Such industry leaders recognize that prosperity begins with satisfied customers and meeting or exceeding the consumer’s expectations.

Major financial institutions with multi-billion dollar assets must manage terabytes of data streaming in each day from tens of thousands of customers using hundreds of financial instruments – from basic credit cards to highly leveraged corporate buyouts. For them, the first step in achieving consistent customer satisfaction is gaining a full knowledge of those many customers, and maintaining that understanding as each customer’s unique situation evolves over time.

Financial services companies start with shared databases, usually in the form of a data warehouse, which stores all of the basic facts on each customer. They tap into that data store and gain insight from it through many varieties of data integration and business intelligence applications. At the heart of all of these processes lies the basic data itself, and the health of that data is determined by how accurate it is to support the business purpose. Such data accuracy, and its relative quality, is directly linked to customer satisfaction within financial institutions of all sizes, particularly in this age of bank consolidations and customers’ direct access to online services.

When banks or trading houses grow through acquisition, they need to maintain the trust and satisfaction of four groups of customers – 1) original customers, 2) the acquired company’s customers, 3) those they shared before the acquisition, and – it they are particularly adept – 4) brand new customers that are attracted by the benefits of the merger. This requires separate approaches to all of those constituencies while simultaneously maintaining meticulous accuracy regarding every last detail on each account. The challenge in moving forward lies in consistency.