Company: FedEx TechConnect, Memphis, TN
Company Description: FedEx provides customers and businesses worldwide with a broad portfolio of transportation, e-commerce and business services. We offer integrated business applications through operating companies competing collectively and managed collaboratively, under the respected FedEx brand. FedEx consistently ranks among the world's most admired and trusted employers.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Business Intelligence Solution – New Version

Nomination Title: Customer Data Governance Tool – FedEx TechConnect, Enterprise Customer Data Services

Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 650 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and sales to date:

The purpose of this writing is to show how a tool that was originally conceived as a customer data management tool as a part of the overall data stewardship and governance processes became not only a world class quality and research tool but also an enterprise wide Business Intelligence solution. This tool was developed solely for FedEx by the Enterprise Customer Data Services team within FedEx TechConnect.

The first generation of the tool was originally released as a quality enabler in November of 2009 and was used primarily by agents to modify the name and/or address of a FedEx enterprise account number (EAN). It was determined that a new tool needed to be developed after the decision was made to use the Customer Enterprise Foundational Service (EFS) data and hierarchies as the basis of a new initiative to revamp the Sales and Pricing customer alignments. This new tool was branded CIMOPS II (Customer Identity Management Operations) and development was started with four primary rollout phases. The first phase was rolled out for use in November of 2013 and subsequent phases took place with the fourth and final program rollout happening in September of 2014.

This new tool was built to create a platform in which the Customer EFS team could not only increase the quality of their data and hierarchies, but also with the idea that it could leverage web services from the master data management (MDM) Hub and other Customer EFS data systems of record. This added functionality enhanced the tool to a point where it was not only a Business Intelligence engine for quality agents and downstream consuming systems, but also a Business Intelligence engine that could be used for analytical purposes within other groups.

The four main functions that this tool allows users to do are:

1. Cleanse the attribute data for account, third-party reference data, and reference record locations.

2. Manually make changes to the hierarchy to correct for false positive and false negative relationships generated by the probabilistic matching algorithms in the MDM Hub.

3. Run an on-demand-matching service that will allow either single or batch upload on-demand-matches giving users the ability to see if there are account, third-party reference data, or reference record matches to name and address inputs.

4. Perform search functionality using account number, reference record number, third-party reference number, or name and address information to find node level attribute information or complete hierarchy data. The returned search data can also be downloaded to a spreadsheet for analytical purposes or users with the appropriate security level can upload the record as a task to be worked by a quality agent.

Functions 1 and 2 above are primarily used by data quality agents to increase the quality of the EAN’s and their respective hierarchies as a part of the overall data stewardship and governance processes of the Customer EFS. The agents use many of the built in research and Business Intelligence functions as well as outside sources to make better decisions when editing EAN records and hierarchies.

Functions 3 and 4 above were built to be used in some cases by the quality agents but more often as a Business Intelligence tool that analyst inside and outside of the Enterprise Customer Data Services team could use for analytical purposes. A few use cases are integration reconciliation, prospecting validation, and campaign matching. Additionally, this tool can be used in the place of writing SQL code for basic data pulls related to customer data.

In conclusion, FedEx was able to take a tool that was originally conceived as a quality tool and make it into a robust Business Intelligence solution. This solution can be used not only by the organization that created it, but as a part of FedEx TechConnect’s offering to the company as a whole as a Customer EFS Business Intelligence tool.

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