N.C. State Students Learn Real-World Value of Data Quality with DataFlux

Release date: 4/2/2007

Major universities using DataFlux technology as key component for curriculum focused on leveraging information technology to deliver business value

CARY, N.C. (April 2, 2007) — This semester, some talented students at North Carolina State University are learning firsthand about how customer data holds the solutions to real-world business problems. Using software from DataFlux, a leading provider of data integration and data quality solutions, and SAS Enterprise Guide, these students are helping a UK-based pet supply company determine how to better serve its customer base by working to create a “single version of the truth” about each of its individual customers.

Dr. Fay Cobb Payton, associate professor of information technology at N.C. State University in Raleigh, N.C., is helping shape undergraduates into future business thought leaders through the innovative, hands-on program. Working with actual customer data, her students are helping this real-world pet-supply chain by making recommendations on how the retailer can better leverage customer information residing in its data warehouse to more effectively serve existing customers and strategically attract new ones. One of the goals is to maintain a higher level of customer data quality to fuel the company’s customer-facing marketing and support initiatives.

N.C. State is the latest in a growing list of universities that are using DataFlux as a core element of enterprise technology programs for its IT and business students; most recently, the University of Alabama chose DataFlux for a data quality course  In Payton’s class at N.C. State, the students are using applications from DataFlux’s data quality and data integration platform as well as business intelligence and analysis technology from SAS Institute Inc., DataFlux’s parent company.

The students will be using the data to determine how frequently customers shop for pet supplies, their average weekly and monthly spends, the types of pets they own, and what items they are willing to spend more on. They are working with real data, which in each instance has about 13 to 15 attributes. To draw effective conclusions, the students are using DataFlux software to increase the quality of this data. Like many enterprises, this retailer has a handful of databases and applications each containing specific data on its customers, and has been challenged to make the data more accurate, with the ultimate goal of creating a “single version of the truth” about each of its customers.

“Whenever possible, I want my students to learn about technology by using it in controlled, real-world situations, helping them learn firsthand the bottom-line benefits of specific enterprise technologies,” said Dr. Payton. “Using DataFlux to solve real problems gives my students a significant advantage when they go into the work force because they can make decisions from a data-quality perspective that they could not get from a regular database class.”