March/April 2005

Ask the Expert: Your Questions Answered

Question:
What does my organization need to keep in mind when synchronizing online and offline data?

Answer:
by David Crooke, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Convio

Online interactions offer an opportunity for any organization to learn more about its constituents — from address updates to their interests and history of online transactions with the organization. In addition, an organization's offline databases have valuable information — such as giving history and biographical data — needed for online communications.

When communicating with a constituent through multiple channels, it is essential that those communications reflect a unified view of the constituent's relationship with the organization. This means an organization must have a systematic way to exchange data between its online constituent relationship management (eCRM) system, such as Convio, and its offline donor management system. Consider the following when planning an online/offline data synchronization.

What Data is Important?
When identifying the data to pass back and forth, most people are inclined to synchronize anything and everything, but that rarely is the best solution. Business needs should drive this decision — in particular, determining what subset of data collected in each system will be used in the other. For example, if an organization has an online advocacy program, but does not personalize direct mail based on actions taken by a constituent, then synchronizing the online action response data with an offline system would not be necessary.

Keeping it Clean: Avoiding Duplicates
An essential but often overlooked part of the synchronization process is matching online and offline records. A significant proportion of people who visit an organization's Web site will already have records in the offline database, and if the organization does not match up this information, duplicate records will eventually pollute the databases and become increasingly difficult to resolve.

Convio's solution to this duplicate dilemma is to use a sophisticated system where records are matched on a combination of rules, comparing new online records against a copy of the offline biographical data. This allows downloaded records to be tagged with their offline database ID before they are synchronized for the first time.

Does it Need to Be Real-time?
Many people's first instinct when synchronizing online and offline data is to aim for a real-time integration solution, where, for example, an address in the offline database updates instantly when a donor provides a new one online. This approach is rarely necessary; the offline database itself is not interacting with constituents in real-time. It really only needs to be up-to-date when pulling a direct mail list or financial reports. In fact, many Convio clients run DataSync, Convio's data synchronization functionality, less than once a week.

Real-time integration also has a couple of major pitfalls. First, offline database updates usually involve manual data entry, and therefore human review for accuracy is part of the process; whereas if constituent self-service updates from the Internet are propagated automatically to offline databases, there is no opportunity to review the data, and the quality of the database is put at risk. Second, real-time integration is considerably more complex than submitting updates to the database in batches, especially considering that offline databases rarely run on a 24x7 basis.

Conclusion
Managing online/offline data synchronization can be complex. However, by keeping a few things in mind, any organization can successfully keep its data synchronized for a better view of constituents. In addition, an organization should turn to an eCRM software provider such as Convio for a data synchronization solution that ensures data gathered online and offline is accurate, timely and available for any of the organization's needs.

Have a colleague who might be interested in this topic? Why not forward this article?

Return to Convio Connection Newsletter page