Big plans for 2014

With the start of a new year inevitably comes some thinking about strategy for the next twelve months. We’re no different here at DataSalon, and in December we all sat down and had a good old chinwag about what we should focus on for the coming year. Here’s what we came up with as our ‘themes’ for 2014.

Data quality

This will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following this blog, but data quality will be a big theme for us in 2014. It’s high on our list as we’re passionate about doing our bit to raise the issue of data quality within publishing, because of the potential for it to improve the overall level of service and communication within the industry. We’re also rolling out our own data quality service MasterVision DQ to more and more of our customers, so further developing the scope and functionality of that module is something we will focus on early in 2014.

Customer identity

Customer identity is another topic that is close to our hearts. We’ve mentioned the developments underway with personal and institutional identifiers a few times on this blog, and we’re looking closely at this area in 2014. In particular we look forward to our clients making greater use of ORCIDs, and therefore feeding that data through to their MasterVision sites. We’re also looking closely at the ISNI identifier as an open and ‘bridge’ identifier for institutions. The ability of ISNIs to work in conjunction with other identifiers – and therefore potentially linking up individuals and institutions as well as connecting different metadata sets – is an exciting one. Watch this space, as there are sure to be some interesting developments in this area in 2014.

Single customer view and analysis

Lastly, we don’t want to lose track of what lies at the centre of our business – providing publishers with customer insight and intelligence via a single customer view. We’re not resting on our laurels here, and have some ideas about how to make the customer data integration already done within MasterVision even more useful for our clients. We don’t want to give away too much just yet, but we’re currently hard at work on some new visual reporting within MasterVision which will provide an even better understanding of customers, segments, and trends for our publishing clients.

Whilst we can’t predict the future, we can predict that 2014 will be a busy year for us, and we’re already hard at work on these new developments.