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Andrew Rafalaf
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AXA Employs Evoke Software to Expedite Data Profiling and Mapping for CRM

AXA Client Services turned to Evoke Software Corp. and its Migration Architect system to ensure data integrity while speeding up a typically lengthy process.

Faced with merging disparate sets of client data from legacy technology, AXA Client Services, a subsidiary of AXA Financial, turned to Evoke Software Corp. and its Migration Architect system to ensure data integrity while speeding up a typically lengthy process. AXA Financial, formerly known as the Equitable Companies until it was acquired by the global AXA Group last year, is altering the focus of its business from a product-oriented one to a more client-centric financial advisory model. A new client relationship management (CRM) solution was found to be of utmost importance, but the task of migrating information from older systems, including ensuring the data quality and the relationships between data elements, is typically a labor-intensive task.

"If you're familiar with CRM, you know it is fundamentally based on understanding your customers," says Sharon Sibigtroth, managing director of information architecture at AXA Financial. "If your data quality is bad, you could have very unhappy and annoyed customers."

Eric Sebo, information architecture consultant at AXA, explains that Evoke analyzes the data in two different ways: it allows you to understand the "potential" of the data, that is, the data's relationships; and the "personality," which is the data type and size. "To give you an idea of how powerful this is, we analyzed 32 tables, 708 attributes, which was close to nine gigs of data," Sebo explains. "I, myself, was able to review 32 million rows. ... That's a mind-boggling amount."

AXA is using Migration Architect currently within the data warehousing division, and will expand its use into the creation of datamarts. Sebo explains that AXA is focusing on the data components and relationships, and hasn't begun to think about the CRM front end.

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