Hello Zingg ID!

Cross reference every entity consistently throughout the enterprise.

Photo by Amol Tyagi on Unsplash

Imagine we have multiple records of a customer spread across ticketing, billing, offline stores, and web properties. This is a usual scenario we witness everyday in our data land. Different sources of data come with multiple versions of truth. When they land centrally in a warehouse or datalake, its hard to figure things out. Revenue attribution and lifetime value can not be calculated accurately. Nor can we estimate churn or calculate confidently how many new customers were added last quarter. Increasing revenue through personalized offers and exploring opportunities to cross sell and upsell will not be possible either. Let alone anti money laundering or risk. Visualize a multimillion-dollar investment in a GenAI customer service agent. How far can it go using this fragmented data?

To establish the right data foundation, analyze and report on business critical metrics, and productionize AI and ML technology, we will need to unify such records and build a trusted single source of truth for the customer.

Enter entity resolution. Variations in attributes can all be resolved, and clusters of matching records can be created. The Zingg Community Version offers robust clustering and fuzzy matching, which bring these records together with a unique Z_CLUSTER field. Matching records share the same Z_CLUSTER. Voila, there is a way to say who is who!

What happens when we want to track the customer over time? Or build a holistic view? Establish their journey and reference them or search for them in different enterprise systems. When there is no identifier to refer to the customer, we need a way to associate them with an identifier. Kind of like an SSN or a passport number. Or a primary key in the database.

The Z_CLUSTER is extremely powerful and useful. But it is not persistent. There is no guarantee that it will not change in the next Zingg run. If we stream our resolved records into our source systems and want to use Z_CLUSTER as the primary key, it would break.

As we saw different Zingg deployments, this was an ask that we heard again and again. A globally unique persistent identifier that acts like a reference key to the entity and all its records. The same key even when the record changes. The unambigious way to refer to an entity across multiple enterprise data systems, operational processes, and workflows. Even as new records come in and earlier ones get updated.

This is exactly the ZINGG_ID in the Zingg Enterprise version. Resolved, unified records across the entire enterprise which can be referenced through a persistent key. A help desk agent could use it to look up the entire customer interaction journey. A GPT based chatbot operating on patient data would work seamlessly with all the information at its disposal.

It's been fun solving this complex piece of the puzzle, and it's extremely satisfying to witness the value it generates for Zingg Enterprise customers.

Sounds interesting, or something you care about? Do get in touch!