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e*Index Global Identifier TM

Enabling a Single Customer View

A SeeBeyond Whitepaper

November 2000

© 2000 SeeBeyond Technology Corporation. All r ight s reserved. e*Gate and e*Way are registered trademarks or trademarks of SeeBeyondTechnology Corporation. All other products and company names mentioned in this document are the trademarks of their respective owners.



e*Index Global Identifier – Enabling a Single Customer View

© 2000 SeeBeyond, All Rights ReservedPage 2

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ............................................................................................................... 3Introduction to a Single Customer View ............................................................................ 4Challenges to a Single Customer View .................................................................................... 5

e*Index Application Overview ........................................................................................... 8Global Person Database .................................................................................................. 9Cross-Index of Identifiers ............................................................................................. 10Real-Time Automated Matching Algorithm................................................................. 11Quality Workstation for Customer Information Management...................................... 13Accessible from any Application.................................................................................. 14

Architectural Considerations............................................................................................. 15Passive Implementation ................................................................................................ 15Active Implementation.................................................................................................. 16

Implementation Planning.................................................................................................. 17Data Investigation......................................................................................................... 17

Algorithm Customization.............................................................................................. 17Data Conversion............................................................................................................ 17Integration Interface Setup............................................................................................ 18Application Configuration ............................................................................................ 18Operations and Support................................................................................................. 18

The Benefits of e*Index.................................................................................................... 19The Future of e*Index....................................................................................................... 19About SeeBeyond ............................................................................................................. 19





Executive Summary

Customers are a company’s greatest single asset and having consistent, reliable information aboutthese customers is essential for business success. In every industry, customers are increasinglydemanding higher levels of service over multiple delivery channels, and these customers are morelikely than ever before to change vendors when they see greater service or value offeredelsewhere. In today’s highly competitive market, poor customer service and inefficient customerprocesses lead quickly to declines in revenue, profit, market share and market capitalization.

The challenge to creating a ‘customer focused’ organization resides in the fact that timelycustomer information is often difficult to find, access and share across an enterprise since it isoften contained in many disparate information systems. This situation may be the result of different information systems having been implemented to support different lines of business, thepresence of multiple systems for the same line of business following a merger or acquisition, orsimply the rapid pace of change leading to the expedient implementation of non-integratedapplications. Irrespective of the cause, e-Business and other enterprise initiatives frequently findthemselves thwarted by the lack of a single, integrated view of customers across the enterprise.This white paper describes the business problem in general terms, identifies the key

characteristics of a successful solution, and illustrates how the e*Index Global Identifierapplication solves this problem with a comprehensive, quickly implemented and proven solution.





Introduction to a Single Customer View

To be successful in today’s technology driven environment, businesses must continuouslyinnovate both their product and service offerings and their customer facing business processes tokeep pace with rising customer expectations.

At any given moment, enterprises must be able to provide sales and service employees with anaccurate and comprehensive picture of each customer’s purchase history, current business andanticipated needs. This customer visibility empowers the organization to effectively respondduring customer interactions to quickly answer questions, resolve problems and successfullymarket targeted products and services.

Similarly, customers expect to resolve all their needs with a single point of contact, regardless of whether that contact is via phone, fax, storefront, mail or the web. Providing these new levels of service that customers expect across multiple channels is challenging, and it requires real timevisibility of all customer interactions across multiple IT systems and organizational divisions.

SeeBeyond terms this real time visibility the Single Customer View. Your business has a singleview of all of a customer’s relationships and interactions with your company across the entirebusiness cycle, and that customer has a single view into all of their business interactions withyour company over their preferred access channels. The target is to make the enterprise’s view of the customer as complete as the customer’s view of the enterprise.

This concept of maintaining a 360 ° view of customers within the organization is always targetedby Customer Relationship Management initiatives, but rarely is it effectively delivered on due tomany challenges. This first step in attaining this customer-centric view is to create a centralrepository of customer information that is always up to date and readily accessible by employees.This requires improving and increasing communication both internally across departments andthen externally to the customer where every point of contact must be consistently satisfying. Thegoal is to make it demonstrably easier for your customers to do business with you.

The challenges in these initiatives escalate when you need to efficiently integrate all thecomponents of the CRM solution such as customer self-service applications, customermanagement systems and analytical data warehouses to the actual back end operational systemsthat own the customer information such as Manufacturing, Enterprise Resource Planning andFinancial systems.

As described in this paper, the e*Index Global Identifier application from SeeBeyond runs on thee*Gate Integrator platform and is purpose built to provide the flexible architecture needed toefficiently overcome these challenges to enable the seamless sharing of customer information.





Challenges to a Single Customer View

In today’s business environment, vital customer information exists in many disparate systemsthroughout the enterprise (e.g. - Customer Relationship Management, Web, eBusiness, Financial,Enterprise Resource Planning systems, and countless others), and it must be accessible frommultiple customer touch points (e.g. – Web, Call Center, Fax, Store Front). These systemstypically evolve internally in isolated silos focused around product lines and departmentalfunctions rather than around customer needs, yet they each contain critical customer information.Additional systems containing customer information are commonly acquired through mergers andacquisitions.

Each of these systems typically assigns their own, independent customer identifier that makes itextraordinarily difficult to share information to create a single, reliable view of the customeracross the enterprise. In the example below, information exists about Clare Smith in twodifferent systems, each of which using its own local identifiers. Information sharing requiresovercoming data quality problems such as name and address changes, transpositions andphonetically similar names to be able to uniquely identify the same person across multipleapplications.

As a base rule, the sharing of customer information between disparate information systemsrequires that each customer can be uniquely identified. Ideally, using a single customer identifieracross all systems from their inception is simply the most straightforward method to achieve this;however, this is rarely possible or practical and alternatives must be considered:

• Replace the existing systems with a single information system architecture, which wouldinherently assign a unique identifier to each customer





• Remediate the existing applications and renumber existing customers to use commonidentifiers then implement a system and/or procedures to coordinate new customernumber assignment in each system

• Build a custom application using a batch process to match customer information betweendisparate applications

• Install a cross-indexing application to provide real-time matching of customers to enablethe seamless sharing of information in the background while allows existing systems tocontinue to operate autonomously.

Although the wholesale replacement of systems is frequently the most technically eloquentsolution, it is also often the least practical approach. This is because of the time, cost, complexityand risk associated with large enterprise projects are often in conflict with immediate businessgoals. Furthermore, it will never be possible to replace all systems (both internal to theorganization and external with partners) that contain differently identified customer information,thus the root problem still remains to some degree. A strategic acquisition or partnership willreintroduce overlapping customer bases that will force you to confront this challenge again.

The second alternative that typically surfaces involves the perceived speed and minimal costassociated with the “let’s just renumber everyone” concept. This requires analyzing the customerdata to match customers across systems, renumbering all customers with unique identifiers andthen remediating all the applications involved to use the new identifier scheme. Even cursoryanalysis reveals that this is neither quick nor inexpensive, and would inevitably result incompromised data quality.

The third approach sometimes evaluated may be to build a custom application utilizing a batchprocess to match customer information from disparate systems. The first problem with thisapproach is that utilizing any sort of batch process builds fixed time intervals into any businessprocess that involves uniquely identifying a customer, and this is the last thing you want to dowhen you are trying to respond to a customer query in an accurate and timely manner. The nextproblem is that custom application development is costly and time-consuming and involves aninherent learning curve.

The optimal solution is clearly one where minimal time and investment is required to achieve thedesired business goal of enabling the real-time sharing of customer information across disparatesystems. Measured against these criteria, the e*Index system is the ideal solution. Using e*Index,existing applications can be quickly leveraged to support the enterprise, allowing immediatebusiness benefit while also complementing any strategic direction an organization may make.

The foundation for sharing information between disparate information systems is a soundintegration infrastructure. This infrastructure must provide the ability to connect disparate

systems irrespective of the communications protocol or messaging standard, as well as providethe ability to map and translate field values between systems. SeeBeyond is the establishedleader in the integration field, with e*Gate providing the core functionality required to integratedisparate systems. e*Index specifically complements this infrastructure by providing the abilityto share customer information between systems irrespective of the customer identifier and oftenwithout requiring changes to the existing systems.

With e*Index in place, the challenges of sharing information between systems are neithertechnically daunting nor prohibitively complex or costly. Once installed, e*Index can rapidly





assimilate subsequent applications quickly and in a straightforward manner, repeatedly realizingthe cost benefits over other approaches. In an environment of increasing eBusiness initiatives, noinformation infrastructure should be considered complete without a comprehensive cross-indexing solution such as e*Index.





e*Index Application Overview

The e*Index Global Identifier application is a relational database of persons records where eachrecord is automatically cross-indexed to the various local identifiers used for that person in localsystems. This is the mapping of a single global identifier to multiple local identifiers. Thefollowing list describes e*Index’s high level components:

Global Person Database : e*Index manages sufficient demographic information aboutpersons in a relational database to facilitate e*Index’s automated matching process to findthe same person in multiple systems.

Cross-Index of Identifiers : e*Index manages a cross-index for persons to all of the localidentifiers representing them in systems throughout the enterprise.

Real-Time Automated Matching Algorithm : e*Index uses a sophisticated, real-timematching algorithm to automatically build the cross-index.

Quality Workstation for Customer Information Management : e*Index provides theQuality Workstation application to facilitate managing the information within the e*Indexapplication. Full edit functions are provided (add, update, delete, merge, unmerge, etc.) aswell as work-lists of potential duplicate records. The Quality Workstation functionallyprotects information stored within the application and audits all changes to information byboth users and external systems.

Accessible from any Application : As an integral part of a robust e-Business Integration(eBI) platform, e*Index can facilitate the sharing of information between any type of systems using e*Gate’s extensive connectivity.

Key Components of the e*Index Application





Global Person Database

e*Index uses a relational database to store the demographic customer information needed toperform the matching of unique persons across systems. This central store of information can beextended as needed to hold other operational information about your customers that can becentralized within e*Index and then automatically published to other systems when updated fromany single system.

These extended values might include:

• Retail Banking – account numbers; account type & charges, fees, or fee waivers;primary branch number; ATM locations accessed; assets by account type; credit rating;etc.

• Insurance – policy types; consolidated billing information; demographic or geographic"rating"

• Telecommunications and Utilities – product/service contract numbers; productutilization by category (long distance vs. local vs. cellular etc.); customer valuationranking





Cross-Index of Identifiers

Even the most basic implementation of e*Index supports a number of valuable activities,including the identification and reconciliation of duplicate customer records, activity reporting,unique customer identification for enterprise data warehousing efforts, etc.

Foremost in value, however, is the ability to facilitate “ID switching” in real time as transactionsflow from one information system to another. ID switching allows information systems toexchange customer information with other systems without regard to differences in the localcustomer ID used by each local system. This is accomplished by switching the customer ID in thetransaction as it passes through e*Gate.

As in the above diagram, a message can be sent from a customer facing eCommerce applicationthrough e*Gate, destined for the backend ERP and CRM applications. During transit of themessage through e*Gate, the e*Index system is queried for the customer record using thecustomer ID from the eCommerce system which is contained in the message. Once thecustomer’s e*Index record is retrieved, the customer ID for the eCommerce system is replacedwith the customer’s ID for the ERP and CRM applications (which e*Gate knows to be thedestination systems), and the message continues on to the targeted applications.

Nowhere in this interaction are the communicating systems aware of the different customer IDsbeing used, yet all the systems are able to seamlessly share information in real time. They keypoint here is that often no changes are required to the connected systems to support this sharing.





This capability to rapidly integrate information systems both internally and externally, even whensemantics are different and no common identifier is shared, is invaluable in rapidly integratingbusiness operations.

Real-Time Automated Matching Algorithm

The e*Index Global Identifier application employs a sophisticated matching algorithm todetermine the likelihood of match between two separate person records. This algorithm isinvoked in real time for each new incoming person record, such that the incoming record iscompared with records already in the database to determine if a record for the person alreadyexists within the e*Index database. This matching process has three objectives: the first is toensure records identified as duplicates across systems are in-fact duplicates, the second is makesure no potential duplicate records are missed, and the third objective is to perform this automatedmatching process quickly and efficiently.

e*Index achieves the first objective by embedding the INTEGRITYTM

Real Time matching enginefrom Vality

®Technology, Inc. within the application. This matching technology has been proven

in some of the most demanding matching applications across multiple industries, and sets thestandard for matching versatility. In addition, e*Index offers the ability to tailor the fields used todetermine a match, the weights assigned to each field, as well as the actual high and lowthresholds for determining a match, thereby allowing clients to determine how best to match theirown records.

The two objectives of not missing any potentially duplicate records, while at the same timeensuring adequate response time, are closely related and in-fact work at cross-purposes. Theoptimal solution for not missing any potential duplicate records is to invoke the algorithm tocompare each incoming record with each and every record already in the database. Whileperhaps practical for smaller databases, this approach becomes unwieldy as the database growslarger with potentially millions of records to compare for each transaction. On the opposite endof the spectrum, the best efficiency is gained by comparing the incoming record to as few recordsin the database as possible, thereby minimizing the number of times the algorithm must beinvoked. The natural consequence of this approach is the likelihood of missing potentiallyduplicate records increases as the number of records compared decreases.

The solution to this quandary is to accomplish the record comparisons in two steps. The first is toperform a relatively broad database query to select the most likely records that could be a match.These records are referred to as the “candidate set” of records. The incoming record is thenevaluated one-by-one against this smaller set of records to determine matched, unique, duplicateand potentially duplicate records.

When configuring the matching algorithm during implementation, it is also important to carefully

select the appropriate data elements to include in the matching calculation. The greater thenumber of elements used to calculate a match, the more time required to perform the calculation.Equally important, however, is that although the inclusion of more data elements in the matchingcalculation may increase confidence that identified duplicate records are in fact duplicates,increasing the number of matched data elements will also increase the number of identifiedpotential duplicate records that need to be manually reviewed.





The following clarifies the matching process in greater detail. This process occurs real-timewhen a customer is first entered in a local system and the system informs e*Index of the newentry.

To determine if a newly identified customer already exists in the customer database, e*Indexfirst queries the database to identify potential matches and include them in the candidate set.An example candidate selection query for a banking customer, may retrieve persons withsimilar first and last names, the same social security number (to catch full name changes), orwith a similar first name, date of birth and gender (to catch married name changes). Fornames, the searching is phoneticized so that similar names (e.g. Robert and Bob) arematched. The purpose of the query is to retrieve candidates that should be further testedusing more criteria to determine if they are similar enough to be deemed the same.

If no candidates are returned from the query, the new person is known to be unique and thus anew record is created in e*Index.

When candidates are returned, e*Index compares each returned record with the new record togenerate a single numeric match weight stating the likelihood of match. This processes uses

a richly configurable probabilistic matching algorithm from Vality Technology. Thisalgorithm is based on complex statistical theory and is far superior to simple rule -basedmatching approaches typically employed within applications.

Once the matching is complete, each weight returned is compared to a high and low thresholdset in the configuration.

If the match weight is above the high threshold, it is deemed a match and the new informationand local identifier are added to the current customer record.

If the match weight is below the low threshold, it is deemed not to be a match. If no matchesexist in the system then this new record is added for this new customer.

If the match weight is below the high threshold and above the low threshold, it is consideredto be a potential duplicate. It is added to the database as a new customer and flagged as apotential duplicate that can be reconciled from a work-list in the Quality Workstation. A usercan look at the two potentially match records side-by-side and merge them together orreconcile them as separate.

Note that if more than one unique record falls above the high threshold, then each of these istreated as a potential duplicate and a new record is added to e*Index for the new customer.

Also, if a match is identified within the same local system, then the record is flagged as asame system duplicate and created as a unique person. This is to ensure that transactions in

and out of the system are not sent to a single one of two possible identifiers until the problemis deliberately resolved by merging them in both applications. e*Index can send a mergetransaction to external systems to facilitate this process.

The summary of this process is that a new customer record came into the system and wasautomatically identified in real time as 1) an existing customer, 2) a new customer, or 3) anew customer that is a potential match to an existing customer.





Quality Workstation for Customer Information Management

The Quality Workstation is designed to be used by data administrators to access and manage thequality of the information stored within the e*Index database. Without the Quality Workstation,reconciliation of duplicates would be an entirely manual process using output reports generatedby the matching process. This application saves great time and cost by facilitating andautomating this reconciliation process in a secure and audited manner.

e*Index Global Identifier Customer Detail Screen

The following functionality is provided to support the data administrator’s needs:

Search: the Quality Workstation allows searching for individual records using the Universal IDnumber, facility code (for the local system) and local identifier pair, social security number, orcombinations of first and last name, date of birth and gender. When more than one record meetsthe search criteria, the records are returned in weighted order with the most likely (highestweight) records displayed first.

Record Maintenance: the Quality Workstation supports all necessary features for recordmaintenance. New records may be added, existing records may be viewed, updated ordeactivated, and new local identifiers may be added to existing records.

Potential Duplicate Work List: one of the most important features of the e*Index system is itsability to match records and identify duplicates in real time. The potential duplicate records aremaintained in a work list that can be sorted either by the system sending the record, by the end-





user who created the potential duplicate, or by the date and time the potential duplicate wascreated (or any combination of these). From the work list, potential duplicates may be mergedtogether or reconciled as distinct persons.

Merge and Unmerge Records: When records displayed on the potential duplicate work list needto be merged, the Quality Workstation provides the ability to display the two duplicate records

side-by-side, as well as highlighting the differences between the two records. Using this feature,Quality Workstation users are able to individually select which record should be retained afterthe merge, as well as individually select which fields from each record should be preserved in theretained record.

Security: the e*Index system protects the information within the application by restricting accessto the Quality Workstation to logged in users and their allowed activities. Users must be grantedfunctional permissions such as view, update or merge to be able to perform these activities. Forease of administration, the permissions can be granted to groups and users within the groups willinherit the allowed permissions.

Auditing: the e*Index system provides a full history of all modifications made to each record,

beginning with the creation of the record. This audit trail is displayed as a series of before andafter views of the record, with the differences highlighted for easy reference. The source systemand type of transaction are captured for each modification, as well as the end-user of the sourcesystem that generated the update transaction.

Application Reporting: The Quality Workstation provides a robust reporting capability,allowing access to all of the transactions received by the e*Index system. For example, alist of all “add new customer” transactions for a specific system or time period can becreated, with the Quality Workstation providing full drill-down capability to the actualtransaction detail.

e*Index provides a number of standard reports that can additionally be scheduled and

automatically delivered through a variety of means including email, fax, etc. For additionalreporting needs, the database is accessible using any commercially available ODBCcompliant third-party reporting tools.

Accessible from any Application

As an integral part of a robust e-Business Integration (eBI) platform, e*Index can facilitate thesharing of information between any type of systems using e*Gate’s extensive connectivity.SeeBeyond’s depth of experience gained deploying e*Gate to connect more than 600 differenttypes of applications over the past decade greatly speeds deployment and lowers the cost of thecomplete ‘Single Customer View’ solution.





Architectural Considerations

e*Index can be operated in a background mode (known as a passive implementation), or activelyintegrated with end-user applications (known as an active implementation).

In either case, transactions are sent to the e*Index system in real time, evaluated by the embeddedmatching logic for potential matches, and cross-indexed to existing records or added to thedatabase as new records. In the active mode, the functionality provided by e*Index isincorporated into or accessed by existing applications.

Passive Implementation

The basic implementation for e*Index is a passive implementation. In this mode of operation,transactions from the participating local systems are sent to e*Index in real time as they occur.The person referenced in the transaction is identifie d as one of the following:

New Record: Each incoming record is evaluated against the e*Index database to determine if arecord for the same person already exists in the database. If a record for the person does notalready exist, and no potential duplicate records for the incoming person are identified, theincoming record is assumed to represent a new person and a new record is added to the e*Indexdatabase.

Duplicate Record: If the incoming record is determined to be a duplicate across systems, theexisting record is updated to reflect the new information contained in the incoming record, ANDthe local identifier and sending system name are added to the cross-indexed local identifier table.

Potential Duplicate Record: If a record sent to e*Index is determined to be a potential duplicateto an existing record, or records, the incoming record is added to the database as a new recordand a link established between the new record and any other potential duplicate records. Each

record pair is then available for subsequent review to determine if the records are in factduplicates.

Update to an Existing Record: An incoming record is identified as an existing record if the localperson identifier is already in the database. In this case, the existing record is updated to reflectthe new information contained in the incoming record.

The end result of a passive implementation of e*Index is a comprehensive database of uniquecustomer records, with each customer cross-indexed to all of their different identifiers used acrossthe enterprise. Once created, this database is also kept current by real time transaction feeds fromeach information system, so that any time a customer record is updated in one system, the change

is made to the customer’s record in the e*Index database. As a result, the e*Index systembecomes the single, authoritative source for the most accurate and up-to-date customerinformation throughout the enterprise.

Included in a passive implementation of e*Index is the ability to “broadcast” updated customerinformation any time a record in the e*Index system is modified. In this manner, the most recentinformation about a customer is available within any participating information systems that canaccept the updates. The e*Index system enables this by sending these updates to eachinformation system using the specific customer identifier for each receiving system.





Active Implementation

Passive implementation of e*Index delivers real value to organizations. However, this value canbe increased dramatically by moving to an active implementation. In this mode of operation,existing information systems are modified to query the e*Index database for customerinformation, rather than their own internal customer databases. In this way, customers that havebeen registered anywhere within the enterprise are available to every other information system,improving both customer service and data quality. As an added benefit, the sophisticatedmatching algorithm embedded in e*Index is then available at the point of customer data entry,helping to reduce customer identification errors by displaying all customer information with themost likely matches first.

e*Index supports active integration in a variety of ways. First, the e*Index API is directlyaccessible to applications to provide access to all of the functions supported by the e*Indexapplication. This API supports C, Java, Monk and COM calls. Alternately, messages can be sentthrough e*Gate which can then access the e*Index API to perform desired functions includingcustomer lookups, record updates or adds, etc.

Active integration using the e*Index API or through messaging with e*Gate is referred to as“cooperative” active integration, since these approaches all require some level of cooperationfrom the participating local systems. This cooperation can be in the form of pre-packagedapplication functionality that allows working with an external customer database, or a willingnessto make system modifications, or access to source code that can be appropriately modified.When these approaches are not possible, SeeBeyond has also developed several non-cooperativestrategies that do not require the cooperation of the local system.





Implementation Planning

The implementation of an e*Index solution follows a well-established deployment methodologywith a history of on-time and on-budget implementations. This process includes the followingsteps:

Data Investigation

The data investigation phase requires extracting a complete set of customer records from eachsystem that will be participating with the e*Index application. The extracts should contain all thefields to be used for matching. The Vality INTEGRITY Data Re-engineering Environment isthen used to profile these records. This profiling process allows identification of default fieldvalues, field-formatting inconsistencies, frequently unpopulated or incorrectly populated fields,etc. Based upon these profiles, standard methods can be determined to either accept or correct thevariation that is found in the data in preparation for the next step, which is to determining the bestmatching algorithm configuration for the specific fields available.

Algorithm Customization

Once the characteristics of the data have been determined, and any data formatting errorscorrected, it is time to configure the matching algorithm. The INTEGRITY Data Re-engineeringEnvironment allows any fields in the record to be considered as part of determining a match, withthe output result of the matching calculation being a single number indicating the likelihood of match between two records. This likelihood of match can be based upon a purely statisticalcomputation determined by the relative frequency of different field values in the actual dataextracts, or can be customized to reflect desired field weights determined by the client. In eithercase, the resulting algorithm, tailored for an individual client and their specific data, is then usedto created a callable library which is used by the e*Index system in real time. Another product of this step is the creation of standard matching reports that identify duplicate records within eachsystem, as well as duplicate and potentially duplicate records between systems. These reports areused to help determine the appropriate matching thresholds configured within the e*Indexsystem, as well as source documents for any duplicate cleanup planned within the local systems.

Data Conversion

A significant decision to be made during an e*Index implementation is whether or not to back load customer data into the e*Index database (also known as a data conversion) prior toproduction use of the system. If the decision is made to do a data conversion, then each of theextracts from the participating systems are converted into the e*Index database using the identicalmatching routine that will be employed in real time operation. The end result is a fully populatede*Index database, with all cross-indexing accomplished and potential duplicates identified. Forlarge record sets (i.e. millions) this is a substantial effort and can require weeks of processingtime. An equally viable option in some circumstances is to put the e*Index system intoproduction with no conversion, and let real time transactions cross-index customers as theypresent themselves. Similarly, you may only want to back load customers that have been activein the past two years.





Integration Interface Setup

Integral to every e*Index implementation is the creation of real time interfaces from the localsystems to the e*Index application. This step of implementation will include the implementationof any id-switching functionality desired between systems, as well as development of anyapproach to automatically send our customer demographic updates to selected systems. With theflexibility inherent in the e*Gate architecture, the sky is the limit with regard to what can be donehere, since every feature, function and data element in the e*Index system is available in real timethrough e*Gate.

Application Configuration

The e*Index application provides a wide array of configurable features that can be modifiedduring implementation. Perhaps foremost among these configurable items are the high and lowmatching thresholds, but also configurable are the source system names, types of transactionssent, and user security permissions along with a variety of other choices.

Operations and Support

The e*Index application requires minimal system administrator intervention beyond scheduledbackups and periodic review of the error logs. On the business operations side, however, thevalue of e*Index is greatly enhanced when staff are tasked with reviewing and resolvingpotentially duplicate records. While a significant number of records may be automaticallymatched and cross-indexed by the e*Index system, the threshold values are typically set to avoidincorrect matches. This means there will be potential duplicate records that must be reviewed andmanually resolved. It is important to note, however, that the e*Index system continues tofunction and provide value, and no information is ever lost, even if potential duplicate records arenot promptly resolved. This is also an area where active integration can greatly decrease thenumber of potential duplicates which must be reviewed retrospectively, since the user at the localsystem is actually reconciling the customer with the records in the e*Index system in real time atthe point of customer interaction.




© 2000 SeeBeyond, All Rights Reserved

The Benefits of e*Index

e*Index accelerates e-Business effectiveness by providing the flexible architecture to enable rapidimplementation of e-Business and CRM initiatives to quickly capitalize on opportunities. Thisinfrastructure also speeds the realization of benefits from corporate mergers, acquisitions andstrategic partnerships.

e*Index streamlines operations by enabling consistent customer information management acrossthe enterprise to improve customer satisfaction, all with minimal user effort and cost to maintaindata quality.

e*Index leverages existing IT investments by cost effectively extending and integrating legacy orpackaged applications into a customer-focused, strategic architecture.

In the larger picture, e*Index enables a single customer view across the enterprise that improvescustomer satisfaction leading to greater customer retention and increased profits.

The Future of e*Index

e*Index is currently implemented for persons with plans to accommodate more generic items indevelopment.

The e*Index application will be flexibly able to address the cross-indexing and cross-referencingdata service needs of all types of information across otherwise semantically disparate applicationsto enable rapid eBusiness integration.

About SeeBeyond

As a market leader in eBusiness solutions, SeeBeyond (Nasdaq: SBYN - news) provides theplatform to allow companies worldwide to eliminate the boundaries and simplify the complexitiesof sharing information among applications, both within their enterprises and among theirsuppliers, partners, and customers in real time.

The SeeBeyond e*Xchange eBusiness Integration TM Suite provides an infrastructure that israpidly deployable and infinitely scalable to meet customers' growing needs. With more than 10years of experience operating under the name SeeBeyond, SeeBeyond has successfully integratedsystems at more than 1,300 organizations worldwide, including ABN Amro, Barnes &Noble.com, Bausch & Lomb, Daimler-Chrysler, Florida Power & Light, Fluor Daniel, HewlettPackard, PETsMART and Pfizer.

Key global business and technology consulting partners include Accenture, EDS,Computer Sciences Corporation, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, KPMG Consulting andPricewaterhouseCoopers. Software partners include Broadvision, Onyx Software, Oracle, SAPand Siebel Systems.

SeeBeyond Technology Corporation has global headquarters in Monrovia, Calif. and sales andmarketing headquarters in Redwood City, Calif. Asia Pacific headquarters are located in Sydney,Australia. For more information, please visit www.seebeyond.com.

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