Harte-Hanks Trillium Software Unveils New Commissioned Research Linking Business Process Results to Data Quality Alignment

BILLERICA, MA--(Marketwire - Jan 24, 2012) - Trillium Software®, a business of Harte-Hanks^®, Inc. (NYSE: HHS) and the leading provider of Total Data Quality solutions, unveiled a new, commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Trillium Software that examines why data quality is critical to core business processes and functions, and reveals opportunities for potential performance improvements in key core processes that depend on high quality data.

Titled "Trends In Data Quality And Business Process Alignment" (published October 2011), this research showcases survey results that point to significant benefits of aligning business process and data management professionals as well as uncovering how organizations use data quality to improve their process results and performance. You can download the research from the Trillium Software website HERE.

According to the study, the effective collaboration between business process and data management professionals is the key to success for data quality and business process management (BPM) efforts. Business processes will break down if they don't use trusted data, and data quality initiatives will fail to deliver business value if the data doesn't support your organizations' most critical business processes and decisions.

Some key findings include:

• 90% of North American enterprises are interested in or considering implementing or expanding data quality management technology in the next twelve months,
• Only 26% of enterprises shared that BPM and data initiatives interact on a regular basis while 28% say they operate separately and 18% did not know the relationship between BPM and data quality,
• 55% of respondents shared that improving efficiencies within cross-functional operational processes were dependent on data quality, while 45% say that data quality has a high business impact on customer relationship management and finance, 40% for customer experience and product management.

Forrester submits that data quality initiatives have finally graduated from being nice-to-have tactical projects to more strategic initiatives with senior sponsorship and prioritization. However, the level of data quality maturity and expertise is low in organizations, so companies must make increased investments in data quality in order to positively impact operational processes, customer experience, finance, customer relationship management (CRM) and other functions. Business process professionals increasingly realize that the transformation and optimization of their process efforts face risk if their core process improvements lack a foundation in trusted, high-quality data. The firm recommends that data management professionals should assist in the necessary change management by educating their business partners on best practices, trends, and methodologies for building out data governance and data quality competencies in-house.

About Harte-Hanks
Harte-Hanks^® is a worldwide direct and targeted marketing company that provides direct marketing services and shopper advertising opportunities to local, regional, national and international consumer and business-to-business marketers. Visit the Harte-Hanks Web site at http://www.harte-hanks.com or call (800) 456-9748.

About Trillium Software
Harte-Hanks Trillium Software^® enables organizations to achieve Total Data Quality by providing a full complement of technologies and services providing global data profiling, data cleansing, enhancement, and data linking for e-business, customer relationship management, data governance, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, data warehouse, and other enterprise applications. For more information about Trillium Software and its offerings, call (978) 436-8900 in the United States and in the United Kingdom call +44 (0) 118 940 7666, or visit Trillium Software online at http://www.trilliumsoftware.com.

This document may contain trademarks that are owned or licensed by Harte-Hanks, Inc. and its subsidiaries, including, without limitation, Trillium Software^®, Trillium Software System^®, Total Data Quality™, and other names and marks. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.