Who manages customer data? It’s marketing at about one-third of the companies polled by DataIQ for the UK Royal Mail. Two-thirds cited a central data organization or IT. (Multiple answers were allowed so at some companies it’s both, and/or other groups including CRM and customer service.) Rather shockingly, one-third (32.7%) had no formal data quality process and 16.3% don’t validate internal data at all. Lots of other interesting data, including estimates of how much bad data harms the bottom line.

Then again, how reliable are consumer surveys to begin with? Let’s take a quick poll: raise you hand if you’re eager to spend more time reading food labels in the grocery store. Not many hands out there, I suspect. Yet a survey for SmartLabel found more than 70% of people would like more details than package labels now provide. No prizes for guessing what SmartLabel does.

The integrated cloud communications market is relevant here because it increasingly overlaps with marketing systems. So you should probably care at least a little that cloud-based communications platform 8×8 has agreed to pay $250 million for Fuze, which offers roughly similar products.