DH-110 Customer information maintenance
Customer information in Datahub
Customer information stored in Datahub is outlined in the diagram below.
Customer information maintenance in Datahub operates on the premise that a customer is only created once and then the customer’s basic information is distributed among all the market parties with whom the customer has an agreement. The customer’s basic information only encompasses the information which, from a market perspective, needs to be updated in a centralized manner and other information is maintained as part of agreement information on a market-party-specific basis.
At a high level, name, identification, contact and postal address information are considered to be customer information. In the case of company customers, the information of the company’s head office is used in the customer’s contact and postal address information.
Agreement-specific information, on the other hand, consists of invoicing address and contact person information. In the case of company customers, the agreement-specific information indicates the (branch) office to which the agreement applies. A customer note can also be given for an agreement to identify, for example, a department, an office or a municipal department on the agreement. The same customer note can be used to identify the supplementary company name for the agreement for a company customer. The supplementary company name is not its own unique customer in Datahub because it uses the same business ID as the actual company customer to which the supplementary company name belongs. In order to avoid multiple unnecessary updates of data, special attention should be paid to whether information should be maintained as customer or agreement information. Additional instructions on maintaining customer and postal address information can be found in the Datahub name and address structure guide.
Distribution of information by customer and agreement
Customer information | Agreement information |
|---|---|
Name | Invoicing address |
Code | Contact person |
Official address (postal address) | Contact person’s contact details (telephone number, e-mail address) |
Contact details (telephone number, e-mail address) |
|
Customer type and identification
There are two types of customers in Datahub: consumer and corporate customer. All legal persons (companies, organisations, public operators) are processed as corporate customers and all natural persons are processed as consumer customers, also called residential customers. Customers are uniquely identified in Datahub using a code which, depending on the type of customer, is either a personal identification code or a business ID number (or VAT code for foreign companies). As such, agreements may only be reported to Datahub if the customer information includes such a code (special situations where a party’s own identification is used are described below). If an agreement is made in the names of several customers, the information of all customers and related codes will be reported, whereupon the agreement will be linked to multiple customers in Datahub.
If the matter concerns a foreign customer who does not yet possess a Finnish personal identification, the agreement can under special circumstances be reported without an ID, but the customer’s date of birth is nevertheless required. In addition, the party’s own identification (“other” identification), which is formed of a supplier party identification (GLN identification) and supplier’s customer identification, is also reported to Datahub as the customer identification. When a new agreement to the customer is reported the customer’s party’s own identification created by the supplier is forwarded also to the DSO. Based on this, the supplier and the DSO can later identify the customer in Datahub. If a customer has a foreign personal identification or equivalent, it can be reported to Datahub using the customer’s additional information field.
A party that reports such an agreement is under obligation to update the customer’s information in Datahub as soon as a personal identification is available. After the update all customer’s previous agreements can be found with the new personal identification number. Foreign customers are the only exception which allows for an agreement for a consumer customer to be reported to Datahub without a customer ID. The creation of customers without identification in Datahub will be monitored.
Private traders are corporate customers who are personally responsible for their agreements. All private traders get a business ID when they register with the authorities. For private traders, a personal identification for a corporate customer must also be entered. In Datahub, private traders are identified with their business ID and personal identification is provided in the customer’s additional identification field. Thus, it is possible to tell the private trader apart from the corresponding consumer customer based on customer identification.
Company customers without a business ID (e.g. certain consulates or road councils) are reported using a party’s own identification, which is formed of a supplier party identification (GLN identification) and supplier’s customer identification.
Customer has an attribute “Customer sub-type” reserved for handling an estate of a deceased person, because the market parties often handle these customers in a different way than other customers. The attribute can be used to improve the processes the parties have for handling estates of deceased persons.
If a company goes bankrupt, it is normal in these situations that the agreement is made with the bankrupted company estate when it does not yet have a new company identification. A new agreement can be reported to a company estate without a company identification by giving a customer sub-type company estate and forming a party’s own identification for this customer.
Accuracy and maintenance of customer information
Parties are responsible for the accuracy of the customer information that they report to Datahub. Datahub does not carry out internal data validation, such as checking whether a customer’s name and business ID correspond to one another. Parties must ensure that a corporate customer’s name is reported in its official format as it is on the official register (YTJ). In addition, it must be ensured that the postal address given to a company customer in the customer information corresponds to the address of the company’s main office. The address information for separate branch offices must be maintained in the agreement information. Additional instructions on maintaining customer and postal address information can be found in the Datahub name and address structure guide.
A customer is only created in Datahub as part of agreement processes. If a customer in an agreement notification submitted by a party cannot be found in Datahub using an identification, it should be created in Datahub as a new Customer record. If the customer can be found in Datahub using an identification, the agreement to be reported is attached to the existing Customer record. In addition, the customer’s information is updated to correspond to the customer information provided. If an agreement with several customers is reported, meaning that the party’s agreement notification contains several agreement partners, several Customer records will be linked to the agreement in Datahub.
It is generally the supplier’s responsibility to update customer data in Datahub. Customer information can be updated by those suppliers who have a valid agreement with the customer. Customer information can be updated as part of agreement processes or using a separate notification. In addition, the DSO or third party can send a customer information update request to Datahub which is then sent to the supplier with the latest agreement with the customer. This supplier then updates the customer information because it is assumed to have the most recent customer information. The supplier can refuse to update the information if it considers the update request to be unfounded or erroneous. The supplier is to respond to the update request by sending a customer information update to Datahub containing either information reported by the DSO/third party (the supplier approves the update request) or customer information found in the supplier’s own system (the supplier rejects the update request). If the supplier does not respond to the update request within 2 working days, this is notified in Datahub operators monitoring and the operator will remind the supplier until it responds to the request. A personal identification or a business ID can be added to a customer in an update, but this identification may never be updated. If for some reason the identification would need to be corrected, this is then done by notifying the Datahub operator, who will then do the update.
If the customer information is updated in the supplier’s own system but there are no changes to the customer information that is maintained in Datahub, the supplier’s system must not send a customer information update event to Datahub. Likewise, a DSO or a third party must send a request to update customer information only if the customer information that is maintained in Datahub has changed. When the changed information is stored in Datahub, Datahub forwards the information to all parties that hold valid (current or future) agreements or valid authorizations with the customer. Datahub checks then to whom the notification is sent according to the rights on the start of occurrence of the change. If an agreement has ended less than 6 weeks ago, updated customer information is also forwarded to the previous supplier of that agreement. In order to prevent reporting and forwarding unnecessary or incorrect information, the parties must ensure that the updated customer information is correct and that the need for updating is based on a confirmed need of the customer. In addition, the update of customer information must not automatically trigger another event, such as the update of the agreement billing address (DH-321), unless the need to update the information also applies there.
In the event that sales and grid agreements are in different customers’ names (the situation for agreements made before the implementation of Datahub and whose data was imported to Datahub via migration), the grid’s customer information can be directly updated based on DSO’s request if the customer has no sales agreement at all.
It is possible that there are multiple updates to the same customer information during the same time period, because the customer may have agreements with multiple market parties. In case of interfering updates to customer information, Datahub retains the information that was reported latest, because it is expected to contain the latest information. In a situation described in the figure below, if both events update the same piece of customer information, for example the telephone number, the information reported to Datahub on 5.6. that takes effect on 10.6. would still be valid after 15.6., because it was reported later. If interfering customer information updates concern the same customer, but different pieces of information, for example one updates the postal address and the other one the email address, both updates will take effect in Datahub according to their start of occurrences. The aforementioned mode of operation is also applied when different business processes update the information of the same customer. In addition to DH-110 processes, customer’s information may be updated by DH-311 new sales agreement process in Datahub.
Private customers
Datahub allows for the completion of “private” customers’ processes. Private customer means that the customer has a non-disclosure order for personal safety or that the customer has forbidden the disclosure of their information and thus their information may not be disclosed. One can apply for a non-disclosure for personal safety from the local register offices if a person has reason to fear for their own or their family’s safety. Private customer does not refer to a customer who has reported a non-disclosure for direct marketing to a party.
If a customer’s information contains a non-disclosure marking, information is forwarded from the Supplier to the DSO normally during agreement processes. Information about non-disclosure is sent to the DSO along with the customer information linked to the notification of a new agreement.
Private customers cannot issue authorizations to third parties. If a customer who has issued authorizations to third parties is marked as “private”, the existing authorizations are terminated immediately when the notification is received in Datahub. Information about a customer changing to private is forwarded to the customer’s other suppliers and DSOs normally as a customer information update event. DSOs and suppliers may relay the information of these customers through Datahub when these market parties authorize third parties to act on their behalf. In these cases, third parties may not use the customer information of these customers for any other processes than what has been agreed with the market party.
If the customer wants to remove the “private”-marking from his information, this can only be done by the customer himself through the end user interface.
Customer information maintenance events