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Customer Relationship Management

Notes aggregated data from social media into a structured format? If this is not required, separate
social media tracking projects can be specified and managed – just so long as the output to action
is coordinated in a customer contact and management plan.

Step 4: Frequency and Recency of Data Updates

Many things now move at pace; for instance the time taken to research and compare prices is
now measured in just a few minutes, many consumers can now routinely gather important
information quickly that empowers them to make choices for a very broad range of products,
even if they ultimately decide to purchase these items on the high street. Web metrics and
behavioural data are in real time. How critical is that data to your customer relationship needs;
how best do you manage that data? Is it through a centralised system or can smaller stand alone
systems and processes work as effectively so long as the plans that drive them are consistent? Do
you need data in real time or would more frequent batch processes drive almost as much value,
and cost less? Consideration needs to be given to how technology can be used to blend new data
capture technologies with traditional ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) tools.

Step 5: What Analytics Resources?

The role of analytics is to turn data into intelligence; raw data on its own doesn’t tell the full
story. In the Experian paper ‘Analytical Insight: Bringing Science to the Art of Marketing’, Marie
Myles talks about the risks of relying upon IT resources and the importance of taking the
initiative by adopting a self-service approach:
“You could, of course, rely on experts from IT or dedicated analysts to slice and dice customer
data for you but their resources are not boundless and IT bottlenecks may mean you miss
valuable opportunities or key deadlines.
The answer lies in marketing analytics that support a self-service approach to extracting insight.
Preconfigured functionality can now empower you as a marketer, rather than an IT specialist, to
undertake a point-and-click exploration of your data for yourself.
You can perform highly sophisticated analysis without having to master complex algorithms or
build numerical models. You can easily share your findings without having to write reports
from scratch by using pre-defined reporting templates and dashboards built on best practice.
These tools turn your dry, dusty numbers into a vivid narrative that points to a clear course of
action– what’s known as actionable insight.”

Essentially many of the barriers you may have experienced resulting in historic analytics
bottlenecks can be avoided if the right technology solution is adopted.
It is now no longer essential that you have an army of highly expert, statistically orientated
analysts to support this function. Highly productive, easy to use technology solutions are available
opening up analytics to non-specialists too.

The new breed of analytical platforms enables you to empower campaign planners and even
branch managers to fill in simple pre-configured questionnaire style forms without resource to
other teams. These produce almost instant analytics and once completed, can be submitted to
centralised teams to drive campaigns on their behalf.
Technology improvement has also led to improvements in more sophisticated applications.
Predictive modelling historically applied during a batch process (e.g. at data refresh), is now a
process that can also be applied to your customers’ real time interactions. Also more sophisticated

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