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February 2013 | CRM Magazine
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Integrated data mining—the core
to customer analytics success
Companies like yours seek to use data
mining to group customers into benefitsbased segments, to find those most likely to
respond to cross-sell and acquisition offers,
to improve retention, and to personalize
communications in real time. Data mining
can make the mountains of data that
companies collect useful and immediately
actionable, whether that data comes from:
• Transactional systems
• Contact centers
• The Internet
• Digital marketplaces
• Third-party sources
• Social media
Unfortunately, in many firms data
mining has not lived up to the hype and
potential. Traditional tools require
organizations to go through the complex
task of building a data-mining-focused
data mart, requiring months of work to
locate the relevant sources of data, clean
the data, and build the data into an
appropriate schema. As well, traditional
tools can be expensive, complex, and hard
to use, and generally require an advanced
understanding of statistics.
LOOK FOR AN EASY-TO-USE SYSTEM
The biggest barrier preventing
widespread use of data mining is the
complexity of traditional tools. Data
mining will never achieve enterprise-wide
use as long as tools have a steep learning
curve and require a degree in statistics to
run and analyze. Look for robust
functionality with a beautiful and intuitive
user interface that encourages you to ask
questions and dig for answers without risk
or resource mismanagement.
GET A SINGLE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER
Clearly, data mining requires data—the
more the better. But to get “nuggets” of
knowledge, you need to have significant
amounts of “ore.” Like many
organizations, yours may have data
scattered across systems and databases, and
rarely have it in the correct format for data
mining algorithms. Before data mining can
begin, you must build a warehouse of clean,
consistently encoded information—a
significant task that can take months or
even years. The process of preparing data
for analysis can often take up to 95% of the
total time required for data mining.
ASSUME EXPONENTIAL DATA GROWTH
AND EVER-CHANGING DATA SOURCES
Data tends to be locked down, so adding
new sources of data (think social and
mobile) is discouraged, even when that
data can be most emotive and directionally
valuable. Plus the traditional tools and
business processes used to tap into and
analyze data can be complex and hard to
use, and generally require an advanced
understanding of statistics. Because of
that, data mining might be limited to only
a few experts in your organization. This
creates a bottleneck request process as well
as a disconnect between the analysis and
the business issue, increasing the time it
takes to take an action or solve a problem.
With Infor Epiphany’s extraction
technology, you can efficiently build an
analytical data mart by collecting
information from multiple sources,
including:
• Transactional systems
• Contact centers
• The Internet
• Social data
• Third-party sources
• External data not housed permanently
in the data mart.
As a result, you’ll get a complete view of,
and maximum insight into, your customers.
AS EASY AS 1…2…3…
EMPOWER BUSINESS USERS WITH INFOR
EPIPHANY
Your entire organization can get the full
potential out of data mining with Infor™
Epiphany Customer Interaction Hub—a
highly scalable, powerful, easy-to-use
solution that’s integrated into marketing
resource management, marketing, real-time
decision making, service, and sales
applications.
You’ll be able to take advantage of
powerful data mining technologies that
aren’t usually at business users’ fingertips,
including:
• Profiling
• Forecasting
• Anomaly detection
• Cluster detection
• Classification and regression
• Dynamic scoring
• Real-time offer optimization
• Collaborative filtering
ABOUT INFOR
Infor—the world's third-largest supplier of
enterprise applications and services—
delivers award-winning Infor Epiphany and
Infor Orbis, helping customers leverage
CRM, CXM, MRM, and social CRM across
their enterprise. Infor helps leading
companies manage the entire customer
experience via the Customer Interaction
Hub, and revolutionizes every customer
interaction to intelligently engage in
multichannel, closed-loop dialogues
through the contact lifecycle. Visit
www.infor.com/solutions/crm/