CRM and Marketing solution
Analysis and Networking (formerly Vision In Business) provide business information in the form of conferences, workshops, training, reports, market studies, books, market research, newsletters and discussion forums. The company operates across Europe and were winners of The Queens Award for Export in 2001.
Analysis and Networking relies heavily on its direct marketing function, which is the main sales method employed by the company. Highly targeted and fast-turnaround mailing campaigns are required to ensure the company's ongoing success. Previously this service had been provided by a marketing bureau; this presented shortcomings in terms of cost, reliability and time-to-market.
Anne Marie Larsen, MD of Vision In Business, explained:
"We looked at all the big providers (Siebel, Pivotal, E.Piphany, Goldmine, Genesys, Peoplesoft, Prime Response/Chordiant, SalesLogix, Pythagoras, Wyvern Crest, etc) and concluded that while they all had something to offer, there were also serious drawbacks in terms of lack of sophisticated direct marketing functionality, lack of openness to customisation or to integration with other best-in-class software and, not least, in terms of very high costs."
A rigorous bid and selection process resulting in Octavia being awarded the full contract for system design, implementation and support.
The overall requirement was for an enterprise-wide, scalable CRM and marketing solution. Specific requirements were as follows:
| Area | Requirements |
|---|---|
| Scalable System | A CRM solution capable of supporting 100s of users across multiple sites. The primary data entity would contain c.1 million entries with dynamic, B2B, Europe-wide data sets. |
| File Import | An open import mechanism for importing and categorising new marketing lists. |
| Job Functions | Automatic assigning of industry standard job function codes according to rule sets based on job titles. |
| Response History | Tracking of the effectiveness of direct marketing campaigns. |
| Counts | Creation of complex, segment based, marketing "counts" using infinite selection criteria. |
| Output | Secure output of marketing data. |
| Data Amendments and Approval | Data entry and amendment by researchers using an intuitive UI. Data changes follow a strict approval process. |
| External Disk Processing | Automatic cross-checking of external data sources against known marketing data. |
| Record Suppression | Automatic suppression of records using email and web technologies. |
| Security & Auditing | A highly secure system for this competitive environment. |
| Customer Services | Tracking and management of customers and their orders. |
| De-Duplication and Merge | Automatic duplicate identification of European address records. Merging of records, choosing the best data from each. |
| Flexibility | User customisation of validation, security, de-duplication and other rule-sets. |
The requirements presented some complicated design issues and very tight contractual guidelines were applied. Therefore, a highly structured project approach, utilising SSADM, was undertaken. This ensured that the solution met stringent targets in terms of performance, scalability, security and extensibility. The solution designed was a 3-tier client server application. MS SQL server, COM+ and Visual Basic were chosen as the development platforms. A 3-tier distributed architecture was chosen to enhance system scalability and also simplify the development of any additional interfaces. Due to the high processing requirments of the marketing count functionality, these were designed to run in an asynchronous manner utilising messaging technology.
Duplicate identification was implemented through integration with SSA Name3 (from Search Software America). This technology was chosen for its ability to spot duplicates despite language differences or badly-formed address data. Customer-based record suppression was implemented through integration with MS Exchange Server.
This screen shot shows some sample screens from the main marketing UI. View larger image. The screen shot shows a multi-segment marketing count being created. It also shows the selection screen once a count has finished running.
The main user interface
As well as solution design and development, Octavia also took responsibility for implementation, testing, support and overall project management.
The solution was delivered on time and on budget. The system has given numerous business benefits particularly marketing cost savings and a decrease in lead-time in the production of marketing counts and outputs. The success of the system has resulted in Analysis & Networking making the software available (through a licensing scheme) to other organisations.
