Know your options
The first step in choosing the right data mining solution is figuring out what kind of data you want to work with and what you hope to accomplish.
E-commerce and Web server information is the most obvious. But also look at the data you collect in other areas of your business: records of transactions made at your call centre, sales receipts and customer information from point-of-sale transactions, and mailing lists of your company's brochures and catalogues.
If your company offers a shopping card that customers use to receive discounts, like those used in some photo processing labs, you have another valuable asset. These cards let you track data about purchasing patterns. Also consider buying third-party information to help you more thoroughly analyse your own data. Buy a list of potential customers with good credit from a credit bureau. Partner with a company that has a complementary business--an auto-repair shop located near your car dealership, for example--and get access to its customer data. Then feed it all to your data mining software.
Without implementing data mining and CRM software useful data is ignored or even abandoned while customers are inundated with information they don't want.
Mark Camilleri, Managing Director of Onyx Software in Australia says it's all about relevancy for your customers. Camilleri uses most banks as an example of what not to do to your customers. Monthly statements are often mailed to customers along with a variety of special offers that are usually of no interest. "If they set up a Web survey and asked me to fill in my interests, I'd get sent information that's important to me, not irrelevant papers".
Even new businesses, especially e-businesses that haven't collected much information yet, can leverage data mining. Purchasing the right list of prospective customers makes more sense than taking the time to build up your own list over time. That's what More.com did, quickly becoming one of the top pharmacies on the Web. "There are ways to acquire customers other than brand advertisement," says Peppers and Rogers' Martha Rogers.
