Event Summary
The strong connection between business intelligence (BI) and customer relationship management (CRM) is being recognized by companies and vendors alike. In order to extend the customer life cycle and meet customer needs, enterprises are looking beyond mere call lists and focus group information. They are seeking to exploit the vast amounts of information they already have on their customers, in order to build more effective marketing strategies, retain profitable customers, and let go of customer liabilities. Leveraging predictive analysis and other analytics, will enable enterprises to drill deeply into customer and market segmentation and improve product lifecycle management (PLM) to possibly reduce operating costs, enhance customer loyalty and lifetime value, and increase profitability.
Perhaps the tightest connection between CRM and BI can be seen in marketing automation (MA). MA involves analyzing and automating the marketing process to better allocate resources into various activities, channels, and media to build and enhance profitable customer relationships. This moves beyond traditional metrics to incorporate data cleansing, analysis tools, and campaign management systems (see the article Why Are CRM and Analytics Intrinsically Connected?)
Despite the complementary nature of CRM and BI, the implementation of MA has been stunted by slow markets and pessimistic investors. MA point solutions are often seen as luxuries when compared to broader CRM or enterprise resource management (ERP) solutions. Thus, vendors in CRM and BI, respectively, are building alliances in order to gain market share and illustrate the value of MA.
In addition to its strategic alliance with Amdocs, SAS has also announced that it will incorporate Aprimo Marketing Suite into SAS Marketing Automation. Aprimo pioneered the concept of marketing resource management (MRM), which centers on tracking marketing resources, including budgets and marketing skills to generate effective marketing strategies—a crucial activity given an age of shrinking budgets in marketing departments. It combines workflow capabilities for assigning tasks and triggering alerts and knowledge management (KM) to comply with marketing best practices.
The "name game" is also coming into play as vendors try and differentiate themselves from the competition to show the depth and coverage of their point solutions. For example, Aprimo and Unica refer to their products as enterprise marketing management (EMM) solutions to illustrate that their solutions surpass the limits of MA to offer tighter control over projected budgets, planning, and execution. Aprimo, in particular has created a Web-based software product that is designed to interface with and enhance ERP and CRM systems. To date, the company seems to be successful, as it boasts the Bank of America, Alticor, and Ernst & Young as among its clients. Unica also claims an impressive list. Its clients include AmBank, Halifax Bank of Scotland, and Best Buy. For more information on Aprimo and Unica, see Can the Market Sustain a Stand-Alone EMM? and Should Uniqueness Vouch for Marketing Automation Niche Players?
Blue Martini's strategy has changed many times. The company began as an e-commerce application vendor for business-to-business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) businesses with an on-line presence. However, it started to develop products as a multichannel CRM suite vendor, intruding even into the dubious partner relationship management (PRM) realm (see What Does the Future Hold for PRM?). In 2002, with the purchase of Cybrant, Blue Martini entered B2B, on the sell-side of e-commerce, because Cybrant provided the configuration for guided-selling functionality. From there, Blue Martini then narrowed its focus to only two industries—retail and manufacturing. In 2004, the company backpedaled its positioning as a CRM suite provider to focus on interactive selling optimization, mainly due to declining business in e-commerce and CRM markets. Before being acquired, the vendor shifted focus away from its traditional B2C e-commerce positioning into more generic support for all selling channels, such as mobile sales, and will now likely focus only on retail.
Deregulated gas and electricity (and even waterworks to some degree) energy and utility companies, may also be a viable market for MA providers. Utilities companies are now operating in a competitive, dynamic environment that is quite different from what it faced previously as a near-monopoly. In particular, the introduction of a dynamic trading market for energy has meant price fluctuations that puts a strain on the internal resources of energy companies.