Enterprise Decision Management - a Weblog

Using EDM to build effective sales scripts

Posed by guest blogger, James Taylor) CRM Daily had an interesting piece on the power of scripting sales. The article's main focus was on how to disqualify bad prospects quickly but it made me think about the power of Enterprise...

Rewards? Experience? Loyalty? EDM!

Posed by guest blogger, James Taylor) I saw a couple of interesting posts when I returned from IBM's IMPACT show this week (blog posts here) -Jim Berkowitz on Want Customer Loyalty? Improve Customer Experience First and Ginger Conlon on Making...

Right here, right now with EDM

(Posed by guest blogger, James Taylor) Richard Higginbotham wrote a nice little post over on mycustomer.com called "Right here, right now: Event-triggered marketing". The use of enterprise decision management or EDM to deliver on this kind of customer-centric, event-based marketing...

Here's how Enteprise Decision Management puts location awareness to work

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) I saw this post by Charlie Bess of EDS today - Location awareness -- the tip of the iceberg. Charlie makes the great point that knowing where something or someone is (location awareness) is...

Using EDM to make your ATMs into a sales channel

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) My friends over at the Analytical Engine had an interesting post this week - ATM Machines As A Sales Channel. Their focus was on pre-approved offers and the possibility of loading them onto the...

Some thoughts on BI and analytics in retail banking

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) Late last year the folks at Datamonitor published Business Intelligence in Retail Banking (Review Report). I finally got to read it today and it is, overall, a very interesting paper and I recommend it...

Customer Interaction Management needs EDM

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) It seems to be customer interaction week (month) on my blogs. Today I finished reading an article that prompted this post - Service-Oriented Customer Interaction Management by Ashutosh Roy of eGain. There was a...

Using EDM to improve the customer experience

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) Dale Wolf had a post this week titled "9 Steps to a Valued, Differentiated and Consistently Delivered Customer Experience". It was a very useful list and it seemed to me useful to map Enterprise...

Using EDM to deliver event-based marketing

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) Adam Sarner at Gartner published Five Steps to Successful Event-Triggered Marketing last week. The abstract of this paper says: Successful event-triggered marketing is a process of identification, categorization, monitoring, optimizing and executing. Marketers that...

Using EDM to build loyalty to your organization

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) 1:1 Magazine had an interesting post this week titled "Loyal to what" that discussed a challenge for companies trying to build customer loyalty. As the article says, But what happens when those employees succeed...

EDM and interesting business technology trends

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) I saw this interesting report on the McKinsey Quarterly "Eight business technology trends to watch" and, as many McKinsey Quarterly reports do, it made me want to write something by way of follow-up. It...

Progressive Financial Services Firms Demonstrate the Value of Predictive Analytics; Decision Services Offer a Path for Others to Follow

Yesterday an article I wrote about Decision Services appeared in the online edition of DM Review’s December 2007 issue ("Decision Services: Pragmatic Real-Time Analytics"). In it, I describe how Decision Services, by providing a framework for managing both business rules and analytics, can pave the way toward adopting predictive analytics.

What's old is new - personalization is back

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) One of the most common reasons for discussing enterprise decision management, and one of the most common ways in which people want to make their systems smarter, is in personalizing them. Making a system...

Another way to avoid massive training costs in your call center

I saw a piece on Computerwire by Janine Milne today - "Poor IT Training Costs UK Contact Centers Billions" (subscription required) . Janine made the point that with 25% churn and complex IT systems, training is a huge problem for...

Customer 2.0, Operational BI and $20M

A series of articles and posts caught my eye tonight. First I read Mike Murphy's article on Meeting the Needs of Customer 2.0: Intelligence All Around (DM Review). Mike discussed the issues and difficulties of serving a new customer, one...

Using EDM to make call centers work better

I saw this interesting report in the McKinsey Quarterly - Anticipating customer queries in call centers. The article is free if your register and the summary says: A telecommunications company trying to optimize the economics of its call centers hesitated...

EDM Outta Sight: Invisible Employees and Transparent Decision Services

As a guest Blogger on the EDMBlog, I am obviously a proponent of Enterprise Decision Management and the impact it can have on a company’s operational decisions; you could say I think EDM is “outta sight.” By that, I mean really effective, specifically how EDM can optimize the many, often hidden, decisions underlying an organization’s day to day operations.

Customer focus with EDM

John Hagel, author of The Only Sustainable Edge (reviewed here), has a nice post on Tests for Customer Focused Companies. I liked his three "big" questions and any organization thinking about using a customer focus as a strategic weapon should...

McKinsey research of better IT management for banks points to EDM

The McKinsey Quarterly just published Better IT management for banks (subscription required). A nice little summary of some research into the IT operations of banks around the world. The report concludes that, rather than traditional IT concerns such as scale...

Automating decisions for better customer service

Mike Schaffner had a nice post that I saw this morning - Some Technology Suggestions for Airline Customer Service. He pointed out that a couple of simple things would represent much better customer service when one is flying. His examples...

Growing your business with decision management

A marketing focus today. More particularly a focus on marketing to existing customers prompted by three distinct posts. Firstly there was Growing Business the Old-Fashioned Way over on Customers Rock discussing how concentrating on existing customers can be very profitable....

Using EDM to improve marketing operations

I have been thinking about Marketing Operations (nicely described by Gary Katz here) and I saw a post on Why is marketing operations so important? on Unica's blog. It contained the great phrase: "What are the reasons for the growing...

Use Cases and Requirements - a response

Scott Sehlhorst, with whom I am presenting at Business Rules Forum this year, just posted Use Case Example With Business Rules. In the post Scott identifies 4 opportunities, in an ATM withdrawal use case, to find decisions and I thought...

Data Mining, Predictive Analytics and Markets of 1

Two articles made me think about the application of enterprise decision management, EDM, in the world of customer experience. First, I saw the one Jeff Kaplan wrote - "Data Mining as a Service: The Prediction is Not in the Box"....

Using EDM to meet CRM challenges and use what you know about your customers

Two articles in CIO magazine caught my eye this week. Firstly, Meridith Levinson wrote Getting to Know Them, an article about some award-winning systems. This was a great article and a couple of things occurred to me as I read...

Treating customers right, even if it means firing them

I saw this post by Seth Godin today - Treating different customers differently - and noticed that the Analytical Engine had a post on the same topic - Firing Customers - and it made me think about treating customers "right"...

Yahoo's senior marketer tells you to use EDM (kinda)

I was reading this interesting McKinsey report - Confronting proliferation ... in online media: An interview with Yahoo!’s senior marketer. In this report Cammie Dunaway, CMO for Yahoo, talks about how Yahoo is coping with the explosion of choices and...

Got MDM? You know EDM Better than you think

For some time now, I have recognized analogies between Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) and Master Data Management (EDM). They both share attributes such as the separation/abstraction of “inputs” from operational or analytical systems and recognition of these inputs as assets to be managed and available for reuse across the enterprise. It’s interesting to note also that both have impacts on analytical and operational systems, yet originated from different points of view. In the case of EDM, high volume operational decisions have historically been the focus, while MDM stems from problems in managing consistency in data warehouses.

New White Paper on Smart-Enough Customer Decisions

Montgomery Research have just published this "thought-leadership" white paper "Smart-Enough Customer Decisions" written by yours-truly. In it I discuss how smart-enough customer decisions can improve results for all concerned. This is based on the material in Smart (Enough) Systems. Technorati...

EDM-Enabled Web Self Service Better be Top of Mind for Financial Services Firms

On June 25 (2007), I saw this news posting on DM Review’s website – “IBM and KANA Study Shows Untapped Potential for US Financial Services Web Sites to Better Serve Clients,” and was intrigued to see to what extent Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) concepts were mentioned. It’s been a long time now that web-based customer service capabilities have been promoted as a timelier, lower cost method of maintaining and growing customer relationships than other options, but what is interesting is that the study, titled "Service Done Right: Why Great Online Customer Service Matters More than Ever," shows cultural and generational factors driving many financial institutions to take web based customer service much more seriously.

Meeting Customer Needs Online

I saw this article - U.S. Banks Not Meeting Customer Needs Online, According to Brulant Study - and it made me think about previous posts on the blog that might help some of these banks do exactly that - meet...

What do people do with analytics?

Interesting little poll over on KD Nuggets today - readers were asked where they had applied data mining in the last 12 months. The top 5 were: CRM (26.1% of respondents) Banking (23.9%) Direct Marketing/ Fundraising (20.3%) Science (18.8%) Fraud...

Using EDM to respond to trends in Financial Services

Guillermo Kopp over at Tower Group wrote this piece - Top 10 Trends in Financial Services: New Approaches in a Changing World (subscription required). It is an interesting paper, though I hope he will write some follow-up pieces as there...

Being customer-centric means being decision-centric

Nice post over on the Forrester Marketing blog today - Being Customer-Centric Is Hard. But, C'mon, It's Not THAT Hard! in which Elena makes some good points. However: Rather than saying "enough with the automated systems already", why not make...

Customer service, websites and decision automation

I got a great example today of the value of automating decisions in a flexible way. A major retailer, that I know to be a user of business rules, had finally got some Nintendo Wiis in stock. Like many of...

Shameless commerce: Smart (Enough) Systems

As some of you know by now I have been working, with Neil Raden, on a new book. As the files shipped to the printers yesterday, I thought I would take the opportunity to shamelessly plug the book here on...

EDM and Customer Centricity

Suresh Vittal over at Forrester wrote a nice little piece this week - "Eight Marketing Technologies That Enable Customer Centricity" (subscription or purchase required). He does a nice job of discussing some of the challenges and identifying technology both for...

Not just cross-channel, customer-centric

I saw this interesting Q&A today over on Intelligent Enterprise - Crossing Channels: Q&A With Best Buy's Matt Smith. The Q&A covered how Best Buy is moving into cross-channel analysis and how it hopes to use this as the basis...

Wells Fargo's Home Page Uses EDM

(Posted by Guest Blogger, and Amateur Webmaster, Ian Turvill.) James recently posted on the value of applying predictive analytics and the broader Enterprise Decision Management concept to the design of corporate home pages. As prescient as ever, James entry was...

EDM, connected decisions and life-cycle marketing

Lisa Bradner of Forrester (who is part of Forrester's marketing blog team) wrote Realizing The Life-Cycle Marketing Vision back in March but Ian pointed it out to me last week. The summary of the document says: "In simple terms, life-cycle...

A home page is a decision

I saw this post by Seth Godin - Blow up your home page - and it made me want to point out that when a customer or prospect visits the "home page" of your site, it feels to them like...

Live from InterACT: What's Next? The "Best Next Action"

I am attending InterACT San Francisco 2007 this week and blogging live (or nearly live) from the sessions. This session is "What's Next? The "Best Next Action"" with Jeff Zabin, one of our precision marketing "gurus" and author of Precision...

Live from InterACT: Customer Centricity in Action: Best Buy

I am attending InterACT San Francisco 2007 this week and blogging live (or nearly live) from the sessions. This session is "Customer Centricity in Action: Best Buy" being presented by Fair Isaac and Best Buy jointly. Customer centricity has some...