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INFO WEB How To Be A VIrtual Data-Miner Using the Net to capture customer data yields richer results. By Hasnain Zaheer Have you realised that the Net is a motherload for your company's data-mining? After all, this infotech tool enables you to mine masses of data about your customers to understand purchase patterns, forecast sales blips, predict customer defections, and arrive at a million other conclusions. And what better, more accurate, and richer source of customer information can there be than the data that can be amassed from their visits to your Website? That's why clever corporate users of infotech are forward-integrating the data-collection part of their data-mining into the Netspace. And with great benefits. Avers Anitesh Barua, 40, Professor of the University of Texas' Graduate School of Business: ''Datamining gives a company the ability to leverage the Net for knowledge-based decisions and co-operation from partners.'' Not convinced? Take a minute to consider the sheer wealth of information about the customer that you can gather by operating on the Net to sell to, or communicate with, them:
The connections that your data-mining software can make from such data will provide insights you can only dream of. The analysis can re-segment your customer-base according to preferences on any number of dimensions. It can enable you to target specific communication to specific customers, designed to appeal to that buyer's interests. It can identify those geographical areas, time-zones, and sociological groupings to which customers who are most-or, if you prefer, least-interested in your products. Says Deepankar Sogani, 27, Business Manager, IIS Infotech: ''Datawarehousing and mining solutions using the Net will provide all the answers without asking too many questions from customers.'' For companies that are using data-mining tools to understand their customers, therefore, using their e-Biz storefronts to pull in customer-data is crucial. How can that be achieved? Well, by designing your Website so that it requires visitors to fill in their personal information before going further needs simple HTML designing, which your Webmaster will do easily. Next, you will need software that collects this information and converts it into the kind of databases that your data-mining application uses. Don't forget, your data-mining tools will be running on databases created with information coming not just from your Website, but also from real-life stores, customer surveys, and call-centres. So, integrating the data captured by your e-Biz site into this database is essential. To do that, you can use the Net module of your existing data-mining tool, if it has one. All popular data-mining software, such as Cognos, Darwin, Business Objects, are adding this module to their packages. Or, you can pick a package that performs this specific task, and then plugs the data into your data-mining software-such as Microsoft's site server and Mediahouse's Stastic Server. Of course, vendors of data-mining tools are using the Net itself to improve their services for you. For instance, IBM, whose Intelligent Miner is a widely-used enterprise-level data-mining package, has launched a Web-based service named SurfAid Analytics (surfaid. dfw.ibm.com). You simply upload the data captured on your Website every day to the SurfAid FTP. Then, for a fixed monthly fee ranging from Rs 43,000 to Rs 12.90 lakh, this data is sliced, analysed, and served up to you any which way your data-mining people want it. Make no mistake-your e-Biz venture is the most valuable ore that your data-miners can unearth. MANAGING YOUR E-TALENT Congratulations! You have, finally, decided to get into e-Biz. Before you work on strategy, focus on the people you'll need. For, there are just aren't enough of them. Companies that don't know what it takes to build a team that can spearhead your Web development end up completely overlooking the basics of success: managing continuous consumer service, developing successful Web applications, and managing multiple external vendors. To help Net-newbies navigate the treacherous terrain of the Web, consulting firm Jupiter Communications (www.jup. com) has produced a report on best practices in Web development. The 5 focus areas: You may outsource development, but the site is still yours. If anything goes wrong, users will blame you. Not the hosting service. Provide for a high attrition rate. If you build an in-house development team, provide for attrition. At least 10 per cent of your staff will leave in the first 12 months. Not only will you have to continually hire employees, you'll also have to train them. Hire for what will be, not for what was. Given the rate at which Net technologies and business applications are evolving, hiring people on the basis of their existing skills-sets is a bad idea. Instead, use outsourcing as an opportunity for the best people to learn from external developers. Prepare to outsource more. Demand will always outstrip supply, and technology growth will always move faster than your own training processes. Create an all-inclusive culture. People who are part of your Website team always have exit options. Only by telling them where the organisation plans to be tomorrow and celebrating their contributions can you retain your best people. -R. Sukumar MOVING UP ON SEARCH-ENGINES Do you know where your potential customers are most likely to start looking for the products you make or the services you provide? Search-engines. So, it's a smart move to ensure that your site features ahead of your competitor's when the engine displays the results of a search. There is a science-and software-to it. Step 1 involves submitting your site to the search-engine. A software package named The SitePromoter (www. marketingtips.com/site promoter) can do this best. It provides you with an interactive form where you can fill in your keywords, descriptions, and the categories in which you want to be featured. And unlike other submission software, all of which just submit the same details to all search-engines, Site Promoter customises its submission to meet the specific criteria of each search-engine. But that's just half the task. The other half lies in monitoring where you figure in the results of searches, especially with reference to the competition. Another package named WebPosition (www. marketing tips.com/web position), can tell you where you figure when specific keywords, or combinations of keywords or phrases are used. This knowledge can help you modify your submission and channel more traffic your Website's way. Caveat: make sure you have picked the right search-engines, given your preferred markets. After that, just watch your site move up the rankings when customers search for products like yours. -R. Sukumar WHO IS YOUR E-CUSTOMER? Is your best selling e-idea premature? It may be, argues consulting firm Forrester Research (www.forrester.com) today, the majority of on-line customers are those who didn't grow up with PCs, and have adopted the Net to do conventional things in new ways. They use the Net as a source of information, and leverage this to derive incremental benefits: lower prices; quicker delivery; or more convenience. However, explain the findings, it is only when consumers who have internalised the Net become the primary target segment that companies will be able to use unconventional e-Biz models. Thus, companies that are trying to push concepts like user-defined prices or personal stores may not succeed as long as the market is made up of adopters who still toe the conventional line. They will have to wait for internalisers. It isn't just businesses that will change under the influence of the Net. So will customers. -R. Sukumar |
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