Following what seems to be an industry trend, Group 1 Software is ready to debut DM1, a new integrated database marketing solution, at this week's National Center for Database Marketing's 21st National Conference & Exhibition in Seattle.
The system's core architecture is a suite of both in-house data analysis and integrity tools along with a spattering of off-the-shelf programs that will let businesses understand, profile and segment individual customers. The system is designed to help companies find the best customers and mass-customize marketing communications.
While DM 1 creates a customized database marketing system, its features include Group 1's DataDesigns product for data integrity, data transformation, data management and data warehousing and Group 1's DOC1 product for database publishing and electronic documentation composition. It has a variety of Group 1 in-house tools as well as Express, Oracle's relational database and online analytical processing (OLAP), and MapInfo's data-mapping and data-visualization tools. The system also has been named a reseller of Acxiom's Data Network.
The system includes Group 1's MODEL 1 data-mining product, which is particularly important since it includes four solution modules that help solve specific business problems, such as response, cross-sell, customer valuation and segmentation modeling.
The key to DM 1, according to Marty Sohovich, product marketing manager of database marketing solutions at Group 1, is that it offers a packaged solution based on the company's tried-and-true database marketing tools. There are no weak links, he said, that a client could end up having trouble with and that eventually could ruin an otherwise successful solution.
“Most of the core components we are offering are from Group 1,” he said. “Take, for example, our experience with our demographic and geographic coding product over all of these years. There are a lot of intricacies that a more casual integrator would have no clue about, such as what the updates are and what the Census Bureau and data providers are doing. We have symbiotic relationships with these vendors, and these relationships will help to offer a beneficial solution to customers.”
Also, Sohovich said this knowledge base makes for quick turnarounds.
“We are finding that the typical amount of time to set up this integrated solution is about six months or less, as opposed to the 12 to 18 months some solutions could take,” he said.
Sohovich said the attempt is to integrate early on in the process and extend out to the fulfillment in the end.
“In reality, we are offering an integrated application architecture with services that give customers the ability to tailor the system and customize it,” he said. “Customers may not need data mining, and the system can be implemented in this way.”
Pricing, which has yet to be determined, is based on a variety of factors, including business process analysis, system design, program and third-party data management, development and integration, training and support. Customers also will be able to continue purchasing each package separately.
“We have found that more customers are choosing a one-stop shop kind of integrated approach,” Sohovich said. “People would rather see an 80 percent solution right in front of them, with the ability to customize it the way they want, and then have that solution be delivered to them at a better price point and schedule point than it would be if they had started from scratch.”
