DM p12-17 Systems Feb09.qxp 27/01/2009 15:26 Page 16
Integrated Systems for Marketing
of skill set to operate it,” says Andrew Freeman, man- any undue implications for performance or indeed
aging director at CRM Technologies. “These solutions data volumes.
require a number of technical disciplines, including One of the fundamental problems of SaaS for mar-
web development, data manipulation or campaign keting has been the dearth of decent solutions via
workflow development. This should not be underesti- this delivery method. British vendor Market
mated when confronted with a shiny, new SaaS sys- Developer has been a trailblazer here, while Wyvern
tem.” has developed its Abraxas ASP sales module and Blue
Marketers also tend to require a richer interface Tahiti has offered a database, associated tools and a
than most other business apps. The standard SaaS prospect data set via SaaS for some years now.
browser window has been limited here, though SmartFocus recently made good on its promise to
options are opening up here with newer standards extend the functionality of its SaaS email suite, now
like Silverlight delivering better graphics, multiple branded as its Digital Marketing Solution. One of the
windows and so forth. problems with most list-based SaaS email tools is that
“We tend to use Terminal Services to deliver richer response and other data does not link back to the
applications where there are a lot of interactions with central customer database.
the interface,” says Annis. “That’s just like running it With open links to other databases, this product
on the desktop. Browsers will be sufficient for most combines analytics tools with email delivery, cam-
other users.” paign management and historical reporting to man-
Marketers often want to run complex queries across age digital channels like email, SMS, RSS and
large data sets, a processor-intensive operation and microsites. Clients can apparently be “be up and run-
one traditionally carried out on a dedicated worksta- ning within 48 hours of agreement” and according to
tion. Underhill, this “moves digital campaigns from list
However vendors like Apteco with its FastStats based communications to integrated data-based com-
Discoverer have shown the way here, running pro- munications”.
cessing on powerful back-end servers and passing Tangible’s Magellan is also in the SaaS mould, with
results across to a local browser-based thin client. So a wider base of functionality delivered through a
having the code remote from the user shouldn’t have .NET framework to client users who have their own
16 Database Marketing February 2009
www.dmarket.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48