FEATURE DATA MINING
Putting the power to exploit ‘big data’ in marketers’ hands
A new generation of data mining and modeling tools puts the power of complex on-demand modeling directly in the hands of marketers, even with no prior training in data mining techniques, as Antony Begley discovers in conversation with KXEN CEO John Ball.
T
he implications for marketers of the much vaunted dawn of the era of ‘big data’ are many and wide-ranging, but one of the most important evolutions
from a database marketing point of view has been the desire of marketers to get much, much closer to those vast quantities of juicy, insight- laden data. Like kids in a sweet shop, the lure of all that data with all the potential it holds is overpowering. The prospect of gaining that sort of insight at an increasingly granular level is temptation of the highest order. There is a problem, of course. And it’s a
problem that most database marketers will be familiar with, particularly if they have been around the block once or twice. The problem is that actually mining that data and all the treasures buried in it is not as simple as it might be. And it’s definitely not as simple as marketers would like it to be. But that could all be about to change thanks to the next generation of super smart, easy to use mining and modeling tools which might finally put the power of complex modeling and predictive analytics straight into the hands of marketers themselves.
THE IT HURDLE This prospect, as all marketers will tell you, is an enticing one, and here’s why: historically, predictive analytics meant submitting requests to the IT department and then waiting an awful long time to not get the answer you were looking for.
“Either that or you waited so long that by the time you got your answers they were no longer valid because they were out of date,” laughs KXEN CEO John Ball. It’s a farcical situation and one that highlights
the difficulties of getting IT and marketing to work together.
“It’s become a cliche that IT and marketing don’t get on,” says Ball, “but most of today’s organisations are seeking to use data to help them make better decisions so the industry needs a solution.
28 April 2012
“Realistically, the problem is only going to be exacerbated by the advent of big data.” The solution that Ball’s company has recently launched is InfiniteInsight Genius. The solution is a plug and play self-service tool that promises to put the power of complex modeling directly into the hands of marketers, even those with no experience in data mining techniques. Let’s face it, the majority of marketers don’t want to have to worry about which algorithm to use, they want to be able to quickly and easily build powerful, reliable, robust models that will predict possible business outcomes. Is this customer likely to churn? Will they respond to a cross-sell or up-sell offer?
‘Clicks and not code’ is the snappy tagline that KXEN uses to encapsulate what Genius is all about. The solution majors on being intuitive and easy-to-use with a browser-based, graphical user interface which effectively walks marketers step- by-step through the process of identifying the behavior they are trying to predict, the timeframe in which the prediction will occur and the target audience.
Because Genius is native to InfiniteInsight, it takes advantage of KXEN’s start- to-finish automation of the predictive analytics process from preparing the analytical data set, to building the predictive model, deploying resulting scores into production and scheduling periodic refreshes as often as needed and based on the latest data.
Importantly for marketers. Genius also integrates seamlessly into marketing processes and tools. Predictive scores and scoring equations can be deployed directly in-database to the data warehouse, in real-time to
transactional systems like a corporate website or call centre, or in batch to campaign management applications.
“High end data mining and modelling used to
be the preserve of Fortune 500 and FTSE 250 companies,” says Ball. “It was telcos and big financial institutions and utilities and so on, but that has changed dramatically in recent years and
John Ball
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