To come to think of it as a subscriber, the move from the governing body is quite an interesting one. However, what does it mean to ISPs that are active in the market or holding license to go live anytime? Well, understand your subscribers and cap basis the business the revenues you get from them. Is it that simple? Yes, only if you are only short-term focused!

A traditionalist would want to handle the situation by (say) listing subscribers basis the revenue in descending order, and try to service the subscribers from top deciles well and eliminate the others, if need be. If you are traditionalist and want to continue running the business in same fashion, don’t read further.

ARPU (one of the most abused terms I have come across the recent past) is just one dimension of understanding the value of your customers and be informed its is awfully short-term driven. When you add a host of other key dimensions to ARPU and use them to effectively to serve or acquire subscribers, you don’t only handle the current quarter/fiscal’ requirement but take care of a considerable amount of long-term objectives as well.

Now the question is how should an ISP do this? Well, Customer Analytics coupled with Marketing Process Management is the only way to stay alive and kicking.

I must admit that there is a sea change in the way how subscriber segmentations and retention programs are being held today in the Indian market. However, there are gaps and there still exists a lot of scope on how finer details can be dealt with for subscribers’ and shareholders’ happiness

There are obvious choices that can be made with Analytical Solutions and I would be very glad to engage in a dialogue with you thus evolve a holistic approach to your customer management strategies. Do send a note by Clicking Here and using the following comment section to let me know your views.

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Though its been a couple of years of India waking up to the Customer Management and associated priorities in business management, my initial interactions with aforesaid folks, reemphasized upon the state of affairs being still nascent and yet to grow, the statement of Campaign Management as a priority item in the scheme of things its quite a good evidence on the industry’s nascent stage.

I respect their views, however it is in need to widen their horizon and look beyond the obvious as determined by basic conventional CRM wisdom.

As the figure above suggests, to maintain and uphold the objective called “keeping the house tidy” is subjected to a few players playing their designated roles.

Its never a one man’s job and importantly claiming a slick broom would do the trick is futile claim as it is currently suggested by some myopic customer management (Campaign Management) consultants.

To give you an idea on the role players in Customer Management, the charts starts with the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Finance Officer staying on top with CEO’ business objective alignment and product managers holding the second line. In addition, the analyst, campaign managers, segment managers and business and IT operational folks follow the suit – All these personas have a defined role that they must play in order to get the desired results.

The power of technology (or software application, if you will) to excel in their scheme of things should not only have campaign management but an entire set of applications and a orchestrating scheme to meet the business objectives .

The CEO/CMO and CFO needs to have a summarized and holistic picture of what is currently happening and how well its in alignment with the business strategy, they should be able to identify any discrepancies and deploy appropriate course measure to manage it effectively.

• IT specialist should be able to define policies on data management and securities related area and let this piece run in an auto-pilot mode, intervene and correct as appropriate.
• Basis the data sourced, the analyst should be able to identify product associations, customer affinity quotients by creating segments, perform analysis to identify potential cross/up-sell opportunities or proactively identify signs around customer management and keep these information consumable by management and operational business folks.
• The product management and the marketing teams should come together to ensure basis the gaps and additional revenue potential identified by analysts are acted upon.
• The product management team also should keep track of each activity where the customer is contacted through an outbound or inbound communication, if the performance is found to be unsatisfactory, make real-time course corrections hence increase the bar
• The Information Technology operational team should store the history of all the aforesaid activities for future references.

Now, as you can see the aspects mentioned above are to be used at various level of intensities (basis your business model) for effective customer management.

You may now agree, a one-size-does-not-fit-all and such one-sized approach may not be a very appropriate one in such scenarios involving various stakeholders.

Please exercise due caution when it comes to evaluating business software applications for customer management, ensure the solution that are being considered will (A) fit well in your environment and (B) covers the aspects mentioned above in one way or the other.

I am keen to know your views on this, please do leave a comment with your opinion or send me a message through the Contact page. Also, if you enjoyed reading this article and would like to be kept informed of any such new articles, you can subscribe below for an email notification.

Business Intelligence growing at a very high pace, knowing these a host of software professional comes together and mushroom out a myriad of software solutions in the market, in the process the poor evaluators and decisions makers at various enterprises go through the turmoil of getting stuck in the cobweb of information and struggle to make the right decisions. The idea behind this post is bounce of some ideas and approaches that are software solution agonistic but totally relevant from business perceptive.

Many folks I have dealt with have this common misconception about Business Intelligence, they think/believe ability to be able to report basis historical data in various forms such as drillable OLAP cubes, KPI driven dashboards, building a Pivot in excel are all business intelligence. As a starter, it ain’t really Business Intelligence! If you insist for a term for this, I would say ‘Historical Business Reporting’

The analogy I give to folk that believe the aforesaid definition is true is the following, “Running any business basis Business Intelligence that is believed to have a comprehensive set of capabilities to report on historical data, is like driving a car with a really huge rear view mirror and no (or keyhole) size windshield to look ahead”

If you believe (request you should, we practitioners are ready to help you) in the value that a true Business Intelligence can bring to your business, please do start with sketching out what are the Business Specific Values you would want to derive out of the Solution.

• In almost all the solutions’ case what goes in determines what gets out. So, if your data is not good enough, don’t expect anything good in return. This means, you might want to ensure the BI solution you are considering has the capability to manage Data Quality effectively.
• In addition to the cleansed data, we need to have access to behavioral analysis of underlying data and predicted future as well, for this we need the power of statistics – In absence of this approach, you will be driving the car (business) like the man in the illustration
• Basis the above two points, we are ready to represent the Information derived (from the cleansed and statistically analyzed data).
• Now, we must be able to present this data to aid various stakeholders make timely informed decisions. Basis their persona/profile, we need to decide how summarized or detailed the data should be.
• In the process of the presenting the data to end-users, we must ensure they are equipped with a through WHAT-IF capability to perform right kind of analysis in addition to accessing reports.

Business Intelligence solutions that has the aforesaid flow would assist you in not only meeting your short-term goals but the long-term objectives as well. Do talk to us, we are waiting to hear your perspectives..

However, the real question is, do you, as a marketer want to automate the entire process? You might ask, if it is a relevant question? Yes, it is!

Let me give an analogy in aviation industry. The role of technology in aviation space has increased so much; flying a passenger aircraft from Helsinki to Caracas is possible without having to have a Pilot on board. The engineers behind the scenes at Boeing, Air Bus, Embraer et al is well aware, the instinct of the Pilots on board is something that can, by no means be automated. And, this very instinct is one of the critical factors for sustenance of safe flights.

What can we understand from this analogy? Though, it is possible to automate the marketing, particularly campaign management function much as you want to, it is essential to keep the human touch intact in whatever way you can. Sooner or Later you will realize, this decision has paid-off handsomely in managing customers effectively, i.e. either in managing marketing costs or increasing the returns you get from various marketing programs.

Please do not fall prey to sales-talks from vendors who make automation process look like result of a magic wand swing, do exercise adequate caution before registering what is being told to you.

In an article I was reading in the morning, there was an interesting note from a software solution consulting firm that magnifies and explores the AHT aspect of Contact Center Management.

In my opinion, “Don’t Make your customers wait on IVR queue” – A term pertaining to Contact Center Management has been given undue importance. In real-sense, no customer is unready to wait for a quality response to their requirements or queries. A customer who waited for 4 minutes in IVR listening to Bohemian Chant music would be satisfied if his queries are addressed to his satisfaction.

IMHO it is important to identify and emphasize more on the quality elements to address the customer needs instead of building unnecessary frenzy around time (quantity) of his wait by the software call handler. End of the day, the customer who waited for an extra two minutes is bound to be happy if his requirements are addressed well.

In the last five odd years, whenever I have presented strategies and recommendations for customer management, enterprises I have worked with often requested us to build a strategy without having to relook into the customer data.

Organizations that played the Data Warehousing Game in the last half-decade without attaching tangible and intangible roles of the warehouse are too skeptical to give the deserved importance to look at the customer data for tangible values – In my opinion, warehouse Solution vendors and importantly some Enterprise Marketing Management Solution vendors are one of the key stake-holders to blame for this.

Amidst of meeting their quarterly figures, they went on a binge to sell software licenses without bothering to address the true needs of Customer Management.

I always requested the enterprises that consider walking the warehouse pathway, to hold their horses before boarding the bandwagon and think over how warehoused data would assist them in making meaningful business decisions, which touches either the top or bottom line of the business. Likewise, urged enterprises to be cautious to deal with Enterprise Marketing Management Solution vendors without adequate Customer Data Management Capabilities.

Sure, you already have substantial data that can be leveraged in customer management but not without some massaging – Fact is, the data that you have as is might not provide value it ought to in customer management, you definitely have to prune it a bit to realize its unseen potential in business.

Always, I repeat, always evaluate how the Customer or Enterprise Marketing Management solution you are considering handles the Customer Data – Firmly insist a demonstration of the solution’s capability around customer data management. In a warehouse scenario, proactively assess what you do once the data is organized in the warehouse pertaining to customer management and other business values it can provide.

In absence of this, you might end up automating some part of Customer Management, but it is surely not complete – Sad part in most of the cases is, you may not even realize the solution is incomplete.

In the world of effectice customer management, data management is one of the crucial steps and not to be ignored..

However, when it comes to solutions that are designed to address marketing requirements, it’s essential to look at them through a high-caliber magnifying glass. Why? Technology is relatively a new entrant to the marketing world and thus the solutions that are available in the market are not really matured, except for a couple of them.

In the last decade or so, a whole lot of software players mushroomed creating software solution for marketing management area. Needless to say, a few of these players have indeed good point-solutions, but the limitation is, most of them are a bit myopic in their offering.

To illustrate this in an example, one of the Campaign Management vendors in the world, got rather a decent solution for Campaign Management function, however, it does not have anything around Campaign Management Function to make it effective – A plain vanilla campaign management solution is nothing but a glorified SQL black-box that abstracts the raw code to the user, nevertheless, does nothing more than what an SQL query is expected to deliver. Any enterprise that is considering to invest in a technology solution would want to know the ROI it can bring to the table over a period of time, a plain vanilla solution would sooner or later fail the ROI litmus test.

As an enterprise when it comes to investing in a Marketing Management Solution, please do exercise some caution. Data Management, Customer Analytics, Channel Integration and Marketing Reporting are a few of the core ingredients of marketing function. You might want to consider investing in point-solution if you have existing investments in these areas.

But… Even if you do have existing investments, ensure you do not have any licensing and hardware sizing limitations to use the existing Data Management and Reporting area for marketing management function. In my experience, in most of the cases there is always a challenge to address around these areas. So, I would think its wiser for enterprises that are considering investing into a Marketing Management solution to evaluate the solution basis its width and depth of offering and not get awed by a few screens that resembles the wand of Ron Weasley.

Some enterprises consider going for a full-fledged best-of-breed approach to address marketing management requirements. Sure. But do note the following few words when you consider offerings from multiple vendors – Integration, Security, Metadata Management, User Management, Upgrades, Updates, Scalability… These factors will spring up when you look at multiple solution integration and will make you grow old, real fast.

If you liked this article and want to know on how to look at a marketing management solution, I urge you to visit Transcentis to know more. I would really appreciate if you can either send your comment for this article or contact to let me know your views/feedback.

Yet another case to add 55% of failed CRM cases. As a result of the failure, he is prone not to recommend anything pertaining to Customer Management to his official and social peers in an open way. Well, what is the idea behind this post?

The gentleman in the aforesaid story must have been one of those who must have fallen prey for one of the Campaign Management vendors that would impressed him and his team on user friendliness and ease-of-use of their software application. As a result to their sales discussion, they have forced him to get convinced on their offering as the end-of-all solution all challenges pertaining to customer management – Result? Substantial failure and another company helped the soaring CRM failures.

It is important to hold back for a moment and think….. Think what?

Please! Please! Please! Do not see Customer Management as an area in isolation, but as a part of the overall organization’ fabric and importantly part of the enterprise’ culture.

And, it is essential to look at Customer Management in totality NOT as one omnipotent software application. Please ensure the data that are to be managed from Customer Management perspective can be handled by the solution you are evaluating, it includes cleansing (if applicable) as well. Ensure, the constraint/limitation you have on storage does not have impact the Customer Management initiative. Ensure, in addition to accessibility to data, you have statistical analytical capabilities to be able to derive meaning out of all possible you may have. Ensure a campaign management application that is functionally rich and truly usable. Ensure, anything pertaining to Customer Management can be thoroughly report to various individual as various levels in the enterprise.

If you are one of those thinking of Customer Management, please do drop in a line-here with your thoughts.

The title of this post is a pretty common phrase used by marketers and businessmen in general, but how much of it is practiced was a debatable issue in the past.  But things are not same any more, marketers and businesses have realized its time such theories are put in practice.

Telecom Operators are one of the early adopters of applying this Theory in Practice. Most of the Telecom Operators I have met had this particular thread in common -”How do we ensure the communication channels are used effectively, importantly how the ‘abuse’ can be arrested”.You might be wondering what the word “abuse” is doing in this context.

Well, study shows not-so-high-value customers that move to a new town have the tendency to call the contact-center and talk for no rhyme or reason, this chokes the channel bandwidth and the Telcos have been struggling to arrest this issue. Another kind of customers that abuse the channel are those who can never be satisfied or pleased by the service provider, there are cases where such customers have called more than 27 times in a month to lodge complaints.

One of the leading telecom operators in the United States has reached a stage to wind the latter scenario by running a marketing campaign to the calling customers to stop calling the contact-center OR get ready for a disconnected phone-line. In my opinion, a task that deserves a loud Kudos!

If you get under the hoods of such success stories, determining the logic behind arriving at single-digit converstion rate is a no-brainer. Due to the indequacies in choosing right customers, marketers invariably decide on a larger carpet size and attack them with offer bombs. This results in substantially lower conversion rates (the genesis of 2%) and the number seem to never grow beyond single digit. A corollary to such stories is invariably, if I do not leverage the allocated marketing budget, the impact it has on subsequent year or quarter is quite high on budget allocation.

In many occasions, I have spoken with marketers to increase the number of campaigns or the offers and ensure the budget spend remains intact without compromising on the quality of work or aim towards higher conversation rates, importantly real business value. Not only the marketers are reluctant to such proposals, they are a bit cynical as any such changes to them is equivalent to moving out of a one’s religion.

I sincerly recommend and hope marketers (at least those that use some automation techniques in Direct Marketing) read and consider embracing the value of Mathematical Optimization techniques in Marketing. Marketing Optimization (AKA MO) translates business and marketing constraints to mathematical equations and by using statistical algorithms maps customers with campaigns and offers scientifically. Some of the end results of an such endeavor are the following,

A) Substantial Reduction of Carpet Bombing thus reduced marketing cost
B) The saved funds are available for other targeted marketing programmes, which can yield higher results
C) Highly Targeted and important Relevant Campaigns and Offers to Customers
D) Balanced and meaningful utilization of Communication Channels
E) Direct Contributor towards reducing the size of DND Database growth
F) Last but not the least, upholding Customer Communication Governance Policies

The recent buzz word in marketing, i.e., Customer Governance can be meticulously dealt with marketing programmes that embraces optimization techqniques and results are undoubtedly substantial.

There are real-life cases from Retailers, Banks and Telecom Operators where Optimization Techniques have aided in improving Campaign response rates by over 20%. In addition, targeted selection of customers, effective Channel Utilization and importantly Customer Satisfaction have proven to be highly profitable. So, its upto the Marketer to decide to stay with the old proverb of 2% conversation rates or decide to move on in life with new paradigm of 20%.

Your Comments?