17,375 research outputs found
Internet-driven customer centric : an exploratory analysis
Firm’s are becoming everyday more focus on customer orientation, leading to the need use of new techniques or combine use of existent ones. Both Customer Relationship Management and Knowledge Management are increasingly relevant in the corporate agendas as well as been broadly studied by academic researchers and with the development of the digital economy it’s necessary to have a larger understanding of their role in e-business performance. Thus, our aims are to determine whether the implementation of virtual CRM and KM is linked to e-business performance and to identify the nature of the relationship existing in the combine use of these tools. Thus, this paper establishes a new model of the practices and results of the both tools which has been tested in European companies. For that purpose, we used a structural equation modelling analysis. The results show that both virtual CRM and KM have a positive impact on the maximization of e-business performance and that their combine use has also a positive impact on e-business performance. As limitations of the study we consider the need for more research into this field and the inclusion of news elements such as technological readiness and management support. This paper contributes to the research on this topic with new evidence in a broad sample.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Customers Behavior Modeling by Semi-Supervised Learning in Customer Relationship Management
Leveraging the power of increasing amounts of data to analyze customer base
for attracting and retaining the most valuable customers is a major problem
facing companies in this information age. Data mining technologies extract
hidden information and knowledge from large data stored in databases or data
warehouses, thereby supporting the corporate decision making process. CRM uses
data mining (one of the elements of CRM) techniques to interact with customers.
This study investigates the use of a technique, semi-supervised learning, for
the management and analysis of customer-related data warehouse and information.
The idea of semi-supervised learning is to learn not only from the labeled
training data, but to exploit also the structural information in additionally
available unlabeled data. The proposed semi-supervised method is a model by
means of a feed-forward neural network trained by a back propagation algorithm
(multi-layer perceptron) in order to predict the category of an unknown
customer (potential customers). In addition, this technique can be used with
Rapid Miner tools for both labeled and unlabeled data
ERP implementation for an administrative agency as a corporative frontend and an e-commerce smartphone app
This document contains all the descriptions, arguments and demonstrations of the researches, analysis, reasoning, designs and tasks performed to achieve the requirement to technologically evolve an managing agency in a way that, through a solution that requires a reduced investment, makes possible to arrange a business management tool with e-commerce and also a mobile application that allows access and consultation of mentioned tool. The first part of the document describes the scenario in order to contextualize the project and introduces ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning). In the second part, a deep research of ERP market products is carried out, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each one of the products in order to finish with the choice of the most suitable product for the scenario proposed in the project. A third part of the document describes the installation process of the selected product carried out based on the use of Dockers, as well as the configurations and customizations that they make on the selected ERP. A description of the installation and configuration of additional modules is also made, necessary to achieve the agreed scope of the project. In a fourth part of the thesis, the process of creating an iOS and Android App that connects to the selected ERP database is described. The process begins with the design of the App. Once designed, it is explained the process of study and documentation of technologies to choose the technology stack that allows making an application robust and contemporary without use of licensing. After choosing the technologies to use there are explained the dependencies and needs to install runtime enviornments prior to the start of coding. Later, it describes how the code of the App has been raised and developed. The compilation and verification mechanisms are indicated in continuation. And finally, it is showed the result of the development of the App once distributed. Finally, a chapter for the conclusions analyzes the difficulties encountered during the project and the achievements, analyzing what has been learned during the development of this project
The Landscape of Salesforce for Nonprofits: A Report on the Current Marketplace for Apps
Do you use Salesforce as a Constituent Relationship Management database at your organization, or are you considering it? Since it launched in 1999, more than 20,000 nonprofits have employed the cloud-based system, which is made available to them for free through the philanthropic Salesforce Foundation. What's the catch? Making such a powerful system work for the particular needs of a nonprofit isn't always straightforward. This report can tell you everything you need to know.What's in it? To learn more about the benefits and drawbacks of Salesforce, we interviewed nine prominent consultants specializing in implementing Salesforce for nonprofits along with several members of the Salesforce.com Foundation about what the platform does well, and what you'll want to add to it to suit your needs. We evaluated some of the constituent management packages built on top of Salesforce, including the Salesforce Foundation's Nonprofit Starter Pack, which is aimed at turning the sales automation platform into a tool for nonprofits. We also took a look at the universe of add-ons to the base Salesforce platform -- called "apps" because of Salesforce's online marketplace, the App Exchange -- to find out which might be useful to support a nonprofit's processes.The goal for this report was to break down misconceptions about the tool and to collect disparate information in one place to help you make informed decisions. Whether you're already using Salesforce, are thinking about adopting it, or have yet to even consider it, there's information here for you.What's more, we've included a directory of consultants or firms with experience working with nonprofits to implement Salesforce and the additional App Exchange modules that we cover in this report to make it easier for you to find the help you'll need
Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns
Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse
eCRM in the Travel Industry
We are bombarded with Internet forecasts and statistics every day, however there is little doubt that the Internet has permanently changed the face of travel promotion and distribution. While only a minority of consumers are actually prepared to buy online at the present time, this minority is growing and there are large numbers of consumers who wish to use the Internet for information and communication. Travel and hospitality companies are selling an information-rich product and will need to leverage the full range of offline and e-channels to engage their customers in dialogue. The Internet does not have any respect for geographic or organisational boundaries and companies will have to forge new business models, involving partnerships and customer-driven product design, in order to meet the needs of the online consumer. There are major challenges and opportunities for companies wishing to add the e to their CRM strategy
To boardrooms and sustainability: the changing nature of segmentation
Market segmentation is the process by which customers in markets with some heterogeneity
are grouped into smaller homogeneous segments of more ‘similar’ customers. A market
segment is a group of individuals, groups or organisations sharing similar characteristics and
buying behaviour that cause them to have relatively similar needs and purchasing behaviour.
Segmentation is not a new concept: for six decades marketers have, in various guises, sought to
break-down a market into sub-groups of users, each sharing common needs, buying behavior
and marketing requirements. However, this approach to target market strategy development
has been rejuvenated in the past few years. Various reasons account for this upsurge in the
usage of segmentation, examination of which forms the focus of this white paper.
Ready access to data enables faster creation of a segmentation and the testing of propositions to
take to market. ‘Big data’ has made the re-thinking of target market segments and value
propositions inevitable, desirable, faster and more flexible. The resulting information has
presented companies with more topical and consumer-generated insights than ever before.
However, many marketers, analytics directors and leadership teams feel over-whelmed by the
sheer quantity and immediacy of such data.
Analytical prowess in consultants and inside client organisations has benefited from a stepchange,
using new heuristics and faster computing power, more topical data and stronger
market insights. The approach to segmentation today is much smarter and has stretched well
away from the days of limited data explored only with cluster analysis. The coverage and wealth
of the solutions are unimaginable when compared to the practices of a few years ago. Then,
typically between only six to ten segments were forced into segmentation solutions, so that an
organisation could cater for these macro segments operationally as well as understand them
intellectually. Now there is the advent of what is commonly recognised as micro segmentation,
where the complexity of business operations and customer management requires highly
granular thinking. In support of this development, traditional agency/consultancy roles have
transitioned into in-house business teams led by data, campaign and business change planners.
The challenge has shifted from developing a granular segmentation solution that describes all
customers and prospects, into one of enabling an organisation to react to the granularity of the
solution, deploying its resources to permit controlled and consistent one-to-one interaction
within segments. So whilst the cost of delivering and maintaining the solution has reduced with
technology advances, a new set of systems, costs and skills in channel and execution
management is required to deliver on this promise. These new capabilities range from rich
feature creative and content management solutions, tailored copy design and deployment tools,
through to instant messaging middleware solutions that initiate multi-streams of activity in a
variety of analytical engines and operational systems.
Companies have recruited analytics and insight teams, often headed by senior personnel, such as
an Insight Manager or Analytics Director. Indeed, the situations-vacant adverts for such
personnel out-weigh posts for brand and marketing managers. Far more companies possess the
in-house expertise necessary to help with segmentation analysis. Some organisations are also
seeking to monetise one of the most regularly under-used latent business assets… data.
Developing the capability and culture to bring data together from all corners of a business, the open market, commercial sources and business partners, is a step-change, often requiring a
Chief Data Officer. This emerging role has also driven the professionalism of data exploration,
using more varied and sophisticated statistical techniques.
CEOs, CFOs and COOs increasingly are the sponsor of segmentation projects as well as the users
of the resulting outputs, rather than CMOs. CEOs because recession has forced re-engineering of
value propositions and the need to look after core customers; CFOs because segmentation leads
to better and more prudent allocation of resources – especially NPD and marketing – around the
most important sub-sets of a market; COOs because they need to better look after key
customers and improve their satisfaction in service delivery. More and more it is recognised that
with a new segmentation comes organisational realignment and change, so most business
functions now have an interest in a segmentation project, not only the marketers.
Largely as a result of the digital era and the growth of analytics, directors and company
leadership teams are becoming used to receiving more extensive market intelligence and
quickly updated customer insight, so leading to faster responses to market changes, customer
issues, competitor moves and their own performance. This refreshing of insight and a leadership
team’s reaction to this intelligence often result in there being more frequent modification of a
target market strategy and segmentation decisions.
So many projects set up to consider multi-channel strategy and offerings; digital marketing;
customer relationship management; brand strategies; new product and service development;
the re-thinking of value propositions, and so forth, now routinely commence with a
segmentation piece in order to frame the ongoing work. Most organisations have deployed
CRM systems and harnessed associated customer data. CRM first requires clarity in segment
priorities. The insights from a CRM system help inform the segmentation agenda and steer how
they engage with their important customers or prospects. The growth of CRM and its ensuing
data have assisted the ongoing deployment of segmentation.
One of the biggest changes for segmentation is the extent to which it is now deployed by
practitioners in the public and not-for-profit sectors, who are harnessing what is termed social
marketing, in order to develop and to execute more shrewdly their targeting, campaigns and
messaging. For Marketing per se, the interest in the marketing toolkit from non-profit
organisations, has been big news in recent years. At the very heart of the concept of social
marketing is the market segmentation process.
The extreme rise in the threat to security from global unrest, terrorism and crime has focused
the minds of governments, security chiefs and their advisors. As a result, significant resources,
intellectual capability, computing and data management have been brought to bear on the
problem. The core of this work is the importance of identifying and profiling threats and so
mitigating risk. In practice, much of this security and surveillance work harnesses the tools
developed for market segmentation and the profiling of different consumer behaviours.
This white paper presents the findings from interviews with leading exponents of segmentation
and also the insights from a recent study of marketing practitioners relating to their current
imperatives and foci. More extensive views of some of these ‘leading lights’ have been sought
and are included here in order to showcase the latest developments and to help explain both
the ongoing surge of segmentation and the issues under-pinning its practice. The principal
trends and developments are thereby presented and discussed in this paper
Data Mining in Electronic Commerce
Modern business is rushing toward e-commerce. If the transition is done
properly, it enables better management, new services, lower transaction costs
and better customer relations. Success depends on skilled information
technologists, among whom are statisticians. This paper focuses on some of the
contributions that statisticians are making to help change the business world,
especially through the development and application of data mining methods. This
is a very large area, and the topics we cover are chosen to avoid overlap with
other papers in this special issue, as well as to respect the limitations of
our expertise. Inevitably, electronic commerce has raised and is raising fresh
research problems in a very wide range of statistical areas, and we try to
emphasize those challenges.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000204 in the
Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
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