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REVIEW
“
It’s safer to have your data
with a company whose
business is data management
To help support new clients making their first steps into customer to deliver against this new requirement. MRM Worldwide launched
marketing databases, Filemaker has just launched Excel Accelerator its DB Express proposition earlier this year to capitalise on the rising
– a toolkit and set of documents to support data migrations out of interest in customer insight among organisations who struggled to
the spreadsheet application into Filemaker. achieve it for themselves.
For Speakman, the benefits of a true database can be seen quickly “We built it so users have a SCV, then we create a production data
in how a business operates. “You have got one set of customers and set with all the rules necessary for data analytics. It is designed for
one set of products to sell. To report on your business and track marketing people,” says director of data and analtyics, Karl White.
where your business is coming from is challenging. But once you “A lot of marketers struggle to link return on investment and cost
have go a database, it is all in there,” he says. per engagement.”
Getting to that may only need an investment of several thousand The service can take data in any form and convert it into a usable
pounds. FileMaker Server costs £600 and access tools a few analytical database which aligns with the specific needs of the
hundred pounds more. From sole traders, via a publisher with a marketing department. This may be for a long-term SCV to support
distributed workforce of 50 right up to Prêt à Manger, which ongoing marketing, but it does not have to be.
manages 178 UK stores on a FileMaker based-system, a customer “We do a lot of one-off measurement pieces for single campaigns.
database is well within reach. They give us the data and metrics and we dig it out for them in a
Of course, not all companies are starting from scratch (or couple of days,” says White. This is where working with a solution
spreadsheet). Many have been using a variety of database tools and provider who is able to deploy a team of analysts provides a
services, ranging from in-house SQL systems to outsourced database significant uplift against a generic hosted database.
bureaux. All of these are currently under the spotlight for their “It provides a lot of cost-saving. Because DB Express creates a
ongoing costs and value delivered to the business. SCV quickly, time to market is very short,” adds White. This is a
That makes anything involving capital expenditure look strong argument for moving to a newly-architected, outsourced
unattractive. Shelagh Regester, marketing strategy director at solution over an in-house silo.
Acxiom UK, notes: “The unprecedented turmoil in the market is But White stresses that the really important dimension is the shift
turning the short-term view into the ‘new black’. With limited funds in mindset which should result from adopting a SCV. “Some
to spend, you must be able to change quickly and need your costs marketers don’t believe you can spend less money and make more
to be fixed.” money. It requires a change,” he says.
Her company this month launched MarketEdge-X in Europe, Without a business case based on process efficiencies and
offering a hosted customer and prospect database proposition which performance improvements, there is little point. Building SCV for its
is intended to increase time to market, reduce risk and cut own sake is an unlikely objective. But that is why it is the perfect
expenditure. “It provides flexible payment options and an OpEx strategy in a recession – the money put into its build will be yielded
model to help marketing manage its budget and avoid up-front many times over from cost savings and marketing uplift.
costs. It also gives freedom from the IT department – and the Some of the client base for this type of solution has undoubtedly
constraints on their budget,” she says. gone out of the market through financial pressures. At the same
The solution can be built piece-by-piece to avoid the risks of time, others have recognised that they can not afford not to invest in
“trying to eat the elephant all at once”. As Regester says, a company their data.
can “start with the ears” by using MarketEdge-X for marketing to “Our traditional market has been high-tech. Those companies have
high value customers only initially. Acxiom is promising a 60-day been suffering budget cuts. But not-for-profit is growing fast,” says
build time to ensure opportunities do not get missed in the current Andrew Freeman, director of CRM Technology. “They are realising
fast-moving marketplace. they have to fight harder to get a slice of disposable income.”
This sort of proposition is significant, coming as it does from a His company offers a hosted solution based around Neolane’s
major global provider of marketing services and data with a 40-year campaign management application, providing access to a high-end
track record. It means clients can get on the data management tool without the front-end capital expenditure. A significant
escalator with every confidence not only that they could get to the advantage of this approach, aside from avoiding heavy investment, is
top, but that there is an actual destination. that a company can make a paradigm shift in its data management.
“Organisations might have been cautious about outsourcing in the “Often when companies come to us, 50 per cent or more of their
past, but now everything is up for grabs. They need to focus on their data is on spreadsheets,” notes Freeman. Over time, these have often
core business. If their concern was data security, then surely it’s been added to and had functionality written in to them which might
safer to have your data with a company whose whole business is not have been documented and is only understood by one person.
data management, than to rely on internal resources that are Investing in an on-premise software licence may simply not be an
becoming increasingly limited,” she says. option. “Marketing technology is still not cheap – it has not been
The last recession helped to drive increased outsourcing of commoditised,” says Freeman. The recession may take care of that with
business processes ranging from call centres to e-commerce. The packaged solutions emerging at much lower price points than before.
current one is likely to take that shift even deeper into organisations. In the meantime, service providers are meeting the new economic
There is little reason why SCV should not be outsourced, especially climate by providing all the functionality of a solution wrapped up in
if it provides a more supported and function-rich environment than a service proposition. It costs more than a spreadsheet, but it adds
could be delivered in-house. more value, too. Just like an own brand product from a major high
Not surprisingly, marketing services providers have been lining up street grocery chain. a71
DATA STRATEGY | REPORT | APRIL 2009 17
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