Data mining and predictive analytics will continue to help firms buck the trend of downturn and depression according to speakers at a recent industry conference. Citing renewed growth, increased customer satisfaction and cost savings as examples, KXEN users from banks to utilities agreed that advanced analytics has a key role to play in maintaining business through a tough economic climate.
The prediction came at the KXEN EMEA and Asia Pacific User Conference in Paris at which more than 120 delegates heard talks and demonstrations from users & executives at Belgacom, Co-operative Financial Services, E.ON, Finansbank, Orange, Wolters Kluwer and others who described applications of the technology to their own business.
Opening the event keynote speaker Marc Beauvois-Coladon, presented findings from the original work of Professor Jean-Claude Larréché, recently published in “The Momentum Effect” best-seller. He started by explaining that sustainable, superior business performance must be customer based. “It is possible to achieve more growth with less cost - even in a downturn - through increased customer discovery and engagement. Data mining can be the enabler that makes that happen,” he concluded.
Proving that point in practice was the next speaker. Jaroslaw Kosinski is Data Warehouse Project Manager at Poland’s leading mobile and fixed telco, Telekomunikacja Polska (France Telecom - Orange Group). He told delegates how he used social network analysis to identify the leading influencers in his customer base. He showed how his use of KXEN’s new KSN module had delivered as much as 47% lift in the effectiveness of marketing. “It means precision marketing can be taken to a completely new level of effectiveness. The social network analyses contribute dramatically to the power of predictive models, leading to much greater results,” he said.
Fast growing telco Belgacom has put customer intelligence at the centre of its business, with data mining informing strategic marketing, segment marketing, product marketing, sales and customer service, legal and regulatory activities. “We consolidate all the results of our analyses to define what we call each customer’s individual DNA. This shows us the likely evolution of that customer through their life with Belgacom in taking new products, in cancelling current products, or returning as a customer again” said Dr. Jacky Huyghebaert, Customer Intelligence Expert at Belgacom.
The Global information services and publishing, Wolters Kluwer has initiated two years ago a marketing analytics program to proactively manage customer satisfaction and thus, to improve customer loyalty across its European offices. “This will support our new strategy for 2010-2012: Maximizing Value for Customers”.
The company’s Sales Development Manager and Business Intelligence Specialist, Derlin Mputu Kinsa has described how his team has built a solution around KXEN to nurture, retain and maintain customer relationships, together with transforming reactive tasks into proactive processes. “This program has enabled us to prioritize customer segments, to anticipate customer needs by applying right actions at the right time and to succeed in improving significantly customer satisfaction across all targeted customer segments… KXEN is becoming one of the key elements of our success as it matches our need for fast implementation and ease of use by non-statistical experts.”
With 17 million prospective customers to reach across 200 marketing campaigns a year, the energy provider E.ON’s CRM Modeling Manager Lee Thomas faced perhaps the biggest challenge of anyone at the conference. “With four channels, three major objectives and 20 possible offers it all adds up to trillions of different combinations, even without factoring in eligibility, capacity constraints and other issues,” he told delegates. His solution - which combines customer values, costs and propensities with channel and budgetary restraints - is already delivering a 20% increase in net present value.
Neil Pollitt, Customer Insight Manager at Co-operative Financial Services, explained how both the company and his data mining team had gone through major change, building success along the way. “The KXEN automated modeling factory has been a major benefit and has saved precious time, and when used correctly that can create real value,” he told delegates. “The team members are seen not as modelers but as value creators with a real commercial focus. In the current climate it is vital that we can demonstrate the value we add.”
