Video tutorial on how to create a SAS Process that exploits data out of an OLAP cube without have to write MDX code from scratch using the MDX editor.
Bridging the IT-Marketing Gap: Learn To Speak The Lingo
This is the third post in a series of tips about how to create analytics around your customer behavior.
As with any discipline, Marketing has its own language which it makes sense to get to grips with. Whether that’s ‘RFM scores’, ‘Propensity Modeling’, ‘Best Next Action’ or ‘CPM’.
Obviously there are vast tracts of information on the InterWeb which will help you – but our personal recommendation would be to pick up a copy of Jim Novo’s Drilling Down – turning customer data into profits with a spreadsheet’ – see http://www.jimnovo.com
Jim is one of a rare breed – a marketing man who understands how to wield a Terabyte of data to good effect. His web site will provide all the explanations you need and his book is chock-full of usable information. What is more, hit on your CMO with discussions of ‘trigger-based marketing’, ‘RFM scores’ and ‘Customer life cycles’ and she (or he) won’t fail to be impressed!
Getting KPIs The Easy Way in SAS Enterprise Guide
Video tutorial on how to create KPI Dashboards using SAS Enterprise Guide
Bridging the IT-Marketing Gap: Understand Your Customer
This post is second in a series of tips about how to create analytics around your customer behavior.
The emergence of ‘CRM systems’ in the early part of the decade signaled a transition to ‘customerorientation’ in businesses. These early systems tended to try to put the focus on the ‘M’ in CRM, aiming to help businesses better MANAGE their customers.
With the emergence of customer power through the social networking revolution and comparison sites, there are few businesses today that still believe they are in a position to ‘manage their customers’.
Instead we all now understand that it is our job to be ‘relevant’ to our customers – leading to the modern marketing mantra of ‘right message, right customer, right time’.
While it might appear obvious, we need to recognize that you can only be relevant to the customer if you understand them – understand them as an individual, with objectives, interests, preferences, likes and dislikes … and note that individuals needs change over time, and their opinion of your business (when considered en masse) will make or break your company!
So today the CRM systems we need are much more focused on the ‘C’ aspects of the acronym and the ‘relationship’ part might be better cast as ‘relevance’…
This means that today we need to build and deliver Customer Relevance Management systems; and if these are to function at all then they need one thing – reliable, accurate, detailed, data on customers!
This focus on customer needs to embrace the idea that customers are individuals, and organize data in ‘customer structures’, record ‘customer events’, allow the marketing and business functions to use their business intelligence (BI) systems to extract the insight and understanding to allow the business to identify how to be relevant and when they should say what to whom!
Creating a Dynamically Listed Prompt for Web Report Studio
Video tutorial on how to create a dynamically populated, prompted filter in SAS Web Report Studio.
Tips for Bridging the IT-Marketing Gap: Get to Know Your Marketing Team
This post is the first in series of tips on bridging the relationship gap between IT and Marketing departments. The rigid disciplines of IT and Information Architectures and the softer, customer-centric focus of Marketing have traditionally seemed poles apart in the organization, but the emerging integration of digital media, data and direct marketing means that the ground rules are changing. This series of posts will discuss some of the central themes that need to be addressed by the IT functions in the modern multi-channel business, and the challenges and opportunities that emerge for them in this new environment.
Get to Know Your Marketing Team
10 years ago, IT Wizards sat in their ivory tower, confident in their ‘Gandalf-like’ ability to wield the latest technologies with considerable skill and efficiency – but their connection to ‘the business’ was limited, often even structured as discrete, or outsourced business functions.
Today the competitive pressures of modern business mean that the IT teams and the underlying Information Architectures they build are much more ‘business focused’ and need to be responsive to and supportive of, the business objectives of the company…
At the same time Marketing has moved from being the Wild-West world of the recent TV hit Mad Men, (where expense accounts that would put modern politicians to shame are commonplace, and advertising campaigns are run without any real accountability for their outcome), to a situation where the expectation is that Marketing will deliver measurable and predictable ROI for every marketing dollar it is given by exploiting the power of the online channel.
The net of these changes are that IT and Marketing need to understand each other more than ever…
Marketing need IT’s help to exploit the data available from the online channel, and realize the opportunities presented by the digital media revolution. At the same time an IT team delivering and supporting the Marketing objectives of an enterprise can’t fail to be seen as a valuable asset to the business.
The most successful organizations are even starting to cross-pollinate functions by seconding IT professionals to the marketing teams of each business unit to promote alignment of IT and marketing strategies. This is also evidenced by the transition of ‘IT Manager’ to ‘Chief Information Officer’ that demonstrates the recognition of the importance of information (data) to the business.
So, go and learn more about your more ‘fluffy’ colleagues and you will discover you have a lot more in common than you might have thought!
SAS Enterprise Guide Server File Access Tutorial
Video Tutorial on how to change file folder location for Enterprise Guide users for the server list.
