CRM software

We believe the future of marketing is all about brands establishing a two way dialogue with their customers. In order to do this they need to establish a single customer view to better understand how their customers behave and react to various marketing campaigns, and then carry on the conversation with appropriate and relevant content.

DataCentre, our proprietary database software, allows marketers to obtain this single customer view from multiple data sources and then communicate with them in a Closed Loop environment.

What is a single customer view I hear you ask?

Well, a single customer view is important to marketers because it allows them to understand all the ways in which a customer is interacting with them and how they subsequently behave i.e. purchase, request information, go to a shop, contact a call centre, visit a website etc.

What DataCentre does is take feeds of named individuals from disparate databases across the company, such as a transactional database, a website, a call centre, a competition, an event or a loyalty scheme and "knit" them together to create a single view of how they are behaving.

The benefit of this to marketers is they can then develop communications that are extremely relevant to that individual and thereby increase the chances of selling them something, due to its relevancy.

And Closed Loop Marketing?

A Closed Loop marketing environment is the creation of a communication programme to known individuals whereby all the interactions and calls to action can be tracked and therefore the activity objectively assessed in terms of ROI, creating brand awareness, shifting perception etc.

DataCentre enables marketers to run Closed Loop Marketing programmes which ultimately help:

• Acquire more customers - through the synchronisation of sales and direct marketing activities.
• Cross and up-sell products and services through better understanding of the customer.
• Retain customers through:
  • Proactive direct marketing - increasing customer loyalty by enabling relevant, timely and useful communications.
  • Providing a better understanding of customers' behaviour patterns to predict why and when they are likely to defect.

Empowering Marketers with CRM software

DataCentre's USP is that it is simple to use for non technical personnel, can sit outside the normal IT infrastructure allowing much quicker access and ease of use, is quick to implement and cost effective.

As such, DataCentre empowers marketers to perform strategic and operational direct marketing functions from the desktop, allowing them to:

• Understand more about their clients and prospects through data analytics and data planning to better target and talk to them.
• Access, via a web link, on a PC, a marketing-specific interface drawing on multiple databases across their company (e.g. contact management, accounts, website, bought-in databases, customer relationship management and business management systems).
• Easily carry out complex marketing campaigns utilising customers' data profiles without the need of technical help.
• Create highly refined groups of customers and prospects, selecting from a customised choice of criteria, to ensure the right message gets to the right person.
• Plan and manage direct marketing campaigns using any combination of the marketing mix directly from their PC (e.g. direct mail, email, call centre, SMS, fax, website).
• Provide accurate "Closed Loop" reporting on campaigns as incoming responses are automatically tracked and fed back into DataCentre, to give clear and consistent measurement of return on investment.

Closed Loop Marketing with DataCentre:

Customer Profiling

Marketers who use DataCentre will be able to segment and profile their customers and prospects from an unlimited range of customised criteria e.g:

• Their individual profile as required, i.e. location, interests, age and products used.
• What they have bought, and when, making it easy to identify buying trends and timing for future campaigns.
• How often they visit a website and what they look at and do when they go there.
• Which marketing campaigns they have been included in and how they responded.
• If they have opted in / out of communications.
• Their lifetime value.
• Their Recency Frequency score.

Technical Specification

DataCentre sits on a Windows platform. If delivered as a managed service, it can be accessed via Remote Desktop Connection from machines with both Windows and Mac OS.

DataCentre can take feeds from new and legacy database systems that run on any platform. All data transferred between the client site and our server is encrypted using most secure protocols.

DataCentre server-side runs on Windows Server 2003, using MS SQL Server as RDBMS platform.

DataCentre client applications either run on Windows XP/2003 and Vista for GUI versions and any standard browser for our web-based applications. Availability depends on the application in question. Some features are also delivered to the client desktop as Win32 applications using light client applications that do not require setup, and connect to the application server using standard HTTP protocol to avoid any security conflict at the client side.