Data to Insight to Action

Today’s flat and wired world and increased

competitiveness has shifted the focus more and
more towards the customer. It is an absolute
necessity that the companies understand their
customers well and address their needs
proactively.

Author – Nagaraj Kulkarni

e-mail – Nagaraj.Kulkarni@cequitysolutions.com

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 Index
Data to Insight to Action …3

Framework …5

Value Propositions …7

About the Author …8

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1
Data to Insight to Action
Today’s flat and wired world and increased
competitiveness has shifted the focus more and
more towards the customer. It is an absolute
necessity that the companies understand their
customers well and address their needs
proactively. The reliable and integrated customer
data is an important asset to every company that
recognizes the value of this "Customer
Information Enabled” competitive market
advantage.
The siloed customer databases across business
units and geographies add to consolidation and
integration challenges. The data that is not
correct and current will lead to wasted efforts and
dollars. A scenario of unutilized or underutilized
customer data will mask several competitive
business advantages (and disadvantages) the
company could otherwise discover and leverage
upon. In the increasingly global market scenario,
single customer view across the enterprise is a
definitive competitive weapon. It will serve the
customer well and help build the customer loyalty.
While the advantages of having a single customer
view are well understood and recognized, the
complexity and long cycles coupled with large
investments make decision makers shy away
from leveraging the hidden customer data assets.
Businesses find it difficult to justify the upfront
investment in such applications – in terms of
hardware, software, system integration and
1Most data warehouses are built by hand, which suits systems integrators just fine (all those yummy billable hours) but does not serve
customers well. TDWI reckon an average data warehouse takes 16 months to deploy, USD 3 million to build and costs 72% of the
development costs in support every year.
© Copyright 2008 Cequity www.cequitysolutions.com
resources over an extended period of time1. The
added burden of managing such a program and
systems over a period of time makes it difficult to
sustain such programs in house.
The typical challenges and pain-points go as
follows:
• Multiple, disparate data sources across multiple
business lines and multiple customer databases
• Challenges with ETL, Integration and consolidation
of multiple disparate systems and systems
• Integration with operational (enterprise, channel,
partner) systems as well as downstream marketing
systems such as campaign management or email
marketing systems
• Customer data quality, cleansing, de-duplication,
ongoing data quality maintenance
• Defining, managing and maintaining Customer
hierarchy and relationships
• Defocus of the business users from the core
business towards the pre-requisite of having a
integrated, consolidated, cleansed customer
database
• Lack of adequate and required information and
insights into the customer base (leading to
suboptimal servicing and potentially unhappy
customers)
• Maintaining required levels of access and security
permissions towards safeguarding the customer
data
3
 CEQUITY-ACE Hosted Customer Solution
CEQUITY-ACE hosted customer environment licensing model that makes it easier for the
(HCE), eliminates these pain-points to the companies to scale in data- size and usage-value
business. It jumpstart the “customer information in an iterative quick-hit (DMAIC) cycle mode.
enabled” competitive advantage. Cequity’s
expertise with customer data cleansing and Providing for the business ownership of customer
integration cuts cycle time and increases data data ensures its success with robust data quality
competency. It takes out the nuances of upfront frameworks, based on CEQUITY’s industry
investment, long cycles, added systems, the experience that is further augmented by business
learning cycles and instead focuses business users. The benefits of such an empowered
users in using the enabled data to unleash customer data can be reaped and leveraged
competitive advantage. It puts the power of across business units spanning sales, service,
reliable customer data coupled with the power of marketing, shipping etc.
analysis and analytics in the hands of the
business users. The ongoing data quality focus The power of CEQUITY-ACE Analytics on the
helps maintain continued data quality and hosted environment can provide jumpstart
ensures no redundant or inconsistent data analytical solutions to help answer and address
elements are introduced by individual business business directives such as:
units.
• How do I build a ‘one view’ of my customers?

• How do I identify loyal customers?

Cequity’s strong understanding of underlying
• How can I segregate customers based on
customer data and the ability to address the behaviour?
entire marketing lifecycle right from prospecting, • How can I turn my customers into high value
customers?
acquisition, development, retention to relationship
management and measurement will help our • How do I calculate the lifetime value of my top
customers?
clients realize the value of their investments. It
• What is the churn pattern? Which of my customers
also enables the business to take advantage of are possibly thinking of leaving me?
sophisticated customer acquisition and retention • Is there an aberrant behaviour amongst my
customers that I should watch out for?
tools that can help grow their customer base and
• Where are the strategic white-space opportunities
increase the customer lifecycle value.
in the market landscape?

• What is customer’s lifecycle value to the business?

All this, without any significant upfront capital
• What is my ideal target customer for new
investment2. It provides for a use as you go acquisition?

2According to Gartner’s guideline for enterprise CRM rollouts, a typical midmarket CRM rollout can run into 20 million over a three year
period.

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2
Framework
CEQUITY-ACE hosted customer environment is • Cequity ACE Analyser™ gain insight into

realized based on the CEQUITY’s 5E characteristics and behavior of customers and

prospects
methodology. It delivers the business needs in a
simple, scalable, iterative, prioritized model. • Cequity ACE Campaigner™ transforms the
insight and intelligence gained. It delivers
Each phase can be tied down to clearly defined
campaign planning and management functionality
KRAs with business ownership and participation.
• Cequity ACE Modeller™ enables predictive
The Cequity ACE solution suite bundled with the
modeling and data mining
hosted solution provides a complete customer
• Cequity ACE Operations & Measurement
lifecycle management solution. Following are the
Services provide the Measurement Frameworks
various solutions that are available:
and Dashboards
• Cequity ACE Snapshot™ gives one view of the
Customer data with dependencies

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3
Value Propositions
CEQUITY ACE simplifies the complex and
arduous chain of processes and projects to, an
engagement with CEQUITY. We take out the IT
and Data Integration challenges, shrink the time
to rollout to few weeks, provide a flexible and
scalable model. We complement this with end to
end solution offerings with CEQUITY ACE
companion products and solution offerings.
We take care of all the data and technology
challenges and requirements and put your focus
back on the customer and business. Our domain
and business vertical expertise complements the
solution offering.
• All Operational issues including ETL,
integration, data quality and cleansing are
addressed by CEQUITY, saving time
businesses to focus on managing the customers
• A consistent view of customer data
standardized key data elements
• Ongoing data quality and maintenance with right
time cleansing and updates to ensure current and
accurate data
• Enhanced customer profile and ability to integrate
with external and third party data sources
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• Capture all marketing communication touch
points and results, enabling right-time tracking
and monitoring
• Managed security with multiple access and
permission levels
• Tested methodology, domain expertise leading to
lower costs, faster implementations and faster
return on investment
• Out of box, quick rollout (weeks), with end to end
functionality leveraging the CEQIUTY ACE suite
of solutions
• Realize Business Value with CEQUITY ACE
hosted solution and CEQUITY ACE solution
offering
• Faster, easier & more efficient execution of
promotions and campaigns
data • Increased effectiveness and efficiency of
acquisition and retention marketing
for • Improve overall ROI by marketing to most
valuable customers
• Insight into customer characteristics and buying
with
patterns across product suites
• Ability to run precision marketing campaigns
designed for specific target audience
• Power of Analytics with Customer Banding,
Profiling, Segmentation, Trending and Predictive
models towards identifying best customers and
prospects and enabling precision marketing
6
 Key Benefits

• Our industry knowledge and deep understanding • On demand managed analytics with single view

of customer lifecycle with business vertical of customer data

expertise will jumpstart the effective, complex and

• Out of box dashboards and reports that help you
extendable customer environments in weeks
measure the success of the marketing programs
• Our tested approach to ETL and integration, Data
Quality and Cleansing, customer database CEQUITY brings in customer experience and
design and management will act as a catalyst to marketing domain expertise, industry vertical
your organization’s ability to leverage customer
insight and experience, technology expertise
insights
with the end to end fulfillment solutions to
• We combine our knowledge of identifying manage your customer engagement and
business objectives, insight of customer events
experience. We do this starting with customer
and data expertise to extract maximum value out
data integration, hosted solution with reference
of customer databases
customer master, data cleansing, de-duplication
• Our solution assets coupled with technology and and enhancement, augmented by CEQUITY
business expertise enable us to deliver better
ACE Snapshot, Campaigner and Modeler to
returns on marketing database investments and
enable seamless and single point of campaign
campaigns
and loyalty management powered by the
• Our focus on time to market (6 weeks for initial
customer insights gained. We manage this with a
iteration and jumpstart), iterative refinements and
measurement framework and dashboards that
pay as you go models help jumpstart your
we design and implement to help you monitor
business objectives
the success of the business intent and the
• Enables business with the possibilities of engagement.
customer data and insights, a must have
competitive advantage

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4
About the author
Nagaraj Kulkarni brings over 16 years of
technology and business solutions experience
across large enterprises, global consulting firms
and start-ups. His focus areas include enterprise
strategy, technology and business systems
architecture, business intelligence & data
warehousing, data architecture, information life
cycle and knowledge management.

He has applied technology solutions to realize

business benefits and value for companies in
India and US across Leasing and Retail Finance,
Banking, Trading, Cerdit Card, Telecom Billing
and Collections, eCommerce, CRM & Customer
lifecycle and Manufacturing and Supply chain.

He is an alumni of Indian Institute of Science,

Bangalore and University of California in
Santacruz.

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 Disclaimer / Copyright
The information contained in this document represents
the views of the author on Data to Insight to Action in
the existing market scenario. It is exclusively for
informational purposes only. Complying with all
applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the
user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no
part of this document may be reproduced, stored in or
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purpose, without the express written permission of the
author and the above mentioned authors of the
reference documents.

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