ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
DS* DECISION TECHNOLOGIES IN DATABASE MARKETING: PART I
by Gene M. Ferruzza, Senior VP, Decision Technologies
For 14 years, Gene Ferruzza has provided integrated business solutions for clients in telecommunications, electric utilities, financial services, aerospace, manufacturing, and retail. He is an internationally recognized expert in strategic database marketing planning and implementation, as well as development and application of data marts, statistical and A.I. modeling, and decision systems for understanding and predicting human behavior. In addition, he directs research in statistical, neural, evolutionary, and hybrid modeling techniques, and the implementation of decision technologies for marketing programs and software productization. He has also developed and marketed his own database management and segmentation software and is currently advising in on-line market research services and products. Prior to his current position, he worked as a consultant and instructor for two leading neural network hardware and software providers (HNC and NeuralWare). Ferruzza graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics.
In this first installment of an extensive multi-part series, Ferruzza writes: "In the 1990s, database marketing came into its own, bringing innovations to business that were not possible at the advent of the computer revolution. With the continuing advances in database technology, our ability to collect and store massive amounts of data from daily business processes and 'crunch' these data to derive new knowledge -- that is, to 'mine' data for new information -- has become a mainstay of strategic business initiatives."
DS* SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CURRENT STATEOF DATA MINING SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS: PART I
by Kurt Thearling
Kurt Thearling is Director of Advanced Analytics at Exchange Applications, a Boston based database marketing company, where he directs the use of data mining and visualization technology in EA's database marketing software and consulting practice. Over the past decade he has developed a number of data mining software products, including Thinking Machines' Darwin and Pilot Software's Discovery Server. He also an independent consultant in areas related to data mining and decision support technologies. His data mining web page can be found at http://www.santafe.edu/~kurt.
In this first segment of a two-part series, Thearling observes: "As a former developer of data mining software, I can understand how difficult it is to create applications that are relevant to business users. Much of the data mining community comes from an academic background and has focused on the algorithms buried deep in the bowels of the technology. But algorithms are not what business users care about."
Vision Associates, Inc. of White Plains, NY is a Business Intelligence (BI) consulting firm specializing in providing services to clients that extract the maximum competitive advantage from their data resources. Through their innovative QuickVision Business Intelligence Workshop series, Vision has helped numerous clients move forward in quickly getting a pilot BI project started. Once this is accomplished and the value of these projects is recognized, clients are in a strong position to move forward with Vision services to more far reaching enterprise-wide initiatives.
Vision consultants have a unique combination of technical proficiency and business expertise that allows them to focus their efforts upon building solutions that remain focused on the client's business goals and priorities. Vision consultants, with an extensive consumer packaged goods background, were among the first to use OLAP techniques to analyze large databases in the early 1980s. Vision has remained on the leading edge of Business Intelligence with their more recent leadership in the areas of web based information delivery and BI driven e-commerce.
Vision Associates can be found at http://www.VisionAssociates.com or can be reached at 800-624-4159.
As growth in corporate databases becomes more evident, two technologies promise to help companies sort through their terabytes of data: online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining (DM). Both are sure to be hot sellers this year as companies look for strategic value from their databases.
Microsoft Corp opened a design review period for new data warehousing extensions for Microsoft Repository. The goal is to garner broad support for repository extensions to allow data warehousing vendors to share information.
The GeneticStorms project is a research effort aimed at using data analysis and data mining methods to investigate the Persian Gulf War Illness. An article in this month's edition of a magazine published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) recounts research presented by the principal investigator of the project, which is sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.
"Although I believe that most data-mining providers have been
accurately representing their services and products, the users of these
services and products often are confused by competing claims."
-- Gene Ferruzza, Senior VP, Decision Technologies
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D S * INFORMATION
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