Building Data Mining Applications for CRM

This text provides comparison and contrast to different approaches and tools available for contemporary data mining. It offers a step–by–step plan to help readers develop a personalized approach.

From the back cover:

How data mining delivers a powerful competitive advantage!

Are you fully harnessing the power of information to support management and marketing decisions?

You will, with this one–stop guide to choosing the right tools and technologies for a state–of–the–art data management strategy built on a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) framework. Authors Alex Berson, Stephen Smith, and Kurt Thearling help you understand the principles of data warehousing and data mining systems, and carefully spell out techniques for applying them so that your business gets the biggest pay–off possible.

Find out about Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) tools that quickly navigate within your collected data. Explore privacy and legal issues...evaluate current data mining application packages...and let real–world examples show you how data mining can impact –– and improve –– all of your key business processes. Start uncovering your best prospects and offering them the products they really want (not what you think they want)!

About the Author:

Alex Berson is a Director of Technology for a global management consulting firm. Dr. Berson holds a Ph.D. in Computer Sciences and M.S. in Applied Mathematics, and is an internationally recognized expert, author, educator and practitioner who has over 20 years of experience in information technologies focusing on data warehouse systems architecture, including design and implementation of systems and applications in the areas of data management, data warehousing and data mining; transaction processing; middleware, client/server distributed computing; and object technologies. Alex Berson is an active member of IEEE Computer Society, ACM, and many others. He‘s also an advisory editor for the McGraw–Hill Professional Books division. He has published numerous technical articles in trade magazines, and is a best–selling author of a number of professional books including "Data Warehousing, Data Mining and OLAP"(with Steve Smith); "Client/Server Architecture"; "SYBASE and Client/Server Computing" (with George Anderson); and "APPC: Introduction to LU6.2". These books are published internationally, and had been translated in many languages including Chinese and Korean. His latest book, "Building Data Mining Applications for CRM", is scheduled to be published in December 1999.

Stephen Smith is the President and CEO of Optas, Inc. the leading provider of web–based Customer Relationship Management tools for the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare industries. Mr. Smith holds a BSEE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MS from Harvard University. He has been working in the fields of Data Mining and Data Warehousing for the past 15 years. His initial work included research into new data mining techniques and optimized database sorting for massively parallel supercomputers. His recent work has included applying these technologies to real world business problems in managing customer databases, including directing the teams that were responsible for the creation of the data mining tools: Darwin (at Thinking Machines and now at Oracle) and Discovery Server (at Dun & Bradstreet). Mr. Smith has co–authored "Data Warehousing, Data Mining and OLAP"(1997) and "Building Data Mining Applications for CRM"(1999) from McGraw–Hill publishers. He can be contacted at: www.optas.com.

Kurt Thearling has spent much of the last decade designing, using, and evaluating data mining and customer relationship management technologies. As Director of Analytics at CRM software vendor Exchange Applications, Kurt directs the use of data mining and decision support technology as part of EA‘s software development and consulting practice. His extensive data mining web and CRM site can be found at www.thearling.com.