Sand Technology's European General Manager keynotes VIP Program at CRM 2001 in London next month
Montreal and London (ots-PRNewswire) -
Duncan Painter to address Directors of top 250 UK companies on the essence of CRM: 'Customer Lifetime Value'
Duncan Painter, European General Manager of Sand Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: SNDT) and Dr. Wolfgang Martin, Senior Vice President, Application Delivery Strategies at Meta Group, will deliver the keynote addresses to the VIP Program guests at Business Intelligence's upcoming "CRM 2001" at the Olympia 2 in London, from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM on May 23rd and 24th. Business Intelligence expects that 3200 people will attend the conference and exhibits next month.
Sand Technology is the exclusive sponsor of the CRM 2001 "VIP Program" which invites senior directors from the UK's top 250 companies to a high level briefing on important trends in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and welcomes them to learn about Sand's innovative CRM solution at the VIP Suite.
Sand will also be demonstrating their Nucleus(TM) CRM solution at Stand Number 1235 in the exhibit hall. More information about CRM 2001 can be found at http://www.crm.bi-uk.com.
- "Customer Lifetime Value" -- the essence of CRM
In his keynote address to the prestigious VIP Program, Painter will analyse the challenges companies face in implementing the ideal of CRM. Duncan argues that, as more and more companies implement CRM, they are coming face to face with the limitations of existing CRM systems and solutions. One large hurdle such companies face is keeping the CRM information (typically stored in a data warehouse that is only updated periodically) in synch with current customer interactions (typically found in many different operational systems). Even more important, Duncan posits, is not simply capturing customer information, but using that information to understand the historical, or "lifetime," value of each customer.
"It is essential for businesses to be able to accurately measure the lifetime value of their individual customers, by looking at all interactions with the customer over a period of time rather than at transactions in isolation," explains Painter. "For this reason, CRM as we now know it turns out to be something of a red herring, since customer relationships are not something a company cultivates as ends in themselves. As always, 'knowing the customer' should translate into real business knowledge that will inform decisions designed to increase profitability by increasing revenue and lowering costs."
"Such comprehensive information permits analysis not simply of the customer him/herself, but also of how that person really deals with the business. For example, what, when and where do they buy? Do they refer other customers to the business? What demands do they place on service or support departments? Are they in a position where their value to the company might be increased? Should they be discouraged from further dealings with the company?"
"Developing this sort of total understanding can be relatively easy for small companies," explains Painter. "However, for large companies, with perhaps millions of customers, this becomes an impossible task using traditional technologies."
"In the contemporary situation, huge volumes of useful data can be recorded every few minutes during interactions via electronic channels such as the Internet and mobile phones, and this must be added to the information that is collected through more traditional sales and service channels," says Painter. "The challenge is to somehow integrate this information into a single domain of useful customer information."
"Furthermore, this valuable resource must be available not only to marketers and/or data analysts, but ideally to anyone, from executives to service/support representatives, who require information to be very current, that is, updated in as near to 'real time' as possible in order to enable accurate judgements and effectively tailor customer interactions. At the same time, it must be available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, if it is to be useful in guiding interactions with customers via web sites, telephone support lines, and other '24x7' channels."
"Traditional solutions and methodologies struggle to allow such flexibility while providing superior performance to match," explains Painter, "but Sand's unique solution can provide an integrated and up-to-date view of all the enterprise's customer information, to all sectors of the organisation, and have it available for access 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."
Visitors to the Sand stand (number 1235) and the VIP Suite will learn how Sand Technology and its partner companies are able to develop and implement such systems using its Nucleus Information Publishing Engine, fed by one of the high-end data acquisition middleware tools currently available from companies like Ab Initio (a Sand business partner), Sagent, IBM (MQ series), or Informatica, and serving clients who may be using a variety of front-end applications.
- About Sand Technology
Sand Technology, with headquarters in Montreal, Canada and offices in the United Kingdom and the United States, provides high performance, scaleable software solutions for data mining, data marts, data warehousing and analytical CRM.
Sand's Nucleus(R) product suite brings revolutionary and patented technology to both IT and business users allowing for highly accurate decision processing against atomic level data at much lower total cost of ownership than traditional solutions.
Supporting all major industries and vertical markets including Retail, Finance, Transportation, Telecommunications, and Manufacturing, Nucleus(R) is successfully installed for corporate initiatives such as CRM, EIS, Supply Chain Analysis, Risk and Investment Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, and E-Business.
Sand Technology has commercial relationships with IBM, Oracle, KPMG, Compaq Computer Corporation, Microsoft, Brio Technology, and Information Builders. For more information, visit http://www.sandtechnology.co.uk.
Nucleus, Nucleus Server, N: VECTOR and MPSO are registered trademarks of Sand Technology Inc. and Nucleus Exploration Mart, Nucleus Exploration Warehouse, Nucleus Virtual Database (VDB), Nucleus Powered! and Nucleus E! are trademarks of Sand Technology Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Contact:
North America- de Jong & Associates,
Tel. +1 760 943 9065, e-mail: sndt@dejong.org, for Sand Technology;
Europe - Garry Neale, VP Sales & Marketing of Sand Technology EMEA,
Tel. +44 1707 828005, e-mail: Garry.Neale@sandtechnology.com,
or Nigel Pritchard of PPR,
Tel. +44 1932 828771, e-mail: Nigel.Pritchard@p-p-r.co.uk,
for Sand Technology
Internet: http://www.sandtechnology.co.uk and
http://www.crm.bi-uk.com