As THUS expanded its business through a number of high profile acquisitions including Your Communications and Legend,Information Arts was charged with overhauling the database.
Background
Information Arts, Europe’s leading business-to-business insight and data services provider, has enjoyed a long partnership with UK-focused business telecommunications expert THUS. Having worked with the business since 2001, Information Arts was initially briefed to design and build a database that would incorporate customer data from both Scottish Telecom, as the company was then called, and its Demon brand.
As THUS expanded its business through a number of high profile acquisitions including Your Communications and Legend, IA’s remit changed accordingly and following a competitive pitch process, Information Arts was awarded the contract to overhaul the entire database.
Challenge
With a number of data sources originating both internally and from its acquired businesses, THUS found it no longer had a way of easily integrating all of its data to produce a complete view of the customer.
There was also an urgent need for the data transformation processes to be automated and no longer reliant on human interaction. This would ensure consistency and resilience in the process whilst significantly reducing timescales for the ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) activity. It would also allow IA and THUS to spend more time in crafting programmes to use the data more effectively.
Strategy and Execution
Working closely with THUS, IA proposed that a new database was required that could incorporate THUS’ existing data sources with those of its newly acquired companies – and any other future acquisitions it might make. The database would also have to allow for the identification and extraction of common attributes and the mapping of similar product groups within the different data sets, enabling THUS to build sophisticated profiles of its customers and prospects and to provide accurate and consistent reporting and analyses.
Based on the agreed requirements, Information Arts took a twin track approach – building the full automated ETL and SQL database environment whilst providing THUS with a snapshot of customers and prospects in FastStats to provide business continuity.
A critical success factor in the ETL stage is IA’s own address management environment called ‘Streetwise’ which applies a wide range of data integrity processes to reformat and improve the data. This is important as off-the-shelf address management packages work best when the incoming addresses are well formatted and accurate. However, with business names and addresses this is often not the case. Using IA’s extensive knowledge tables, Streetwise is able to identify, temporarily remove and validate company names embedded anywhere within address records before PAF matching takes place. This means that the addresses can be validated more effectively and then correctly repopulated with the business name in the right field before file matching is attempted. This inevitably leads to higher PAF validation rates, and significantly better file matching results.
Streetwise and all of the additional ETL activity are automated within IA’s Group 1 workflow environment, reducing the reliance on operator subjectivity and intervention – thereby introducing consistency and resilience.
To further ensure THUS is able to explore and analyse its data intelligently without an over reliance upon IA, the new database environment includes FastStats Discoverer as an integral component.
FastStats Discoverer provides a powerful capability for data exploration, data analysis and data visualization to non technical, Marketing users via a friendly and intuitive interface – without the need for extensive training.
The elements of ETL, SQL database and FastStats have created an industry standard and open technology platform based on best of breed ‘modules’ for each database element – rather than using a single technology solution that may require specialist skills to operate – or that could be difficult to support or migrate when required.
Results
The database was designed to run automatically and this has greatly reduced the time involved to improve and load THUS customer and prospect data. Information Arts applies a persistent unique reference number to all ingoing sources of data, so new data feeds can be easily added and identified.
Since its implementation of the new database, the targeting of THUS’ campaigns have been greatly improved through more transparent reporting and a higher quality of data. With FastStats Discoverer successfully acting as the front end user interface for THUS and Information Arts acting in a supporting role, THUS has been able to create customer and marketplace segments, including identifying the geographical spread of its customers throughout the UK. FastStats Discoverer also allows THUS to produce visualizations of its database in a timely manner allowing for a greater ease of reporting. Overall the time taken to complete more detailed reporting, including analysis by the five main product areas, by size, by sector (both revenue and value) and by region, has been greatly reduced. The new marketing database and FastStats have both been key enablers in these productivity gains.
Information Arts continues to provide operational support and strategic counsel to THUS, advising on a framework of specialist segmented programmes and providing guidance on how to develop and implement contact strategies that will provide the greatest leverage to THUS.
Information Arts Testimonial
“Information Arts, has always, and continues to display a thorough and comprehensive understanding of our business requirements. With an unrivalled knowledge of the data-driven B2B industry, they successfully ensured the smooth transition of our data operations, ensuring minimal disruption to our business.
“It is a testament to our working relationship that seven years on, Information Arts continues to provide us with invaluable strategic advice, allowing us to concentrate on growing the THUS brand.”
Des Lynch, Database and Segmentation Manager, THUS
FastStats Testimonial
“FastStats Discoverer allows us to undertake extensive analysis of our data and has taken our reporting to another level! The software operates with a Window’s interface, making it extremely easy to use. It has provided us with powerful insight into our customer base, allowing us to make informed and targeted marketing decisions.”
Des Lynch, Database and Segmentation Manager, THUS
