Business Objects Partners with SPSS

Intelligent Enterprise reports that: Business Objects may be the largest business intelligence vendor, but in striking an original equipment manufacturer agreement today with SPSS, it acknowledged that it needed to fill a crucial gap in the area of predictive analytics.

Under the terms of the OEM arrangement, the BusinessObjects XI platform will gain two predictive analytics data mining offerings. The BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench will be a co-branded, "Powered by SPSS" version of SPSS Clementine integrated with the BusinessObjects Universe semantic layer to enable data mining experts to develop predictive models.

"The Universe becomes a data source, and you will then run your modeling within the Workbench and ultimately send the results back to the Universe for further analysis," says James Thomas, Business Object's vice president of BI Content and tools.

In a second phase of integration, BusinessObjects Predictive Services will be integrated with the BI vendor's Web Intelligence query and analysis tool to expose predictive capabilities to ordinary business users through reports and documents.

"Predictive Services will give business users a simpler and more compelling way to understand where their business is headed in areas such as sales and customer churn, and what interesting trends may lie underneath their business intelligence content," says Thomas.

If, for example, a Web Intelligence report details customer sales by region, running the detailed data through predictive algorithms would return deeper insights into best customers, customers likely to churn and those likely to respond to cross-sell and up-sell campaigns.

In the wake of October's announcement that SAP would acquire Business Objects, rival SAS openly derided Business Objects as having "shallow" capabilities in the area of analytics, a point that Thomas now concedes: "We've been working with the 'predictive' concept for a number of years, but we had just a few algorithms buried in our product line and we just didn't offer the scope of predictive functionality that our customers were asking for."

For SPSS, the Business Objects deal bolsters its strategy to extend its predictive capabilities through partnerships. "We don't own the data, nor do we own the delivery mechanisms to get the data and the predictive analytics out to the end users, so Business Objects is a perfect partner for us to do that with," says Patrick McCue, vice president of global alliances. "We've had joint-marketing success with companies like Oracle, Microstrategy and SAP, but as we started planning for 2008, we put a big focus on the channel and on deeper OEM relationships."

SPSS already has OEM relationships with Hewlett-Packard and J.D. Edwards, and McCue says most SPSS OEM targets would consider SAS to be a competitor. "That gives us a competitive advantage against SAS to be able to go out into a customer base with that partner leading the way," he adds. "Once we sell the data mining/predictive piece, we have a plethora of other products that our sales team can sell, such as text mining, real-time decision making and statistics."

Thomas says the Clementine-based Predictive Workbench will be added within the first half of 2008. Predictive Services may take longer to integrate because it will change the Web Intelligence user interface.

DMA Offers Web Analytics Report

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has published a Web Analytics Report, based on detailed input from 130 marketing organizations, to identify which elements of Web analytics to employ for specific business goals, such as:

* increasing sales
* improving customer loyalty
* monitoring Web site usability

The report is divided into two sections:

* Part 1 provides a comprehensive overview of Web analytics purposes, challenges, usage, and effectiveness in the field of direct marketing. It covers such specific aspects of direct marketing as using Web analytics to design and evaluate online and off-line marketing campaigns and increase channel integration
* Part 2 focuses on how to use Web analytics specifically to increase conversions

The Web Analytics Report provides four major categories of information:

* Popularity: The percentage of respondents who currently use a particular Web analytics practice and can rate its effectiveness a.k.a. How popular are Web analytics practices?
* Effectiveness ratings: How marketers perceive each Web analytics tool and practice in terms of its impact on the overall ROI a.k.a. How is this affecting my bottom line?
* Expertise: Information about the popularity and effectiveness segmented by respondents’ level of expertise (beginner, intermediate, expert) a.k.a. Who are we really asking?
* Insights from the Expert: Dave Rhee (Wandering Dave of Ox2) a Web analytics expert, gives commentary throughout the book to help interpret and decipher the data provided a.k.a. "Lessons from the veteran direct marketer"

Eugenia Steingold, Senior Research Manager for the DMA, notes that the Web Analytics Report looks in-depth at over 20 specific metrics and tools, including:

* hit reports
* browsing patterns
* online order volumes
* conversion rates
* internal search results

Steingold points out that both standalone and CRM-oriented Web analytics vendors deliver the goods from a functionality perspective, but that many companies are neglecting to incorporate these Web metrics into their sales and marketing strategies. "A lot of SVPs don't look at data as often as they should," Steingold points out. "You need the right people to collect and analyze data. You need to develop decision-making sensibilities so that you can adjust sales and marketing campaigns in response to real-time trends."

List Price: $445.00
DMA Member Price: $245.00

IBM, Mainsoft Facilitate .NET Integration

Developers using Microsoft's .NET Framework technology and SharePoint can now readily integrate their .NET applications with IBM's Java-based portal technology, after IBM agreed, in a global reseller deal, to sell Mainsoft Corp.'s .NET Extensions solution with the IBM WebSphere Portal solution.

IBM WebSphere Portal lets users create composite or "mashup" applications in service-oriented architectures and enables organizational performance monitoring, self-service applications, document access and team collaboration.

"Portal-to-portal interoperability is going to become increasingly important," said Yaacov Cohen, Mainsoft's CEO and president. "With a service-oriented architecture you want to connect all of your systems together, and you want to deliver your composite applications -- coming from different platforms."

Mainsoft's technology can integrate a number of Microsoft .NET technologies:

* Windows SharePoint services
* Microsoft Office document libraries
* SQL Server Reports
* .NET-based applications

Mainsoft, an advanced IBM business partner, provides solutions that help organizations with mixed .NET and Java environments. The company's solutions are certified as "Optimized for Visual Studio" and have been validated as "Ready for WebSphere Software."

Mainsoft Portal Edition solution is a plug-in to the Visual Studio development environment. It has a cross-compiler that compiles .NET code into Java bite code. The solution makes it easier for developers with a background in C# and Visual Basic to integrate ASP.NET on WebSphere Portal.

JunctionBI 4.2 Adds Customer Predictive Analytics

Junction Solutions has announced the release of Version 4.2 of JunctionBI, its Business Intelligence platform, which offers:
• Historical Sales Analytics
• Customer Predictive Analytics
• Customer Profiling
• Customer Retention
• RFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary) Scoring
• Inventory Movement
• Unique Person Identification
• Direct Marketing List Pull
• Campaign Matchback
• Customer Lifetime Value

Developed using the Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform (including Microsoft SQL Server 2005), JunctionBI can run against virtually any type of source database including Junction Solutions’ own Retail and Consumer Goods applications. Information is presented using common Microsoft tools such as SharePoint Portal, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SSRS) and Dundas Visualization.

At the heart of JunctionBI is a multi-dimensional Kimball-style data warehouse designed to cleanse, enhance, and store data to facilitate rapid, flexible access. Reports and queries can be initiated by users from anywhere in the organization using desktop or web browser interfaces. Information can also be generated on a scheduled basis and 'broadcast' to users or individuals as required. The JunctionBI system can be customized to meet unique business rules without costly alterations to the underlying data schema or architecture.

DMA Slams NY Sales Tax Ploy

New York Governor Spitzer’s Department of Taxation and Finance has issued a new regulation that requires out-of-state marketers to begin collecting state sales tax on deliveries made into New York based merely on a link to their website.

In response, Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Executive Vice President for Government Affairs & Corporate Responsibility Steven K. Berry issued the following statement:

"It is unfortunate and particularly ill-timed to impose a legally questionable tax collection responsibility just as companies are headed into the all-important holiday season. This is an overreach of authority that will harm consumers and merchants both in New York and nationwide. Businesses depend on a robust fourth quarter to meet payrolls and operating expenses. The last thing businesses or consumers need is uncertainty in the marketplace.

"We are very disappointed that Governor Spitzer and the New York Department of Taxation and Finance have just put forward a new directive attempting to require out-of-state sellers to collect sales tax on deliveries into New York State. This directive goes against the US Supreme Court’s landmark Quill decision, and thus would not survive legal scrutiny."

IBM to Buy Cognos

A month after SAP announced it was buying Business Objects, IBM has now announced it will acquire Cognos for $4.9 billion, or $58 a share.

The two companies already had an alliance where they served customers such as the New York City Police Department and Canadian Tire Corp., according to a statement today.

IBM said the all-cash deal was subject to shareholder approval and should close in the first quarter of 2008.

Junction Solutions Centers on Retail

Following the lead of other major direct commerce order management solutions, Junction Solutions has moved closer to the retail channel in announcing the release of Version 4.2 of its newly branded "Junction Solutions for Retail" packaged software suite.

This release, containing over 70 new features, extends Junction Solutions’s cross-channel retail enterprise functionality to encompass eCommerce and in-store POS systems within a single corporate data source built upon Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Junction Solutions announced earlier this year the acquisitions of both ThePage.com and ISS Retail, which expanded its capabilities to run eCommerce and in-store/POS operations. The former catalog and direct marketing JunctionMCR product, built on Microsoft Dynamics AX, has been expanded to become a hub for cross-channel retailing. Accordingly, the product has been renamed to JunctionRES – Retail Enterprise Solution.

All together, the Junction Solutions for Retail solution provides cross-channel retailers and vertically oriented retailers/manufacturers a comprehensive retail enterprise solution (or “Retail ERP”).

The focus of Junction Solutions’s 4.2 software development team was integration of the data and store, eCommerce, and direct marketing business processes, enabling merchants to operate and provide a seamless, cross-channel shopping experience.