SPSS and Extraprise Aid in the Analytics Evolution

SPSS and Extraprise partnered yesterday to provide SPSS's predictive analytics solutions to large enterprises looking to predict customer behavior and action.

The goal, according to Bill Blundon, chief marketing officer at Extraprise, is to help organizations graduate from descriptive analytics to prescriptive analytics. The difference, Blundon says, is that descriptive analytics captures historical customer data, where as prescriptive analytics creates actionable analysis on the data captured. "There's so much customer data lying around, but very little actionable information," Blundon says.

For its part Extraprise announced the start of its latest consulting and integration business unit, named Marketing Analytics and Automation Practice. Together, Extraprise marketing and analytics consultants will support SPSS's predictive analytics solutions.

With SPSS technology and Extraprise's marketing expertise, the companies aim to help customers develop more efficient customer profiles and manage their marketing programs more effectively, Blundon says. This comes at a time when companies often experience analysis paralysis from the overwhelming amount of customer data they collect. "People run advertising, public relations, and dozens of different campaigns, as well as seminars. Some of Extraprise's customers are conducting millions of individual customer contacts every month," Blundon says.

From these campaigns, Blundon says, organizations need to answer several questions: What did the customers buy? When? Have they ever bought from our company before? What is the most effective way to reach them? What other customers are like them? Considering our marketing budget, what is the most effective way to reach these customers?

"So many organizations fail to maximize the value of their most critical asset--their customer relationships," Blundon said in a statement. "Knowing your customer today means having a solid grasp of all available information. This enables a company to quickly identify and understand the history and personality of the customer, and then apply that information in ways that add value to future interactions."

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