 |
|
| Recent Articles |
Driving Customer Loyalty
The BrandingWire team takes on car dealerships this month. And what we've uncovered is straight out of Jurassic Park. Car dealers seem to have been frozen and preserved for all time, as if trapped in amber.
CRM and Sales Force De-Automation
Is CRM Software Killing your Company? CRM Can become Company De-Automation. CRM vendors speak of sales force automation and work flow improvements...
Customer Service: Bend Vs. Break
When does a customer service process stop serving the customer, and begin to become detrimental to the relationship? David Cushman tells us: "My payment...
CRM For IGoogle Demoed
It's interesting to see all the companies who are trying to hook into iGoogle (Google's personalized portal page). Here's Etelos showing off how its "CRM for Google"...
EDM For Delivering Relationship-Based Pricing
Mary Pilecki at Forrester just published Turning Pricing Optimization Into Relationship-Based Pricing (subscription required) about using pricing optimization as part of a financial services institution's relationship...
Will Sales Technology Improve Your Company's Sales?
As we embrace the information age, there are more gadgets available to the average sales person , than there were weapons for old age warriors. So does this...
|
|
09.06.07
Making Customer Loyalty Programs Work With EDM
 By James Taylor
Martin Fowler's bliki had an interesting post on Customer Loyalty Software that made me think about what a great fit business rules, and enterprise decision management, are for loyalty program management.
Applying Martin's patterns and using a business rules approach to handle the automation is a great fit for a number of reasons:
• Loyalty program rules are typically independent and atomic
Just like business rules in a business rules management system
• Some transactions have multiple consequences
Each rule that is met has its own actions and those actions can, in turn, trigger more rules.
For instance, a transaction might trigger a rule putting someone into a new reward level that means previous transactions now earn bonus points.
Inferencing rule engines handle this kind of scenario particularly well.
• Different systems (as Martin noted) need different consequences applied
The rules for updating multiple systems can easily execute in parallel
• Loyalty rules are dynamic and constantly changing
Making business rules an even more attractive technology for this. Rules are easier to manage and easier to change
• Many loyalty rules conform to regular templates
Allowing business users to see simple interfaces for managing their rules
• Analytics add value
Using past data about the behavior of customers to see if loyalty awards changed behavior allows you to derive the most profitable rules for your loyalty program and focus your efforts on those customers whose behavior will be changed.
I'm sure there are more but that seems like enough reasons. So, if you are building loyalty software, use a business rules management system.
Comments
About the Author:
VP of Product Marketing with a passion for the technologies of decision automation. 15 years designing, developing, releasing and marketing advanced enterprise software platforms and development tools. Across the board experience in software development, engineering and product management and product marketing.
http://www.edmblog.com
|
