using data to drive successful product development

Using data to drive successful product developmentPresented by Ian Eckert

14 –16 Regent Street, London, SW1Y 4PH. Tel: +44 (0)20 7766 9810. [email protected]

Abacus e-Media • System integration in online since 1983

• Web development since 1995

• Media 70%, government and recruitment 25%, ecommerce

• Software products, design, development and hosting

• 54 UK staff, 12 offshore

• Locations in London and Portsmouth

• Subsidiary of Bond International Software PLC


– UK B2B Market leader

84-86 Regent Street, London, W1B 5RR Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 (0)20 7297 5200

Events:

• Exhibitions

• Conferences

• Webinars / Web-

events

• Awards

• Match making

Recruitment / HR:

• Job advertising

• Search and selection

• Application

management

• Market data

• Training / coaching

• Value added services

• Temps

• Micro sites

Lead generation:

• Affiliate fees

• Pay-per-click

• Vertical search

• Online commerce

• B2B marketing

• Directories

Community site:

• Best practice data

• UGC

• Meet-ups

• Targeted advertising

• Social networks

• Community networks

• Best practice

• Membership

schemes

The areas of audience development

Editorial content:

• Digital only content

• News and Features

• Premium content

• Multi-platform access

(print, online, mobile)

Information services:

• Data services

• Research

• Newsletters

• White papers

• Real time prices

• Deals

• Analytical tools

• Best practice


Audience transactions• As delivery platforms and products multiply, individual audience

transactions increase exponentially. These include:


Functional overlaps


Anatomy of a content access system• Access control

• Highly flexible and agile to deal with rapidly evolving business model• Allow instant definition new products and qualifying users• Provide context-sensitive messaging and prompts

• Transaction platform

• Interface directly the access control system to create inventory of available products

• Process payment and provide data to back-office (eg SOP, fulfilment)

• Audience management and intelligence

• Supply pan-system reporting on activity and behaviour to identify new product opportunities

• Produce data feeds for offline marketing activity

• Back office support

• Audit and accounting


Abacus CAMS• Rules-based

products• Function• Content type• Age

• User-based products• Qualification

• Demographics• Location

• Usage


Challenge for publishers• Combination of CMS and CAM systems can allow rapid development

and deployment of new products but significant barriers remain

• Inability to identify and market to key targets – inefficient data management

• Integration with third-party fulfilment houses

• Delivery of transactional data to and from back office systems

• Control of ‘master’ customer data

• The links between e-commerce and fulfilment are often fundamentally flawed or broken

• Products are often purchased in real-time but delivery is delayed by batch processing issues or offline validation

• Data obtained during the purchase process is entirely isolated from other systems


The solution: An integrated AD approach


Approach to Audience Development• Acceptance that a single unified data source is unworkable

• Multiple generators of data

• Instead put data integration at the core of the approach not as a peripheral activity

• Develop ‘master’ data concept by defining core elements

• People• Organisations• Locations• Brands

• Apply statistical data profiling to understand the data to guarantee quality regardless of source

• Data matching replaces data mapping


Indexed Data Catalogs

(Dynamic Subject Model ELT)

Master Data Catalog

Data Profiling

Data Matching

Application Transactional Data

(Near Real-time Replication Mirror)

Business & TechnicalMetadata Catalog

Data Cleansing

Master Data

(Near Real-time Database Replication Mirror)

Application Transactional Data

3rd Party Operational and External Data

(Includes Flat Files & Business Application Databases)

Application Indexed Views

(Application UI Master Data Presentation)

Synchronized

Data Delta Loader

Data Import and Integration UI

Data

Quality

, Analy

sis & S

tatistics U

IA

pplica

tion U

I

System Wide Configuration & Maintenance UI

BI

/ R

eport

ing a

nd E

xport

U

I

Integrated BI Data Presentation

(Conformed Muliti-Dimensional Star Schema)

OLAP

Correlated Data Query

Database Replicated

Query

Data Update

Extracted Updates

Abacus e-Media AD Platform

SaaS and Client Systems


Audience development tools: Acumen

• Web analytics are necessarybut not sufficient

• Important for volume metrics

• Provide a common currency

• However, even market leaders struggle to answer ‘real world’ questions

• Acumen utilises the AD architecture to provide behavioural tracking across a wide range of variables

• Tracker reports create actionable intelligence


A data-driven product development cycle

Thank you for listeningAbacus e-Media

14 –16 Regent Street, London, SW1Y 4PH

Tel: +44 (0)20 7766 9810

[email protected]

using data to drive successful product development

Technology

data integration

external data

data feeds

data mapping

master data concept

data query database

source data matching

query data update