Businesses could be forced to fund new e-crime unit

The Home Office is currently thinking about whether business will be expected to fund a new e-crime unit that is under consideration by the Home Office. Not surprisingly, the private sector has said that the core funding for such a police unit to combat e-crime must come from the government.

The proposal stems from a suggestion that the Policing Central E-crime Unit, as proposed by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the Metropolitan Police Service, would be jointly funded by the Home Office, ACPO and businesses.

Derrick Cameron of Eximium comments, “It’s pretty obvious that e-crime is a problem for everyone in society and affects businesses as well as consumers. Whilst it is in the interests of companies who sell online that it is properly policed, it seems unreasonable that they should be expected to pick up the tab. The funds should come from general taxation.”

Derrick goes on to add, “As an economy, we should be encouraging business owners to do more online not asking them to pay more if they want to trade on the web.”

The unit would be aimed at stopping hackers who can often be found tapping into the profits of ever more businesses. Although for many it is ‘something fun’ to pass the time, it is taking its toll on company profits. In fact, many hackers have spent time creating a business model that is nearly as sophisticated as that of legal software providers.

“Cyber crime is no longer something that affects only big businesses — it affects small businesses just as much; in fact, there are few aspects of the economy not affected by it. Let’s hope the e-crime unit is up to the significant task ahead of it,” adds Cameron.

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Businesses leave valuable data untouched

Almost every business already has valuable information about its customers at its disposal. With recent technological advances in printing making personalised direct mail campaigns affordable, there has never been a better time to apply the data mining techniques used by direct marketers to predict customer behavior.

Business to business or b-to-b marketing is one of the more challenging areas. B-to-b marketers have been slower to adopt database marketing best practices. They tend not to have the in-house expertise to leverage the historical information from their customers, which might help segment their customer base and make the most use of customer data.

Working with a combination of in-house transactional data as well as overlay business “firmographic” information, companies can target their current customers and also understand where to find new clients that resemble their best customers. Studies show that an existing customer is 7 times more likely to buy from you as a stranger.

Many companies don’t track the amount of money their customers spend, making a ‘lifetime value’ figure for the average customer impossible to price. This makes it very difficult to accurately gauge how much to spend on marketing. That process can be as simple as tracking total sales or as complex as completely analysing their transactional history and corresponding profitability. Most business owners tend to think of a customer based on the current transaction; they tend to be more transaction- than customer-focused, not looking at the bigger lifetime picture.

Derrick Cameron from Eximium comments, “What was once very difficult to track and monitor can now be simplified through the intelligent use of IT. Once the systems are in place, monitoring this type of essential information becomes quite straightforward.”

Here are Derrick’s three key tips for getting more out of your existing customer data:

1) Be clear what you want. Data mining techniques are useless if you don’t know what you want to achieve. You don’t want to data mine for its own sake. You want to make sure that the information you retrieve can be applied to winning or converting more clients or up selling to existing clients. Focus your data mining on areas where you are producing results that can be implemented into tactical initiatives. Use the information to achieve your marketing objectives. It’s all about planning and preparation.

2) How current and reliable is your customer data? Perhaps it’s time to conduct a data audit. Find out how accurate it is and assess the information based on its origins. Did the information come from the customer directly, during the point of sale, or from a third-party source? Look to your marketing objectives to determine what information is required. Track all transactional history back to the customer mapping. A common issue is the use of different versions of a company name in your database. One day the order might be placed using ‘Ideal Marketing’ as the customer name. The next time, you might use ‘The Ideal Marketing Company’ or even an acronym such as ‘IMC’. You need to make sure those purchases are being linked to that same customer to ensure the accuracy of your analysis.

3) Keep it clean. It’s worth doing a final manual check to spot potential errors, undefined fields or duplication. The follow through from the data audit is to make sure you capture all the information you can on a customer, and to make sure you can match those transactions.

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CRM finally seems to have come of age

There is no doubt that, after being hailed as the ultimate in 21st century business tools, with a rapid return on investment, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) failed to live up to its promises, and sales of the technology lost pace. Now this formerly much-hyped technology is finally coming of age.

CRM software is simplifying many business processes and becoming more user-friendly. The result being CRM is actually starting to live up to its early promise.

Derrick Cameron of IT firm Eximium comments, “In its early days, the first and second generation CRM technology was supposed to propel businesses into a new customer centered mindset. In truth, the technology wasn’t where it should have been. It was too complex and difficult to use effectively. Instead of making the lives of sales people and customer service personnel easier and their jobs more efficient, it tended to make processes and tasks harder and less efficient.

“The result was that early adopters found few real benefits. In effect, CRM became regarded as good in theory with few practical business applications. The expense, effort and time required in implementing a CRM solution and to train people, rarely worked out for anyone,” adds Derrick.

But the signs are that 2008 will be a different story. “Interest in CRM is picking up again because users are coming to realise that what they had in place was over-complicated. There is no need to have-it-all and do-it-all to benefit from CRM,” Derrick adds.

Derrick’s main three ‘must have’ points to remember about CRM are:

1. Incident Management - know when and what complaints customers have logged with your company.

2. Sales Management - know what a customer has bought, enquired about and their credit record.

3. Market Segmentation - know what location and sector the customer operates in and the types of products other people in that sector have previously bought.

CRM products have matured to the point where users can quickly and easily make use of the functionality of the CRM application that best suits their needs. “Get these 3 processes right and the CRM package is likely to quickly pay for itself,” adds Derrick.

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