Publications

Forbes, Naomi Grossman 09.21.07

... We turned to Gordon Linoff, a principal at Data Miners, to learn what data mining for BI can do for small and midsize businesses .

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Where do small and midsize companies fit into this BI picture?

Well, it depends upon their relationship with their customers. If they only have a handful of larger clients, they know them. But one of our clients, The Vermont Country Store, is a cataloger that sends to several million people. The company has about 400 employees. How are 400 people going to know about several million people? They need to use the information they collect in order to better serve their customers and increase revenue.

But there's not an overall approach, because businesses are different, and there are several different levels that businesses operate on. Some are campaign-driven, to encourage customers to buy, and [business intelligence helps] them optimize each campaign and [some use] traditional predictive models associated with data mining, tailoring aspects of their Web sites to their customers or sending e-mails to their customers to return to their site.

For example, on Amazon.com, which is not a small company, if I bought Harry Potter IV, [they know] I will buy Harry Potter V, VI, and VII, [because they're asking] what's the next type of thing that I'll buy? You can get associations or market basket analysis. For companies in retail, association rules are something they're interested in. What things sell together?

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