Briefs

Here, a guide to uncovering the bounty buried in your data warehouse. DestinationCRM, September 2005, by Karen Bannan

From CRM Magazine September 2005 Business intelligence (BI) applications have come a long way over the past 10 years. More commonly known as data mining a decade ago, analysts back then predicted a boom for this software market. Only today is that boom starting to materialize.

Already, industry pundits posit that 60 percent of companies have data-mining or BI systems installed. Of those 12 percent say they use their software at least once every hour, while 36 percent say they use it at least once each day, according to Ventana Research. It may come as no surprise that those who install data-mining software weren't necessarily getting the most out of it or the data, for a variety of reasons. Alton Adams, a partner at Accenture's CRM practice, says, "Even today people are still struggling to get it right. At its foundation data mining is all about having a good understanding and a single view of the customer to effectively market and sell to that customer. But we're just not there yet. There is probably a litany of things that people are doing wrong and things that they should be doing right. There's still so much work to be done."

Similar to mining for gold, when done well data mining can extract a treasure trove. Here are 12 tips experts and users say will help you uncover the precious elements in your data.

1) Share data with caution

2) Look beyond transactional data

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