Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Foundations of Business Intelligence: Databases and Information Management

INTERACTIVE SESSION : PEOPLE

Asking the Customer by Asking the Database

1.      Why would a customer database be so useful a company such as Forbes or Kodak? What would happen if these companies had not kept their customer data in database?

Ø  Customer database be so useful a company such as Forbes or Kodak because database include records of the company’s communications with its own consumer or customer “list” purchases from other organizations, including charity donating forms, application form for free product or contests, product warranty cards, subscription form, and credit application forms.

Ø  Management realized it could actually learn details about each of its individual readers by examining Forbes’s enter reader population, using the data it had already accumulated on a regular basis.

Ø  These details help’s Forbes’s advertising target their campaigns more precisely and also help Forces publications increases their circulation.

Ø  And, if these companies had not kept their customer data in database, so company difficult to analyze the data

2.      How did better data management improve each company’s business performance? Give examples of two decisions that were improved by mining this customer database.

Ø  Better data management is important to the company understand the customer and know the information about customer. The examples are Forbes did maintain extensive data on its individual subscribers and Web sites and Kodak maintain data on 50 million customers compiled from direct purchases and registration on Kodak’s Web site and photo sharing site.

  

3.      How did better data management improve each company’s business performance? Give examples of two decisions that were improved by mining these customer databases.

Ø  Business use their database to keep track of basic transactions, such as paying supplies, processing order, serving customer, and paying employee. But they also need databases to provide information that will help the company run the business more efficiently, and help managers and employees make better decisions. If a company wants to know which product is the most popular or who its most profitable customer is, the answer lies in the data.

Ø  Enter corporate database s and data mining. Forbes did maintain extensive data on its individual subscribers and Web site visitors from magazines subscriptions and visit to its Web sites. It just needed to make better use of the data. Management realized it could actually learn details about each of its individual readers by examining Forbes’s entire readers populations, using the data it had already accumulated on a regular basis.

Ø  Kodak now relies more heavily on the actual data in its Oracle customer database, which maintains data on 50 million customers compiled from direct purchases and registrations on Kodak’s Web site and photo-sharing site, customer-service interactions, product registrations from retail store purchases, and interaction from social network. Kodak supplements these data with demographic and psycho-graphic information purchases from third-Party database vendors.

4.      How would you feel if your employer used this software where you work to monitor what you are doing on the job? Explain your response.

Ø  I will be more responsible to my job. I will focus to do job in the office to increase the productivity of the company. The employer can make a reward to the person that does the job seriously. The employer has much reasonable reason to monitor their worker. The employer wants to increase their productivity of the company, fear leakage of confidential information and trade secrets through e-mail or social network. If the worker follows the rule of the company, work hard, no reason for the employer to check the e-mail and social network of the worker. The worker must know their responsibility of their own work.