Simplify with Complex Events Processing
Customer Data is like the oxygen processed by the lungs and heart (systems in information technology) and injected into the blood (business processes) of any Company. Simplified, the purpose of IT is to harness this key information for the improvement of business operations. Eventually the goal of business is provide the best services to their customers. It is even more significant to know this information for a prospective customer which has the potential to increase the business for an organization. There is no secret that a company outwits competitors just with better customer satisfaction and services at the same time maintaining lower TCO and increasing bottom line. The question in today’s world when IT is ever changing, what is the current scope in usage of technologies such as complex event processing.
Consider a hypothetical scenario of events captured by different IT systems:
- A user located in suburb of Chicago (probably a fan of Manchester United) joins the facebook page for ManU on Jan 31 2010
- ManU launches a new series of accessories in collaboration with its sponsors and partners like Nike, Audi and Aon in mid of Apr 2010
- This fan as a registered user in ManU database follows the link on facebook page for the US online store to check the new accessories but does not buy. He visits 4-5 times the same site between May 15 and Jun 15 2010.
- ManU wins the spanish league in Mar-Apr 2010.
ManU loses the UEFA champions league in May-Jun 2010.- The fan updates his own page that he bought a 2009 version Man U accessory such as T-shirt with the team photograph from Amazon in mid Jul 2010.
Before the start of the next season, A report on the inventory is generated for the marketing leads on the sales in the last season for the accessories in account of the sponsor companies. The report shows that there is still a good load of stocks in their inventory and warehouses of the retailers and the sales are less than expected though there has been a little variation due to the wins or loses of the ManU games.
Market leads gets another report from Market Research team. The research analyzed that only 10% of the purchasers are hardcore fans who will buy any new that comes up. Around 30% of the purchasers follow ManU but would wait and buy only if there is discount or exclusive coupons and only partially get affected with loses or wins of the games. Others are not fans and buy sporadically who the variation is proportional to the loses or wins.
Though the above events were independent and happened over a period of half a year, there is a relation and if captured properly can provides intelligence to capture the 30% fan base to increase the sales and revenue.
This is possible with the application of technology “Complex Event Processing”. Traditional IT tools can only capture events in a short span of time and complex coding would need to be done to get the desired result. Business Intelligence can capture reports over historical data but cannot act on the basis of patterns. CEP fills this gap and provides the tools and means to catch, process, apply the pattern over weeks or months or years if required and even predict or provide customized solutions based on the configured rules.
In the above series of events, a CEP solution could have easily recorded the fans checking out pages but not purchasing (lets say more than 5) on the accessories and also integrated through 3rd party tools that access the user activities for ManU website. Based on the customer info and actions over different set of systems, one of the simplest solutions can be to process coupons and send as an email to the customer on the new accessories (obviously with usual marketing messages such as exclusivity, stores near the customer location or online itself). There is more chance that these fans will grab such opportunities and go for the purchase eventually providing a win-win situation to both the fan and the organization.
