Research on Business Intelligence in the customer-centric e-business environment

In the current knowledge economy, it is now an indisputable fact that information of customer is the key to organisations for gaining competitive advantage. Companies are realizing that the keys to long-term, sustainable revenues and profits are identifying, acquiring, and retaining profitable customers. Unfortunately, most companies don't know which customers are profitable and which are not. They also don't know which customers are likely to defect and which are likely to respond to particular offers and products. Most importantly, few companies can identify those customers or prospects that have the greatest potential to become profitable customers over time, given the right marketing investment. Today, due to proliferation of information systems and technology, business increasingly have the capability to accumulate huge amounts of customer data in large databases. However, much of the useful marketing insights into customer characteristics and purchase patterns are largely hidden and untapped. By analyzing data from the customer-facing systems at a macro level, Business Intelligence (BI) can empower management to work intelligently and help shape customer and product focus to the maximum benefit of the company. BI is a strategic approach for enterprises to transform raw data into insights and intelligence and to help decision makers identify key trends of the market. This paper outlines the building blocks and framework of Business Intelligence and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and then presents a new approach to implementing a Business Intelligence solution focused on the analytical aspects of CRM.