

Sedona incorporates DataMentors' householding software into Intarsia

CRM software company Sedona Corporation has agreed to incorporate DataMentors Inc.'s DataFuse householding software as an element of Sedona's Intarsia Internet CRM software. As part of the agreement, database marketing software and programming provider DataMentors will also become a reseller of Intarsia.

Targeted at small and mid-size financial institutions, Intarsia is a full-hosted software product that provides personalized customer interaction and profitability management. DataFuse standardizes and matches data, and by using it, Intarsia customers can customize their householding algorithms to precisely fit their bank's needs.

"You can put as many tools [onto your CRM system] as you want, but if your data is not clean and matched accurately, your modeling efforts won't be accurate," said Bev Tannenbaum, senior vice president of DataMentors. According to Tannenbaum, DataFuse can precisely standardize names and addresses, and can match data even if it has typos. The algorithms in DataFuse can be customized to match names that only are similar by 75%, for example, or match names phonetically, such as "ph" and "f."

Sedona chose DataMentors because DataFuse "basically adds a greater level... in terms of allowing customers to analyze households," said Alyssa Dver, vice president of marketing and customer care at Sedona. In the banking environment, Dver said, a teenage boy with an unimpressive savings account could be the son of two very good customers, and householding information allows banks to identify that and also target products, such as college loans, to the young man.

Other companies, such as retailers, can aggregate their data and pare down their mailing lists so that one catalog is sent to each household, or in some cases, each person. And no matter what the industry, if a company is trying to cross-sell products, knowing what is in the house can assist their campaign, Tannenbaum said.

"When you're trying to do CRM, you really want to understand the household, as opposed to just an individual member," Dver said.

The integrated software is expected to go into beta testing in April 2001 with a 60-day beta cycle.

New customers will be able to purchase Intarsia integrated with DataFuse as part of an initial purchase, and existing customers will receive it as part of a paid upgrade. Pricing depends on the size of customer data assets. Exact pricing, however, has not been released.

For more information, visit DataMentors' Web site

And Sedona's Web site.

Also check out Search CRM Editor's Picks: Vertical Industry Applications: Financial Industry

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