Enabling analysts in managed services for CRM analytics

Abstract

Data analytics tools and frameworks abound, yet rapid deployment of analytics solutions that deliver actionable insights from business data remains a challenge. The primary reason is that on-field practitioners are required to be both technically proficient and knowledgeable about the business. The recent abundance of unstructured business data has thrown up new opportunities for analytics, but has also multiplied the deployment challenge, since interpretation of concepts derived from textual sources require a deep understanding of the business. In such a scenario, a managed service for analytics comes up as the best alternative. A managed analytics service is centered around a business analyst who acts as a liaison between the business and the technology. This calls for new tools that assist the analyst to be efficient in the tasks that she needs to execute. Also, the analytics needs to be repeatable, in that the delivered insights should not depend heavily on the expertise of specific analysts. These factors lead us to identify new areas that open up for KDD research in terms of 'time-to-insight' and repeatability for these analysts. We present our analytics framework in the form of a managed service offering for CRM analytics. We describe different analyst-centric tools using a case study from real-life engagements and demonstrate their effectiveness. Copyright 2009 ACM.