JD Williams Creates Multi-Channel Customer Insight With Celebrus Technologies

NEWBURY, England, November 8, 2011 -

- JD Williams uses Customer Data Hubs to transform its online customer intelligence via integration of real-time online information on individual customers from Celebrus Technologies -

JD Williams, the Internet and catalogue home shopping company, is working with Celebrus Technologies www.celebrus.com the online customer intelligence provider, to give customer insight into its six million customers’ behaviour on the e-tail sites of its 35 brands, and thus improve the relevance of each individual marketing interaction and better understand customer preferences with the use of Celebrus.

JD Williams needed a way of capturing customer data and integrating it seamlessly with the Teradata datawarehouse. The company therefore adopted Celebrus Technologies software to capture clickstream information and incorporated that data within the Teradata TCRM system creating individual customer profiles to support ongoing marketing campaigns.

Combining real time and near real time online information from Celebrus Technologies with offline information within JD Williams’ existing Teradata datawarehouse has transformed customer understanding, ensuring the company can understand what customers ‘intended to buy’ as well as ‘what they purchased’ through the multi-channel customer insight.

Note to editors: A video case study is available to the Press which explains in greater detail the relationship between JD Williams and Celebrus Technologies, how they built a Customer Data Hub, and the resulting benefits.

N Brown Group plc, and its principal subsidiary, JD Williams, is a £719 million ($1.1billion) Internet and catalogue home shopping company, with over 140 years of experience in the distance shopping market. The company is the UK’s largest Internet and Catalogue fashion retailer, operating over 35 different brands and specializing in providing fashionable products in larger sizes.

Investing in Teradata software in 1990, JD Williams had so far achieved an in depth understanding of its customers across its mail order and telephone channels. Since the initial investment into customer data hubs was made, the company has created a corporate datawarehouse that holds 95% of all JD Williams’ data and delivers a single version of the truth that is used by over 800 staff.

Over the past few years however, JD Williams has seen its online business grow significantly, with Internet sales now representing 46% of annual turnover. JD Williams therefore needed a way of capturing this online customer intelligence to the same extent as was already being achieved for its offline channels.

The company therefore adopted Celebrus Technologies’ software to capture clickstream information and incorporated that data within the Teradata TCRM system, creating customer data hubs to support ongoing marketing campaigns while giving a multi-channel customer insight.

Neil McGowan, CIO of JD Williams, comments, “Adding individual customer information from the online channel has allowed us to achieve more focused customer segmentation and undertake marketing campaigns based on deeper customer understanding to improve relevance and experience. Integrating it with the Teradata warehouse ensures online customer intelligence can be combined with buying behavior across the other channels, to create a complete 360 degree view of the customer - what is now referred to as a customer data hub.”

Since an initial pilot on two of its website brands - Simply Be and Simply Yours - JD Williams has rolled out multi-channel customer insight across all its online brands, and now has over a year’s information. The company is analyzing individual customer behavior to understand what the customer is interested in, has intention to buy, and to identify activity triggers. The customer data hubs that JD Williams has produced are able to provide a single customer view and online customer intelligence which will improve customer segmentation and identify and target better more appropriate offers, personalizing the web experience to making it more relevant while providing multi-channel customer insight.

McGowan continues, “We have rolled out real time response for our figleaves.com brand, allowing us to tailor the offer and experience in real time based on customer behavior. The creation of the customer profiling is allowing us to combine real time activity with customer history to change the promotions and offers that appear to each customer, further improving the overall experience.”

McGowan concludes, “The customer data hub, powered by Celebrus, is becoming a key part of the ecosystem JD Williams is using to develop its real understanding of actual individual customer behavior. Quite impressive really, when you consider that we have over six million customers!”

About Celebrus Technologies

Celebrus Technologies (formerly known as Speed-Trap) provider delivers complete, real-time data, on online individual visitors’ behavior, environment and experience, and processes that in real-time to power Customer Data Hubs, and drive cross-channel behavioral targeting, real-time personalization,  interaction management and multi-channel customer insight. With its tag-free content push, it can also provide a personalization overlay for existing web sites and apps too.

Celebrus Technologies captures and analyzes interaction at the user interface from any mobile or laptop browser, including Flash/Flex components, video players and many apps.

Celebrus Technologies’ online customer intelligence systems have come to define a new approach to the integration of online applications into an enterprise’s Information Architecture. The system’s User Interface Capture functionality provides a definitive, flexible and reusable source of customer, behavioral, process and performance data from any internet, intranet or extranet application.

Celebrus Technologies delivers its online customer intelligence solutions directly and via a range of OEM, reseller and system integration partners around the world. Direct customers include AXA, Belron (Autoglass), directgov, Rank Interactive, P&O Ferries and ghd. Celebrus Technologies’ partners include the SAS Institute, IS Solutions PLC, Teradata Corporation, OnMarc, Oracle, Microstrategy, Sybase and BIMA Consulting.

What is a Customer Data Hub?

Customer Data Hubs are a new way of thinking about managing your online and offline customer interactions. It is a place to accumulate records of customers’ and visitors’ behavior and experience of an enterprise.

These records typically contain a “customer profile” for each visitor, this profile will hold static information about visitors - things like their name, address, account number etc. and the Hub will also contain “behavior records”, that record individuals undertaking specific actions or activities (like purchasing or searching for products, or registering for the site).

In this way the behavioral record becomes a place to hold all the key business and behavioral data for a customer. Some companies just use these hubs to keep track of their online customer intelligence, but they can be used to compile a complete cross-channel view of the customer. Other businesses also augment a customer record with data from BI or other systems - adding information like suggested credit limits, or “next best offer” or “product recommendations”.

Adding this type of data is important as the second reason for implementing a customer hub is that they can be used to drive personalized messages to the visitor or to drive trigger-based marketing campaigns.

Such behavioral records can drive dynamic programs like Basket Re-marketing, Customer Retention, Behavioral Targeting and even provide triggers for key business processes like Churn Management or Anti-Fraud programs.

For further information, please contact:

Katharine Hulls        
Celebrus Technologies       
Tel: +44(0)1635-230-630          
Fax: +44(0)1635-230-435             
   

Will Gardiner
Itpr
Tel: +44(0)1932-578-800
Fax: +44(0)1932-578-801

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