ADBM and CRM

Some people are analytical. some people are detail oriented. some people can drill down into it with incredible intensity. That’s the kind of skill and focus Advanced Database Management requires.

Databases:

For a database to be interesting it has to have enough related data for it to contain some useful information. Database Management is taking the database and setting up the data so that it is good data. When you fill in a form and put in your last name as Microsoft or Gnulicense, some database manager somewhere has to scrub that. When you put in a date as 12//12/2012 someone has to clean that so it reads 12/12/2012.

Relational Data:

The difference between data and information is (usually) human intervention and interpretation. Often though, humans use database tools like Relational Database management to show relationships between data. A family has four kids, so the kids are in the table with the parents. They also go to school, so then they become part of the table that refers to the school. Later, as more and more adults with kids are added to the family tables, you eventually see how many students are in the schools. So, the kids and the students are related, the kids belong to the school and to the parents.

RFID tags:

Besides gathering data from people filling out forms or people using cards at the library or credit cards, there are the cards you use at the grocery store and tags in the things you buy. RFID tags are the tags that record enable RFID readers to transfer product data to the database. All types of information is recorded and placed in databases, but that is really only the first step in measuring data.

So, even though this is really only a simple outline of these basic database principles, you can probably see how tables and databases are set up to create relationships among data and use RFID tags and other technology to add other information to these tables and databases to show more depth of information.

CRM:

Customer Relationship Management is taking all of your customer product data, customer address and household data, customer family data, business product data, business characteristics, even business employee data, and finding all the relationships between  those data. Most Advanced databases use database technology, math, science and interpretation of relationships and data all thrown together into one big globule. Then you have to take that globule and look at the related data after its boiled down.

Imagine a customer table, which includes all customer demographic information.

Then there would be a purchase table of all the purchases by each customer, how much each thing costed, any discounts that were used, any coupons presented, what time and date the product was purchased, and of course, more.

A products table would have all the products, their availability, the product RFID#, size of the package or weight.

There might be an Inventory table that shows what shelf contains which product and whether that location was a kiosk or sale stack or end-of-aisle display or other type of display.

And of course, this can be just the beginning of a bigger more incredible monster. If you go to the website and use there customer card then your favorite websites or shipping information could be recorded. If you use a credit card or store credit card then information could be recorded from there.

Once all this data has been warehoused and drilled and mined, you could check out a Kroger and receive a coupon for a truck you were looking at online just before the last time you bought carrots online. They could figure out how much time remains from the last time you bought carrots till the next time and send you coupons just before the next time you go out to the grocery store. They might try to give you a coupon for the bigger bag of carrots to see if you will buy more carrots this time around. You could receive an email with pictures of trucks of carrots, and saying you can get a discount through your favorite search engine if you use your grocery store credit card to buy them.

They just want to show you what a special customer you are !