News
 Efficient
Databases Require Past-Point-in-Time Views
By Jim Wheaton, co-founder of
Daystar Wheaton Group
Most marketing database developers are not deep-dive
data miners. Therefore, all too many of today's
databases don't support strategic analytics best
practices.
An important factor is a misunderstanding of time as
it relates to data mining. Analytical professionals
work in the present, on the past, in anticipation of
the future. Therefore, a seminal requirement of a
marketing database is the easy and rapid recreation
of past-point-in-time views.
Past-point-in-time views are essential for the
construction of the analysis and validation files
required for predictive models. Likewise, they
support the creation of the underlying data required
for all cohort analysis, including long-term value
and the monitoring of changes in customer
inventories such as fluctuations in segment sizes
over time.
Past-point-in-time views also are known as "states"
or "time-0 views." A third common term, "freeze
files," refers to archaic database processes. The
following test will help determine if your firm is
using the best practices of marketing databases:
• Consider a promotional sequence that is done
within a marketing database environment—say, a
mailing with a follow-up e-mail to your best
customers.
• Assume you intend to perform subsequent deep-dive
data mining on this promotional sequence—perhaps, a
predictive model or a sophisticated response
analysis.
• If, in conjunction with the database selection
("pull") to execute the promotional sequence, you
have to create a "freeze file" so you can do the
analysis later, then you are not working with a best
practices marketing database. This is because all
the data required for deep-dive data mining – by
definition – already resides within the database.
---Source:
Multichannel Merchant List & Data Strategies July 7,
2008 newsletter (www.multichannelmerchant.com). Jim
Wheaton is a co-founder of Daystar Wheaton Group.
Reach him at
info@daystarwheaton.com.
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