Friday, 30 August 2013

Innovative Online Data Entry Services

Number of companies providing data entry services has increased in the last few years. These companies also provide services on online and offline data-entry and data processing, etc. Data Entry is to enter any form of data into computerized inventory. It could be done by typing at a keyboard plus electronically entering information into the machine.

These companies have updated technologies, unique processes and efficient data processing by integrating skilled professionals. These companies deliver high-quality services with complete accuracy, efficiency plus effectiveness. They provide services through reliable and secure online platform with the help of encrypted FTP upload CD-R or CD-W or E-mail. Adopting this technology customers get an assurance that their information is free from any sort of unauthorized access, copying or downloading. Companies specializing in such services provide a broad spectrum of services fulfilling each customer specific needs.

Few of these services are listed as follows: surveys, online copying, pasting, sorting, editing, and organizing data, questionnaires, online form processing and filing, reports and submissions, online medical and legal data entry, data collection, mailing list / mailing label, email mining, typing the manuscript in MS Word, etc. Outsourcing of the documentation of the work is a workable and a reasonable option.

Such services includes a wide range of back office and BPO - Business Process Outsourcing and ITO - Information Technology Outsourcing enabled data processing services.

Online data input services provided by India have earned a global recognition for its superior quality and timely completion of its work. Saving time is crucial for each organization running its business. Qualitative output is produced in lesser time which is advantageous for using the time at other important places. By availing such services one can save on cost of hiring trained professionals. More services could be availed within the saved cost.

Talking about the role of online data processing services, as the requirements of high quality and accurate data-entry of textual and numeric data processing business needs is most needed. In this way, companies can save valuable time and money by entering information online reduces. You can also consult experts who have vast experience and knowledge about online entry of data.

With the help of these services, mostly many business processing companies are able to focus on their core activates through online services. This kind of services require speed, analytical skills, domain expertise and industry experience. Choosing right outsourcing partner can save you cost and time significantly.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Innovative-Online-Data-Entry-Services&id=6442656

Monday, 26 August 2013

One of the Main Differences Between Statistical Analysis and Data Mining

Two methods of analyzing data that are common in both academic and commercial fields are statistical analysis and data mining. While statistical analysis has a long scientific history, data mining is a more recent method of data analysis that has arisen from Computer Science. In this article I want to give an introduction to these methods and outline what I believe is one of the main differences between the two fields of analysis.

Statistical analysis commonly involves an analyst formulating a hypothesis and then testing the validity of this hypothesis by running statistical tests on data that may have been collected for the purpose. For example, if an analyst was studying the relationship between income level and the ability to get a loan, the analyst may hypothesis that there will be a correlation between income level and the amount of credit someone may qualify for.

The analyst could then test this hypothesis with the use of a data set that contains a number of people along with their income levels and the credit available to them. A test could be run that indicates for example that there may be a high degree of confidence that there is indeed a correlation between income and available credit. The main point here is that the analyst has formulated a hypothesis and then used a statistical test along with a data set to provide evidence in support or against that hypothesis.

Data mining is another area of data analysis that has arisen more recently from computer science that has a number of differences to traditional statistical analysis. Firstly, many data mining techniques are designed to be applied to very large data sets, while statistical analysis techniques are often designed to form evidence in support or against a hypothesis from a more limited set of data.

Probably the mist significant difference here, however, is that data mining techniques are not used so much to form confidence in a hypothesis, but rather extract unknown relationships may be present in the data set. This is probably best illustrated with an example. Rather than in the above case where a statistician may form a hypothesis between income levels and an applicants ability to get a loan, in data mining, there is not typically an initial hypothesis. A data mining analyst may have a large data set on loans that have been given to people along with demographic information of these people such as their income level, their age, any existing debts they have and if they have ever defaulted on a loan before.

A data mining technique may then search through this large data set and extract a previously unknown relationship between income levels, peoples existing debt and their ability to get a loan.

While there are quite a few differences between statistical analysis and data mining, I believe this difference is at the heart of the issue. A lot of statistical analysis is about analyzing data to either form confidence for or against a stated hypothesis while data mining is often more about applying an algorithm to a data set to extract previously unforeseen relationships.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?One-of-the-Main-Differences-Between-Statistical-Analysis-and-Data-Mining&id=4578250

Saturday, 24 August 2013

Effective Online Data Entry Services

The outsourcing market has many enthusiastic buyers who have paid a small amount to online data entry service providers. They carry the opinion that they have paid too low as against the work they have got done. Online services is helpful to a number of smaller business units who take these projects as their significant source of occupation.

Online data-entry services include data typing, product entry, web and mortgage research, data mining as well as extraction services. Service providers allot proficient workforce at your service who timely deliver best possible results. They have updated technology, guaranteeing 100% data security.

Few obvious benefits found by outsourcing online data entry:

    Business units receive quality online entry services from projects owners.
    Entering data is the first step for companies through which they get the understanding of the work that makes strategic decisions. The raw data represented by mere numbers soon turns to be a decision making factor accelerating the progress of the business.
    Systems used by these services are completely protected to maintain high level of security.
    As you increasingly obtain high quality of information the business executive of the company is expected to arrive at extraordinary decisions which influence progress in the company.
    Shortened turnaround time.
    Cutting down on cost by saving on operational overheads.

Companies are highly fascinated by the benefits of outsourcing your projects for these services, as it saves time as well as money.

Flourishing companies want to concentrate on their key business activities instead of exploring into such non-key business activities. They take a wise step of outsourcing their work to data-entry-services and keep themselves free for their core business functions.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Effective-Online-Data-Entry-Services&id=5681261

Friday, 23 August 2013

Web Data Extraction Services and Data Collection Form Website Pages

For any business market research and surveys plays crucial role in strategic decision making. Web scrapping and data extraction techniques help you find relevant information and data for your business or personal use. Most of the time professionals manually copy-paste data from web pages or download a whole website resulting in waste of time and efforts.

Instead, consider using web scraping techniques that crawls through thousands of website pages to extract specific information and simultaneously save this information into a database, CSV file, XML file or any other custom format for future reference.

Examples of web data extraction process include:
• Spider a government portal, extracting names of citizens for a survey
• Crawl competitor websites for product pricing and feature data
• Use web scraping to download images from a stock photography site for website design

Automated Data Collection
Web scraping also allows you to monitor website data changes over stipulated period and collect these data on a scheduled basis automatically. Automated data collection helps you discover market trends, determine user behavior and predict how data will change in near future.

Examples of automated data collection include:
• Monitor price information for select stocks on hourly basis
• Collect mortgage rates from various financial firms on daily basis
• Check whether reports on constant basis as and when required

Using web data extraction services you can mine any data related to your business objective, download them into a spreadsheet so that they can be analyzed and compared with ease.

In this way you get accurate and quicker results saving hundreds of man-hours and money!

With web data extraction services you can easily fetch product pricing information, sales leads, mailing database, competitors data, profile data and many more on a consistent basis.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Web-Data-Extraction-Services-and-Data-Collection-Form-Website-Pages&id=4860417

Thursday, 22 August 2013

Cutting Down the Cost of Data Mining

For most industries that maintain databases, from patient history in the healthcare industry to account information for the financial and banking sectors, data entry costs are a significant expense for maintaining good records. After data enters a system, performing operations and data mining extractions on the information is a long process that becomes more time consuming as a database grows.

Data automation is essential for reducing operational expenses on any type of stored data. Having data entrants performing every necessary task becomes cost prohibitive quickly. Utilizing software solutions to automate database operations is the ultimate answer to leveraging information without the associated high cost.

Data Mining Simplified

Data management software will greatly enhance the productivity of any data entrant or end user. In fact, effective programs offer macro recording that can turn any user into a data entry expert. For example, a user can perform an operation on a single piece of data and "record" all the actions, keystrokes, and mouse clicks into a program. Then, the computer software can repeat that task on every database entry automatically and at incredible speeds.

Data mining often requires a decision making process; a recorded macro is only going to perform tasks and not think about what it is doing. Software suites are able to analyze data, decide what action needs to be performed based on user specified criteria, and then iterate that process on an entire database. This function nearly eliminates the need for a human to have to manually look at data to determine its content and the necessary operation.

Case Study: Bank Data Migration

To understand how effective data mining and automation can be, let us take a look at an actual example.

Bank data migration and manipulation is a large undertaking and an integral part of any bank's operations. Account data is constantly being updated and utilized in the decision making process. Even a mid-sized bank can have upwards of a quarter million accounts to maintain. In order to update every account to utilize new waive fee codes, data automation can save approximately 19,000 hours that it would have taken to open every account, decide what codes applies, and update that account's status.

Recurring operations on a database, even if small in scale, that can be automated will reap cost saving benefits over the lifetime of a business. The credit department within a bank would process payment plans for new home, car, and personal loans monthly, saving thousands of operations performed every month. Retirement and 401k accounts that shift investments every year based on expected retirement dates also benefit from automatic account updates, ensuring timely and accurate account changes.

Cost savings for data mining or bank data migration are an excellent profit driver. Cutting down on expenses on a per-client or per-account basis increases margins directly without having to secure more customers, reduce prices, or remove services. Efficient data operations will save time and money, allowing personnel to better direct their energy and efforts towards key business tasks.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Cutting-Down-the-Cost-of-Data-Mining&id=3329403

Wednesday, 21 August 2013

Know What the Truth Behind Data Mining Outsourcing Service

We came to that, what we call the information age where industries are like useful data needed for decision-making, the creation of products - among other essential uses for business. Information mining and converting them to useful information is a part of this trend that allows companies to reach their optimum potential. However, many companies that do not meet even one deal with data mining question because they are simply overwhelmed with other important tasks. This is where data mining outsourcing comes in.

There have been many definitions to introduced, but it can be simply explained as a process that involves sorting through large amounts of raw data to extract valuable information needed by industries and enterprises in various fields. In most cases this is done by professionals, professional organizations and financial analysts. He has seen considerable growth in the number of sectors or groups that enter my self.
There are a number of reasons why there is a rapid growth in data mining outsourcing service subscriptions. Some of them are presented below:

A wide range of services

Many companies are turning to information mining outsourcing, because they cover a wide range of services. These services include, but are not limited to data from web applications congregation database, collect contact information from different sites, extract data from websites using the software, the sort of stories from sources news, information and accumulate commercial competitors.

Many companies fall

Many industries benefit because it is fast and realistic. The information extracted by data mining service providers of outsourcing used in crucial decisions in the field of direct marketing, e-commerce, customer relationship management, health, scientific tests and other experimental work, telecommunications, financial services, and a whole lot more.

A lot of advantages

Subscribe data mining outsourcing services it's offers many benefits, as providers assures customers to render services to world standards. They strive to work with improved technologies, scalability, sophisticated infrastructure, resources, timeliness, cost, the system safer for the security of information and increased market coverage.

Outsourcing allows companies to focus their core business and can improve overall productivity. Not surprisingly, information mining outsourcing has been a first choice of many companies - to propel the business to higher profits.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Know-What-the-Truth-Behind-Data-Mining-Outsourcing-Service&id=5303589

Saturday, 17 August 2013

Optimize Usage of Twitter With Data Mining

Twitter has become so popular and it is often thought of as very addictive and as more and more people are getting addicted to it, the more Twitter becomes an important medium for driving traffic to your website, marketing your products and services, or for just brand recognition purposes. As an internet marketer, you will always be interested in what's going on inside Twitter but with 40 million people located all over the world, it would be impossible to know it not unless you use additional tools to help you achieve this goal.

Twitter is a microblogging platform that is used by most people to inform their friends and loved ones what is curently going on in them, tweeters can also engaged in some sort of discussions and very recently more and more internet marketers use it to inform everyone about their company, business, products and services.

As an internet marketer, you will need to maximize your usage of Twitter. You may not just only need how to tweet efficiently or how you will be able to broadcast your tweets [http://moneymakingonlinetip.blogspot.com/2010/01/broadcast-your-tweets.html]. You will really need to know the current most talked about topics in twitter on a certain period of time for a certain geographical location. And by knowing this information, you will be able to define a good marketing strategy and how you can blend well with these people. Advertising in the right time and place would promise higher conversion rate translating to higher sales and earning more profits.

This can be achieved with the proper use of Data Mining Tools and Software. There is probably no such tools yet right at this moment, but for sure it will be an excellent strategy to acquire very useful information that will help you succeed in the business generated and extracted form data gathered from Twitter with the help of these Data Mining Tools and Software.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Optimize-Usage-of-Twitter-With-Data-Mining&id=3589673

Friday, 16 August 2013

Core Benefits of Data Entry Outsourcing Services

Due to globalization of businesses and the world becoming a united marketplace, the need for effective data entry solutions have surfaced. Data is one of the most important parts of any company. Its appropriate management is very essential in order to keep the business running smoothly and effortlessly. In order to have reliable data handling, obtaining services from a data entry company helps.

In today's market, data entry solutions for different types of businesses are available at very competitive prices. An increasing number of companies are turning to data entry outsourcing services. Hiring offshore companies for outsourcing addresses the challenge of obtaining better work quality from qualified professionals in a cost effective and timely manner.

The benefits of data entry outsourcing services include:

a) When an organization grows, it has to face many issues related to employees, their benefits, keeping pace with new technology, employees' healthcare, having the latest business information, and so on. When a company outsources some of their responsibilities, many of these issues get resolved automatically. The same holds true for data entry service.

b) India is preferred by many companies for data entry outsourcing. Various back office functions are taken care of, and the benefits of quality processes, global delivery, and better infrastructure are enjoyed, thus enabling you to give attention to other core business issues.

g) Data entry solutions firms offer numerous services such as data processing, image scanning, data formatting, file conversion, data security, SGML/HTML coding, etc. These outsourcing companies can provide data in various formats including XML, MS Word, MS Excel, JPG, DBF, and HTML.

h) Better data management and a high quality of service can be expected with timely delivery from data outsourcing companies. They hire qualified and experienced professionals, and use the latest technology in order to get more clients and stay ahead of fellow competitors.

i) Data processing is used in businesses of all sizes and is very useful for them. It is more than just the implementation of data at the right place and time. They cover all important aspects of data handling and use them for your company's profit.

j) Online data entry outsourcing services minimizes the capital cost of infrastructure and management problems. There is a greater level of employee's job satisfaction due to a reduction of mundane and uninteresting data entry tasks. These companies make the best possible use of their international resources. You can expect high output at lower costs.

Data entry outsourcing can relieve lots of time-consuming and tedious responsibilities for a company. Outsourcing to India is the ultimate answer for the challenge of cutting costs and increasing profit margins.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Core-Benefits-of-Data-Entry-Outsourcing-Services&id=1548011

Wednesday, 14 August 2013

Basics of Online Web Research, Web Mining & Data Extraction Services

The evolution of the World Wide Web and Search engines has brought the abundant and ever growing pile of data and information on our finger tips. It has now become a popular and important resource for doing information research and analysis.

Today, Web research services are becoming more and more complicated. It involves various factors such as business intelligence and web interaction to deliver desired results.

Web Researchers can retrieve web data using search engines (keyword queries) or browsing specific web resources. However, these methods are not effective. Keyword search gives a large chunk of irrelevant data. Since each webpage contains several outbound links it is difficult to extract data by browsing too.

Web mining is classified into web content mining, web usage mining and web structure mining. Content mining focuses on the search and retrieval of information from web. Usage mining extract and analyzes user behavior. Structure mining deals with the structure of hyperlinks.

Web mining services can be divided into three subtasks:

Information Retrieval (IR): The purpose of this subtask is to automatically find all relevant information and filter out irrelevant ones. It uses various Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc and other resources to find the required information.

Generalization: The goal of this subtask is to explore users' interest using data extraction methods such as clustering and association rules. Since web data are dynamic and inaccurate, it is difficult to apply traditional data mining techniques directly on the raw data.

Data Validation (DV): It tries to uncover knowledge from the data provided by former tasks. Researcher can test various models, simulate them and finally validate given web information for consistency.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Basics-of-Online-Web-Research,-Web-Mining-and-Data-Extraction-Services&id=4511101

Tuesday, 13 August 2013

Data Mining Is Useful for Business Application and Market Research Services

One day of data mining is an important tool in a market for modern business and market research to transform data into an information system advantage. Most companies in India that offers a complete solution and services for these services. The extraction or to provide companies with important information for analysis and research.

These services are primarily today by companies because the firm body search of all trade associations, retail, financial or market, the institute and the government needs a large amount of information for their development of market research. This service allows you to receive all types of information when needed. With this method, you simply remove your name and information filter.

This service is of great importance, because their applications to help businesses understand that it can perform actions and consumer buying trends and industry analysis, etc. There are business applications use these services:
1) Research Services
2) consumption behavior
3) E-commerce
4) Direct marketing
5) financial services and
6) customer relationship management, etc.

Benefits of Data mining services in Business

• Understand the customer need for better decision
• Generate more business
• Target the Relevant Market.
• Risk free outsourcing experience
• Provide data access to business analysts
• Help to minimize risk and improve ROI.
• Improve profitability by detect unusual pattern in sales, claims, transactions
• Major decrease in Direct Marketing expenses

Understanding the customer's need for a better fit to generate more business target market.To provide risk-free outsourcing experience data access for business analysts to minimize risk and improve return on investment.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-Is-Useful-for-Business-Application-and-Market-Research-Services&id=5123878

Sunday, 11 August 2013

Data Extraction Services - A Helpful Hand For Large Organization

The data extraction is the way to extract and to structure data from not structured and semi-structured electronic documents, as found on the web and in various data warehouses. Data extraction is extremely useful for the huge organizations which deal with considerable amounts of data, daily, which must be transformed into significant information and be stored for the use this later on.

Your company with tons of data but it is difficult to control and convert the data into useful information. Without right information at the right time and based on half of accurate information, decision makers with a company waste time by making wrong strategic decisions. In high competing world of businesses, the essential statistics such as information customer, the operational figures of the competitor and the sales figures inter-members play a big role in the manufacture of the strategic decisions. It can help you to take strategic business decisions that can shape your business' goals..

Outsourcing companies provide custom made services to the client's requirements. A few of the areas where it can be used to generate better sales leads, extract and harvest product pricing data, capture financial data, acquire real estate data, conduct market research , survey and analysis, conduct product research and analysis and duplicate an online database..

The different types of Data Extraction Services:

    Database Extraction:
    Reorganized data from multiple databases such as statistics about competitor's products, pricing and latest offers and customer opinion and reviews can be extracted and stored as per the requirement of company.
    Web Data Extraction:
    Web Data Extraction is also known as data Extraction which is usually referred to the practice of extract or reading text data from a targeted website.

Businesses have now realized about the huge benefits they can get by outsourcing their services. Then outsourcing is profitable option for business. Since all projects are custom based to suit the exact needs of the customer, huge savings in terms of time, money and infrastructure are among the many advantages that outsourcing brings.

Advantages of Outsourcing Data Extraction Services:

    Improved technology scalability
    Skilled and qualified technical staff who are proficient in English
    Advanced infrastructure resources
    Quick turnaround time
    Cost-effective prices
    Secure Network systems to ensure data safety
    Increased market coverage

By outsourcing, you can definitely increase your competitive advantages. Outsourcing of services helps businesses to manage their data effectively, which in turn would enable them to experience an increase in profits.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Extraction-Services---A-Helpful-Hand-For-Large-Organization&id=2477589

Friday, 9 August 2013

RFM - A Precursor to Data Mining

RFM was initially utilized by marketers in the B-2-C space - specifically in industries like Cataloging, Insurance, Retail Banking, Telecommunications and others. There are a number of scoring approaches that can be used with RFM. We'll take a look at three:

RFM - Basic Ranking
RFM - Within Parent Cell Ranking
RFM - Weighted Cell Ranking

Each approach has experienced proponents that argue one over the other. The point is to start somewhere and experiment to find the one that works best for your company and your customer base. Let's look at a few examples.

RFM - Basic Ranking

This approach involves scoring customers based on each RFM factor separately. It begins with sorting your customers based on Recency, i.e., the number of days or months since their last purchase. Once sorted in ascending order (most recent purchasers at the top), the customers are then split into quintiles, or five equal groups. The customers in the top quintile represent the 20% of your customers that most recently purchased from you.

This process is then undertaken for Frequency and Monetary as well. Each customer is in one of the five cells for R, F, and M

Experience tells us that the best prospects for an upcoming campaign are those customers that are in Quintile 5 for each factor - those customers that have purchased most recently, most frequently and have spent the most money. In fact, a common approach to creating an aggregated score is to concatenate the individual RFM scores together resulting in 125 cells (5x5x5).

A customer's score can range from 555 being the highest, to 111 being the lowest.

RFM - Within Parent Cell Ranking

This approach is advocated by Arthur Middleton Hughes - one of the biggest proponents of RFM analysis. It begins like the one above, i.e., all customer are initially grouped into 5 cells based on Recency. The next step takes customers in a given Recency cell - say cell number 5, and then ranks those customers based on Frequency. Then customers in the 55 (RF) cell are ranked by monetary value.

RFM - Weighted Ranking

Weightings used by RFM practitioners vary. For example some advocate adding the RFM score together - thus giving equal weight to each factor. Consequently, scores can range from 15 (5+5+5) to 3 (1+1+1). Another weighting arrangement often used is, 3xR + 2xF + 1xM. In this case, scores can range from 30 to 3.

So which to use? In reality, there are many other permutations of approaches that are being used today. Best-practice marketing analytics requires a fine mix of mathematical and statistical science, creativity and experimentation. Bottom line, test multiple scoring methods to see which works best for your unique customer base.

Establishing a Score Threshold

After a test or production campaign, you will find that some of the cells were profitable while some were not. Let's turn to a case study to see how you can establish a threshold that will help maximize your profitability. This study comes from Professor Charlotte Mason of the Kenan-Flagler Business School and utilizes a real-life marketing study performed by The BookBinders Book Club (Source:Recency, Frequency and Monetary (RFM) Analysis, Professor Charlotte Mason, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina, 2003).

BookBinders is a specialty book seller that utilizes multiple marketing channels. BookBinders traditionally did mass marketing and wanted to test the power of RFM. To do so, they initially did a random mailing to 50,000 customers. The customers were mailed an offer to purchase The Art History of Florence. Response data was captured and a "post-RFM" analysis was completed. This "post analysis" was done by freezing the files of the 50,000 test customers prior to the actual test offer. Thus, the impact of this test campaign did not effect the analysis by coding many (the actual buyers) of the 50,000 test subjects as the most recent purchasers. The results firmly support the use of RFM as a highly effective segmentation approach.

Purchased the book = yes; months since last purchase = 8.61; total # purchases = 5.22; dollars spent = 234.30
Purchased the book = no; Months since last purchase = 12.73; total # purchases = 3.76; dollars spent = 205.74

Customers that purchased the book were more recent purchasers, more frequent purchasers and had spent the most with BookBinders.

The response rate for the top decile (18%) was twice the response rate associated with the 5th decile (9%).

Results from this test were then used by BookBinders to identify which of their remaining customers should receive the same mailing. BookBinders used a breakeven response rate calculation to determine the appropriate RFM cells to mail.

The following cost information was used as input:

Cost per Mail-piece $0.50

Selling Price $18.00

BookBinders Book Cost $9.00

Shipping Costs $3.00

Breakeven is achieved when the cost of the mailing is equal to the net profit from a sale. In this case:

Breakeven = (cost to mail the offer/net profit from a single sale)

= $0.50/($18-9-3)

= ($0.50/6)

= 8.3% = Breakeven Response rate

So, according to the test offer, profit can be obtained by mailing to cells that exhibited a response rate of greater than 8.3%

RFM dramatically improved profitability by capturing 71% of buyers (3,214/4,522) while mailing only 46% of their customers (22,731/50,000). And the return on marketing expenditures using RFM was more than eight times (69.7/8.5) that of a mass mailing.

Number of Cells and Cell Size Considerations

As previously mentioned, RFM was initially utilized by companies that operated in the B-to-C marketplace and generally possessed a very large number of customers. The idea of generating 125 cells using quintiles for R, F and M has been a very good practice as an initial modeling effort. But what if you are a B-to-B marketer with relatively fewer customers? Or, what if you are a B-to-C marketer with an extremely large file with millions of customers? The answer is to use the same approach that is used in data mining -- be flexible and experiment.

Establishing a minimum test cell size is a good place to start. Arthur Hughes recommends the following formula:

Test Cell Size = 4 / Breakeven Response Rate.

The Breakeven Response Rate was addressed above in the BookBinders case study. The number "4" is a number that Hughes has found works successfully based on many studies he has performed. BookBinders Breakeven Response Rate was 8.3%. Using the above formula, you would need a minimum of 48 customers in each cell (4/0.083). BookBinders actually had 400 customers per cell, so they had more than adequate comfort in the significance of their test. In reality, BookBinders could have created as many as 1,041 cells if they were comfortable using the minimum of 48 per cell. As an example, they could have used deciles as opposed to quintiles and established 1,000 cells (10 x 10 x 10). The more cells the finer the analysis, but of course the law of diminishing returns will arise.

Other weighting considerations can be used for small files. If your Breakeven Response Rate is 3%, your minimum cell size would be 133 customers (4/0.03). Therefore, if you have 12,000 customers you could have about 90 cells (12,000/133). As such, a 5 x 5 x 4 (100 cells) or a 5 x 4 x 4 (80 cells) approach may be appropriate.

Conclusions

RFM, BI and data mining are all part of an evolutionary path that is common to many marketing organizations. While RFM has been practiced for over 40 years, it still holds great value for many organizations. Its merits include:

- Simplicity - easy to understand and implement

- Relatively low cost

- Proven ROI

- The demand on data requirements are relatively low in terms of variables required and the number of records

- Once utilized, it sets up a broader foundation (from an infrastructure and business case perspective) to undertake more sophisticated data mining efforts

RFM's challenges include:

- Contact fatigue can be a problem for the higher scoring customers. A high level cross-campaign communication strategy can help prevent this.

- Your lowest scoring customers may never hear from you. Again, a cross-campaign communications plan should ensure that all of your customers are communicated with periodically to ensure low scoring customers are given the opportunity to meet their potential. Also, data mining and the prediction of customer lifetime value can help address this shortcoming.

- RFM includes only three variables. Data mining typically finds RFM-based variables to be quite important in response models. But there are additional variables that data mining typically use (e.g., detailed transaction, demographic and firmographic) that help produce improved results. Moreover, data mining techniques can also increase response rates via the development of richer segment/cell profiles that can be used to vary offer content and incentives.

As stated before, successful marketing efforts require analytics and experimentation. RFM has proven itself as an effective approach to predicting response and improving profitability. It can be an important stage in your company's evolution in marketing analytics.


Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?RFM---A-Precursor-to-Data-Mining&id=1962283

Wednesday, 7 August 2013

Why Outsource Data Entry Services?

All large business and organizations are faced with the task of processing huge amounts of data on a daily basis. The data to be processed may range from indexing of vouchers and documents to collecting of information from customers and vendors. In order to save on the huge amount of time, energy and monetary resources which go into data entry, businesses world wide have discovered the multiple benefits of outsourcing their Data Entry Services to India. Along with quick turn around time, reliability of data accuracy and confidentiality of all client databases, outsourcing Data Entry Services to India also proves to be extremely cost-effective.

What are the kinds of Services that can be outsourced?

Most outsourcing companies provide custom made Data-Entry Services depending on the client's specifications. A few of them provided by Indian Outsourcing Companies are;

- Data entry from product catalogs to web based systems
- Entry from hard/soft copy to any preferred database format
- Insurance claims processing
- Image Entry
- Data mining and warehousing
- Data cleansing
- Entry from hospital records, patient notes and accident reports
- From e-book and e-magazine publications on the Internet
- Entry for mailing lists
- PDF document indexing
- Online data capture services
- Online order entry and follow up services
- Creating new databases and updating of existing databases for banks, airlines, government agencies
- direct marketing services and service providers
- Web based indexed document retrieval services, tools and support
- Entry of legal documents
- Indexing of vouchers and documents
- Hand written ballot/cards entry
- Online completion of surveys and responses of customers for various companies
- Business card indexing
- Custom data export/import interfaces with audits
- Bonded mail handling cash, credit and check processing
- Entry of Questionnaires
- Entry of Company Reports
- From Printed / Handwritten Source
- From Yellow Pages / White Pages
- Entry of Dictionaries, Manuals and Encyclopedia
- Entry of Surveys

What is the process?

Since most Indian companies hire only competent and highly qualified staff, outsourcing Data Entry Services to India ensures that the client is fully satisfied with the end result. Added to this the client's data confidentiality and security is viewed as extremely important. Each project goes through a specific data entry service plan that aims to fulfill the exact need of the customer and the error rate is always kept below 2-3%. The process is as follows:

- Data is processed, scanned and uploaded on to secure FTP online server
- Data is subsequently accessed over VPN and downloaded
- Data is individually indexed and sorted into private work folders
- Data is entered into specific applications as per client's requirements
- Data is checked and assessed for errors
- Data is finally sent to the customers

What are the benefits of outsourcing Services?

Oversees companies outsourcing their Data Entry Services to India have the assurance that their projects will be delivered on time with the highest levels of data quality and accuracy. The cost competitive prices, highly qualified employees, fast turnaround time and data security offered by outsourcing vendors, make sure that all of the client's objectives and goals are met. Outsourcing of these Services to India has been proven to be an advantageous choice for businesses worldwide.


Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Outsource-Data-Entry-Services?&id=1428867

Tuesday, 6 August 2013

Basics of Web Data Mining and Challenges in Web Data Mining Process

Today World Wide Web is flooded with billions of static and dynamic web pages created with programming languages such as HTML, PHP and ASP. Web is great source of information offering a lush playground for data mining. Since the data stored on web is in various formats and are dynamic in nature, it's a significant challenge to search, process and present the unstructured information available on the web.

Complexity of a Web page far exceeds the complexity of any conventional text document. Web pages on the internet lack uniformity and standardization while traditional books and text documents are much simpler in their consistency. Further, search engines with their limited capacity can not index all the web pages which makes data mining extremely inefficient.

Moreover, Internet is a highly dynamic knowledge resource and grows at a rapid pace. Sports, News, Finance and Corporate sites update their websites on hourly or daily basis. Today Web reaches to millions of users having different profiles, interests and usage purposes. Every one of these requires good information but don't know how to retrieve relevant data efficiently and with least efforts.

It is important to note that only a small section of the web possesses really useful information. There are three usual methods that a user adopts when accessing information stored on the internet:

• Random surfing i.e. following large numbers of hyperlinks available on the web page.
• Query based search on Search Engines - use Google or Yahoo to find relevant documents (entering specific keywords queries of interest in search box)
• Deep query searches i.e. fetching searchable database from eBay.com's product search engines or Business.com's service directory, etc.

To use the web as an effective resource and knowledge discovery researchers have developed efficient data mining techniques to extract relevant data easily, smoothly and cost-effectively.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Basics-of-Web-Data-Mining-and-Challenges-in-Web-Data-Mining-Process&id=4937441

Monday, 5 August 2013

Develop Your Business With Accounting Outsourcing India

Accounting is considered as the most laborious and time consuming aspect of any business organization. Hence, most of the companies make special efforts to recruit an efficient team of accountants who are capable of handling and managing every task of accounting. But unfortunately, very few can actually accomplish this deal. And the major reasons for this incompetent behavior are the absence of responsible financial experts and their high quoted charges. Therefore, now many of the big business houses are considering other resources, among which accounting outsourcing India is the most preferred choice.

Accounting Outsourcing India is the most preferred choice of all leading business organizations located in United States, United Kingdom, Australia and many other countries. India has already secured the top most position in providing accounting outsourcing due to various reasons. First and the most important fact responsible for India's popularity is the lucrative combination of huge manpower and cost effective charges. Secondly, the entire country is familiar with English language and hence no interpreters are required for the communication between the accountants and the client. Thirdly all accountants are well qualified and work enthusiasts. Moreover, their knowledge, expertise and perfect time management are some of the other added advantages. They perform all sort of accounting tasks such as billing, calculating transactions, maintaining financial records and even handle the extremely complicated tax sessions. In turn, this entire mechanism of accounting outsourcing India has also helped the country to gain a good deal of business prospects.

However, the most important thing that should be highly accolade for benefiting the business enterprises with this blessing of accounting outsourcing India is Internet. Yes! the amazing option of online services has greatly felicitated the entire mechanism of taking accounting help from other resources. Now, through online communication, it is possible for the clients to maintain a direct contact with the accountants. They can always keep a check on their work strategy and can also seek their assistance in solving various financial problems and issues. Moreover, all the files, track sheets and data can be transferred to any required source with just two clicks. Therefore, if you are also wondering from such instant yet efficient accounting service then extend your work horizon towards east.

However, as this entire task is executed through the facility of web, the chances of fraudulence and hacking of information are quite prominent. Hence, it is mandatory for the owners to form alliances with only reputed and certified outsource vendors. Do not forget to inquire about the security arrangements as any misuse of your company's private information can result into a total loss. Make sure, that the vendors are not sharing your confidential data and documents with any other unregistered or illegal source. Hence, to obtain an authorized accounting help, you may have to conduct a qualitative research. Other than the security issue, one thing more that you have to stress on is the fact that every business organization has different requirements and hence, your selection should be in complete accordance to your demands.


Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Develop-Your-Business-With-Accounting-Outsourcing-India&id=1169596

Friday, 2 August 2013

Data Mining Services

You will get all solutions regarding data mining from many companies in India. You can consult a variety of companies for data mining services and considering the variety is beneficial to customers. These companies also offer web research services which will help companies to perform critical business activities.

Very competitive prices for commodities will be the results where there is competition among qualified players in the data mining, data collection services and other computer-based services. Every company willing to cut down their costs regarding outsourcing data mining services and BPO data mining services will benefit from the companies offering data mining services in India. In addition, web research services are being sourced from the companies.

Outsourcing is a great way to reduce costs regarding labor, and companies in India will benefit from companies in India as well as from outside the country. The most famous aspect of outsourcing is data entry. Preference of outsourcing services from offshore countries has been a practice by companies to reduce costs, and therefore, it is not a wonder getting outsource data mining to India.

For companies which are seeking for outsourcing services such as outsource web data extraction, it is good to consider a variety of companies. The comparison will help them get best quality of service and businesses will grow rapidly in regard to the opportunities provided by the outsourcing companies. Outsourcing does not only provide opportunities for companies to reduce costs but to get labor where countries are experiencing shortage.

Outsourcing presents good and fast communication opportunity to companies. People will be communicating at the most convenient time they have to get the job done. The company is able to gather dedicated resources and team to accomplish their purpose. Outsourcing is a good way of getting a good job because the company will look for the best workforce. In addition, the competition for the outsourcing provides a rich ground to get the best providers.

In order to retain the job, providers will need to perform very well. The company will be getting high quality services even in regard to the price they are offering. In fact, it is possible to get people to work on your projects. Companies are able to get work done with the shortest time possible. For instance, where there is a lot of work to be done, companies may post the projects onto the websites and the projects will get people to work on them. The time factor comes in where the company will not have to wait if it wants the projects completed immediately.

Outsourcing has been effective in cutting labor costs because companies will not have to pay the extra amount required to retain employees such as the allowances relating to travels, as well as housing and health. These responsibilities are met by the companies that employ people on a permanent basis. The opportunity presented by the outsourcing of data and services is comfort among many other things because these jobs can be completed at home. This is the reason why the jobs will be preferred more in the future.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-Services&id=4733707