If you notice that you are getting more of those pesky calls from telephone companies asking if you want to switch your long distance carrier or buy new kinds of services then you might well want to blame DataMind Corp. After getting its Mine Your Own Business software out on the market last year (CI No 2,837), the San Mateo, California-based data mining start-up is switching its focus to vertical markets beginning with a custom solution for telecom companies, which will likely be followed by others for industries, including retail, banking and maybe healthcare. What DataMind has done is to dress up a version of its software for use as a customer lifecycle planning tool, enabling organizations to identify their most profitable customers, determine factors for attracting and keeping them, and recognize which subscribers could be prospects for new services. The highly competitive telecom market, where companies can experience turnover rates of up to one third of their customer base a year, is an obvious first target for the solution. These companies may not even have products of their own as many are simply resellers of services. DataMind says telecoms companies are already around a third of its business; that’s only 30 installations, two of which are production sites. It thinks it’s peaking at just about the right time with its marketing automation tools as it claims venture capital firms are buzzing around companies with similar solutions, having already burned through call center and account evaluation talent. The DataMind Lifecycle suite includes a $25,000 evaluation project; a pilot implementation, including consulting and a five-user DataCruncher server costs from $145,000.
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