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What is Data Mining and Why Should Your Company Use It?
Source: www.spss.com
Copyright SPSS, Inc. 2004

Everyone is talking about data mining. But what does it do? How does
it work? What will it do for your company? Read on to find the
answers to these and other fundamental questions about data mining.

What is data mining?
Data mining enables you to discover hidden patterns and relationships
in large amounts of data. Data mining solves a common paradox: the
more customer data you have, the more difficult and time-consuming it
is to effectively analyze and draw meaning from it. What should be a
gold mine often lies unexplored, due to a lack of personnel, time or
expertise. Data mining uses powerful analytic technologies to quickly
and thoroughly explore mountains of data, isolating the valuable,
usable information — the business intelligence — that you
need.

Why use data mining?
When you have a reliable guide to the future of your business, you
have the power to make the right decisions today. Data mining
empowers you to change the future of your business, by delivering
accurate predictions. For example, data mining tells you which
prospects are likely to become profitable customers and which are
most likely to respond to your offer. With this view of the future,
you increase your ROI by making your offer to only those prospects
likely to respond and become valuable customers. Your decisions are
based on sound business intelligence, not on instinct or gut
reactions. And those decisions deliver consistent results that keep
you ahead of the competition.

SPSS data mining products and services ensure timely, reliable
results by incorporating the CRoss-Industry Standard Process for Data
Mining (CRISP-DM). Created by industry experts, CRISP-DM provides
step-by-step guidelines, tasks and objectives for every stage of the
data mining process.

What business problems does data mining solve?
You can use data mining to solve almost any business problem that
involves data, including:

* Increasing business unit and overall profitability
* Understanding customer desires and needs
* Identifying profitable customers and acquiring new ones
* Retaining customers and increasing loyalty
* Increasing ROI and reducing costs on promotions
* Cross-selling and up-selling
* Detecting fraud, waste and abuse
* Determining credit risks
* Increasing Web site profitability
* Increasing store traffic and optimizing layouts for increased sales
* Monitoring business performance

How has data mining helped other SPSS customers solve their business
problems?
SPSS data mining products and services have enabled hundreds of
companies to achieve remarkable results in many business areas. Here
are just a few examples of the impact data mining has on business
success:

* British Telecommunications (BT): used data mining to improve the
response rate of a direct mail campaign by 100 percent

* HSBC Bank USA: boosted sales close to 50 percent and reduced key
marketing costs by 30 percent. Uncovered cross-selling and "rollover"
sales opportunities by mining customer data and creating predictive
models.

* Sofmap: tripled online profits by using data mining to improve
personalization features

* Standard Life: secured an additional $50 million in mortgage
revenue by using an accurate propensity model to target offers

Which SPSS products should I use for data mining?
Clementine: the market-leading data mining workbench, Clementine
incorporates your business expertise at every step to create powerful
predictive models for specific business issues

SPSS: get the decision-making power and confidence that comes from
using the range of advanced analytical methods found in SPSS, our
flagship analytical software

AnswerTree: target the right people more effectively with
AnswerTree's unrivaled analytical power, scalable decision trees and
impressive presentation features

SPSS Consulting: whether your organization is large or small, SPSS'
flexible team of consultants can help you develop and implement a
data mining solution that addresses your unique objectives

For the last two years in a row, users voted Clementine the most
regularly used data mining tool in a poll taken by KDnuggets, the
leading Web site for data mining, Web mining and knowledge discovery
information. SPSS and AnswerTree tied for second place both times.
Many companies claim to have the best data mining products, but real
users know the truth.