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DSI News – 2008
DSI Attends NCDM in Orlando, Florida
December 19, 2008
This year's NCDM show, held at the Gaylord Palms in sunny Orlando, Florida, was a blast! We were able to show off our new MarketWide 3.0 software to the world, attend some infomrative sessions, and enjoy the sunshine. There was even time for a nice stroll through Downtown Disney. As usual, any break from the chilly D.C. winter weather is always welcome! As exciting as the was for us, there's plenty more in store for 2009. Be sure to check back in January for the full production release of MarketWide 3.0!
MarketWide™ 3.0 Release Announcement
By Jeff Fowler
September 30, 2008
Decision Software announces the release of MarketWide 3.0 on Sunday, October 12, 2008 at the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Conference in Las Vegas. The new version is the successor to DSI’s MarketWide 2.1 Campaign Management software product, which has been in production since 2006. MarketWide 3.0 is the culmination of two years of planning, development, and testing; resulting in the most powerful and advanced marketing application ever developed by DSI. Among many other achievements, MarketWide 3.0 is the inaugural edition of fully automated multiwave campaigns, coupled with powerful and sophisticated multiwave response reporting.
Product Overview
DSI’s MarketWide software provides a unique set of features used by businesses to track and market to their customers and prospects. It is the successor to DSI’s innovative and popular TopDog™ Campaign Management product, which was developed in 1993. Like TopDog, MarketWide uses an open architecture – sitting directly on top of relational databases such as Oracle or SQL Server rather than using an embedded database – and allows companies to:
- Create and manage complex, multi-channel marketing campaigns.
- Track responses.
- Create sophisticated response and P&L reports.
- Perform data mining, cross tabs, subtotals, and charts.
- Execute ad-hoc queries and data extracts.
MarketWide functions as a “thin client” application, allowing customers to access their database from anywhere in the world through an Internet connection.
Summary of Enhancements
Following are several key improvements offered by MarketWide 3.0:
- Better data security, communications, network performance, and error detection through the use of Microsoft .NET communications.
- A robust scheduling database to support automated multiwave campaigns as well as other automated business functions.
- Powerful automated response reporting, for B-B and B-C “one-off” and multiwave campaigns.
- Enhanced user permission settings for better administrative control.
- New Service Bureau features have been added to provide seamless support for running multiple clients on a single MarketWide server. Further, as clients are added and usage increases, MarketWide’s powerful “N-tier” architecture uses a sophisticated load balancing scheme, allowing the workload to be shared across multiple machines.
- Ability to incorporate and automatically enforce standard business rules within the product, allowing marketers to exclude or include consumers based on legal requirements or consumer preferences.
- Improved “triggering” mechanism, allowing installations to fully automate marketing activities based on a specific event or series of events.
MarketWide’s Competitive Advantages
MarketWide offers an unbeatable combination of features, price, and performance, including:
- Flexibility - because of its open architecture, MarketWide can respond instantly to changes in your data in near-real time, allowing you to to react immediately to changes in your business.
- Performance - MarketWide’s proprietary segmentation engine can process campaigns having thousands of segments using a unique one-pass approach. This yields a tremendous performance improvement compared to the typical SQL-based query segmentation, while still maintaining the advantages inherent to SQL database systems.
- Scalability – current MarketWide installations range from a few hundred thousand records to over a billion. And MarketWide has effortlessly executed marketing campaigns containing well over 5,000 mutually exclusive segments.
- ROI - MarketWide has recently gone head to head against several leading competitors in several “Solution Shootout” sessions in marketing conferences, consistently attaining the highest overall score with its features and clean and friendly user interface.
To learn more about MarketWide or to schedule a demonstration, please contact us at: sales@dsoftware.biz, or call (301) 459-9000.
Multi-wave is here!
By Eli Black
August 4, 2008
It doesn’t take long reading the news to see that costs are going up. The cost of food, the cost of gas, the cost of living, all these contribute to an environment where consumers are less likely to spend. With customers less and less likely to part with their money, successful marketing becomes harder and harder. Gone are the days where blanket mailings were cost effective. Now success takes more strategy, more complexity, and more work. To combat this, DSI has focused on using our MarketWide 3.0 release to ease the burden of campaign management.
While we can’t predict the market changes currently taking place, we do recognize the need to provide software that’s flexible, sophisticated, and real-time. When we released MarketWide 1.0 in 2004, we did so anticipating the way that the Internet was changing communication, and now with MarketWide 3.0 we’ve added the following features:
- In order to support campaigns with a comprehensive multi-effort strategy, PromoTrak now lets marketers build out several waves of criteria at once. These waves can be linked and coded at the same time, giving the user a one-stop location to build an entire mailing strategy. Each effort also becomes a chance to build on previous solicitations. The follow up efforts might be a survey sent to non-responders asking for their opinion on the solicit they received. It might be an increased incentive for certain demographics. Perhaps it’s a reminder about an offer about to expire. Whatever the reason behind a multi-solicit strategy, PromoTrak handles the complexity of such campaigns using simple point-and-click dialogs.
- Obviously multi-wave campaigns require a set of criteria for each wave, but they also require time management. A crucial part of a marketing strategy is the timing of a contact. Instead of making marketers manually juggle the running and scheduling of future efforts, MarketWide contains a simple effort dialog:
This dialog avoids frustrating hard coded dates and times, working instead using elapsed days since a previous effort. In turn, this flexibility anticipates production timetable change or delays, so that there’s no need to spend time recoding the entire strategy. Simply adjust the appropriate effort and MarketWide will update any other affected waves. Although reaching the consumer takes more work than ever, MarketWide makes automation easy.
- There’s nothing more frustrating that rebuilding. Anyone in a position of building marketing segmentation has better things to do than sit and repeat work they’ve done before. DSI recognizes that, which is why marketers now have the ability to embed criteria into their PromoTrak templates. Want to include the appropriate excludes with your email campaigns? PromoTrak can do it automatically. And now it’s no problem to have control groups pre-built when you start a direct mail campaign! No one wants to waste time doing the same task over and over again. Now with PromoTrak, you don’t have to.
- Speaking of the PromoTrak templates, they’re now more accessible than ever. Say you’re running a twelfth hour job and you need to make last minute changes to your mail file layout. Now you don’t have to wind your way through separate modules, contact your administrator, or wait until morning. As a MarketWide user, you can have access to every setting in your mail campaign. With more access comes more control, and when you’re on the clock, you need all the control you can get!
When you tie these new features in with MarketWide’s traditional staples such as infinite segmentation and one-pass processing, it’s easy to see why DSI has been proudly providing industrial strength campaign management for over a decade. With MarketWide 3.0, all of this functionality is ready to be deployed, saving you time and money and letting you capitalize on opportunities.
Behind the Scenes
By Eli Black
April 4, 2008
While working on MarketWide 3.0, I’ve learned two things. First, software development never finishes on schedule. The other lesson was that it’s incredibly hard to keep quiet about your projects. But since MarketWide 3.0 is in beta testing, with the final internal production testing phase starting soon, it’s time to pull back the curtain on all our hard work. Over the next several weeks, I’m going to talk about many of MarketWide 3.0’s new features. These are all implemented enhancements. There’s no vaporware here, no smoke and mirrors, just real software.
This week, we’re going to talk about changes to the foundation of MarketWide. These changes aren’t flashy. In many cases, they’re actually invisible to an end user. Still they’re all critical to making MarketWide more powerful. These changes to MarketWide’s architecture include:
- Updating MarketWide’s communication code to completely use Microsoft’s .NET framework. Remote MarketWide users will be happy to know that our MarketWide connections are more stable than ever. Using .NET has also enabled a new level of data protection for MarketWide. .NET comes with built-in encryption, which we’ve integrated into MarketWide’s multilayered security. In a day and age where security is constantly needed, MarketWide users can rest easy knowing that DSI and Microsoft are protecting their data transmissions.
- Enhancing MarketWide’s scheduler. As makers of an “industrial strength” campaign management solution, we develop and design MarketWide for production, not boardroom demos. MarketWide helps marketers run campaigns day in and day out. The ability to easily schedule campaigns is crucial to keeping our customers’ production running. That’s why users can now see all scheduled jobs within a realm. Now managers can keep track of all activity while end users schedule jobs cooperatively with each other. Manually keeping track of who was running a campaign can be tedious, and that’s why MarketWide does it for you now.
- Changing our internal database engine. The new engine is leaner and faster. The improvement in response time when working with results in MarketWide is incredible! Whether it’s opening a DataMiner or reviewing the counts of a PromoTrak campaign, data is opened and displayed in a fraction of the previous time. Be excited about one of the fastest campaign management solutions getting even faster!
- We’ve got a new report writing package, similar to Crystal. The potential for this package is so great that we couldn’t implement all of our ideas in this release. It won’t be till this fall that we really get to show off what it can do. For now though, users are going to have their MarketTrak reports produced in this slick new format. These reports load faster, have more drilldown capabilities, and even export cleaner. While it’s just the tip of the iceberg, that should tide our MarketWide customers over till autumn comes around!
That’s it for now. Check back next week when we go over some of the client side changes to MarketWide, including a peek at the new multi-wave PromoTrak!
DSI News – 2007
DSI Wins Solutions Shootout 2007
December 20, 2007
In December of 2007, DSI traveled to Las Vegas to attend the 2007 National Center for Database Marketing's show. While there, we showed off our premier campaign management software, MarketWide 2.1 and gave our audiences a sneak preview of the MarketWide 3.0 beta. Between the exhibit hall and networking, we even found time to participate in the 2007 Solutions Shootout.
The Solutions Shootout is a competition which pits various campaign management tools against each other. For the Solutions Shootout, presenters all receive the same scenario to accomplish using their own software and data. Using previously received specifications they create an output file within a certain time limit. It is hosted by Bernice Grossman and this was the third time she has put together such a panel. Going in, we had won the previous two Solution Shootouts and were looking for the hat trick.
Keeping the streak alive, DSI’s own Eli Black wowed the crowds at the NCDM 2007 Solutions Shootout, defeating competitors Alterian, Aprimo, and SmartFOCUS. After another presenter went 10 minutes long, Eli displayed the power of MarketWide in 15 minutes rather than the allotted 20. Fortunately, this was still enough time to prove that MarketWide is a superior campaign management solution and we have the numbers to prove it! Eli scored higher than any other presenters, impressing audiences with not only MarketWide’s power, but it’s flexibility as well. Eli handily won not only the Presentation Skills section but the Information Content as well, as you can see from the audience ratings below:
| Company | Excellent | Very Good | Good | Fair | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DSI | 50.0% | 47.1% | 2.9% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Alterian | 35.3% | 50.0% | 14.7% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| SmartFOCUS | 17.6% | 70.6% | 8.8% | 2.9% | 0.0% |
| Aprimo | 18.8% | 50.0% | 25.0% | 6.3% | 0.0% |
This win gives DSI three victories in three shootouts. Sadly, we were not invited to participate in the next Solutions Shootout at DMDays New York. We’ll be working on MarketWide 3.0 in the mean time and look forward to trying to go four for four the next time we present at a Solutions Shootout!
DSI Heads to NCDM 2007
December 15, 2007
The DSI crew headed out to Las Vegas to attend the NCDM2007 and play the slots. Not only did Eli wow the crowds at the shootout with MarketWide, but visitors to the booth were treated to a sneak peek of MarketWide 08. After seeing the multiwave functionality of the new PromoPlus, many people said that they cannot wait for next year! And while Lou Anne and Jeff were beamed up at a Star Trek themed restaurant, Eli hit the buffet and Jason hit the blackjack tables. After only losing his shirt, Jason joined Eli and had his fill of shrimp cocktail before heading home.
SLIDESHOW.
Brian Ashbaugh Joins DSI
September 10, 2007
DSI is proud to welcome the newest member of our Operations team, Brian Ashbaugh. Brian is a graduate of Penn State, with a BA in English. He enjoys playing golf and skiing, and in his spare time he watches football. He will be working with GE as a DBA and with other clients as well.
CADM 2007 in Chicago
April 30 - May 1, 2007
Eli and Kat headed to Chicago to participate in their first ever CADM conference. Eli participated in the Solution Shootout, where he wowed the crowd with MarketWide, and was the only person to finish his presentation. After meeting Greg Gumbel, Eli was almost too excited to finish his delicious deep dish pizza, but he managed, and Kat barely got a slice of her own.
Lauren Spielman Joins DSI
February 2007
Joining our Operations team to work on database design and management, Lauren Spielman is the newest addition to the DSI family. Lauren graduated from UMUC in 2006 with a BS in Computer Information Systems. When not managing our databases, Lauren enjoys fishing and bugging Blake. We're happy to have her join us because she’s already fine-tuning our database system.
DSI News - 2006
NCDM 2006 in Orlando
December 11-13, 2006
DSI's own Jeff, Eli, and Kat went to NCDM 2006 on December 11-13, 2006 and blew the doors off the place! After Eli showed off MarketWide to a crowd at his session, "Solution Shootout: Campaign Management," people were so impressed that they flooded our booth. In fact, people left the Shootout early just to find out more information about MarketWide and DSI, almost overwhelming poor Kat. And while Jeff, Eli, and Kat were kept busy during the convention, they all found some time to relax in warm Orlando at Disney's Pleasure Island, before catching some improv comedy at The Comedy Factory.
Daniel Gabriel Joins DSI
Fall 2006
We are proud to welcome the newest addition to the DSI family, Daniel Gabriel. Daniel is a graduate of UMBC with a Bachelor of Sciences in Computer Science, and joins our programming team to work on the MarketWide Host and backend processes. So, while you might not see any of his work on the MarketWide Client, you will be aware of it as MarketWide runs stronger, faster, and better than ever before!
DMA 2006 in San Francisco
October 14-17, 2006
Jeff, Lou Anne, Eli, Jason, and Josh headed to San Francisco on October 14-17 to represent DSI at the DMA 2006 Conference. Despite an early flight and change in time zones, everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Eli and Jeff spent Monday watching Monday Night Football. Jason and Josh spent a great deal of the tradeshow attending seminars, while Eli and Jeff showed off MarketWide's impressive campaign creation features and blistering speed. Sadly, everyone was too busy to take a ride on a trolley or explore the city, but Eli promises that he will take Jason and Josh for Chinese food sometime.
MarketWide Helps Save the Children
October 10-12, 2006
Michael and Kat went out to Connecticut, the land of colorful leaves, to visit Save the Children and train them on MarketWide 2.1. After a long car ride, they made it to the beautiful town of Westport and made sure to stop in at the famous Coffee 'An Donut shop every morning for breakfast. Save the Children was very impressed with MarketWide's campaign creation features, particularly our scheduling capabilities. As thanks, they gave Kat a brand of her favorite chips for the ride home.
Kat Massey Joins Client Services
August 21, 2006
DSI has just hired our newest member of the Client Services team. Kat Massey has more than two years experience in customer service. She is currently training in the EMT/Paramedic program at Anne Arundel Community College, which is good in case Eli chokes on a pretzel. We are glad to have Kat with us on the team, and know that she will make a great addition. She has already tamed our DSI barracuda (Kat is in the foreground).
Training in Blue Devil Country
August 14, 2006
Eli and Michael made their way to Blue Devil’s Country, Durham, NC, for a training mission with Abacus Data Systems. The new airline security regulations meant that both of them were up before 2AM. They powered through the training session on caffeine and tenacity.
Everyone was impressed with PromoTrak’s intuitive user interface. Eli even managed to keep his anti-Duke comments to a minimum, and Michael did not wear any of his Terps gear. After admiring all the signed jerseys and other memorabilia, Eli and Michael went back to the hotel for a well-deserved rest. Next time they go though, they are going to steal a Duke banner as a prize.
Hot Days in Atlanta
July 14, 2006
From July 12-14, Michael headed from the blistering heat of Maryland to the blistering heat of Atlanta to lead a MarketWide training session at National Vision. Everyone was impressed with MarketWide's data mining capabilities, and the ease with which they could set up even the most complicated campaigns. And Michael was sure to try the peach cobbler. He even stopped by a Waffle House for a true Georgia experience, and had some of the best waffles of his life.
Days and Nights at DM Days 2006
June 26, 2006
After taking some very early trains up to New York City, DSI set up shop at DM Days 06. People were wowed by the speed of MarketWide 2.1, the ease of setting up and running campaigns, and other features that make DSI a leader in campaign management.
On Wednesday night, Jeff, Adam, and Michael went to Virgil's in Times Square for some of the tastiest ribs and pulled pork ever. Even though they were full of delicious food, they couldn't resist trying out the seven person circular party bike. Adam was the brave person, keeping his back to traffic. A lot of pedaling, a few near misses from crazy taxi drivers, and a couple of blocks later, everyone was dropped off at the hotel, having burned off all the calories they had just eaten!
New Face at DSI
June 8, 2006
DSI has a new addition this month. Michael Wires joined the programming team as junior programmer. Mike is a fellow graduate of the University of Maryland with a B.S. in Computer Science. Between teaching Chris and Blake how to incorporate guitar music into their training and tech support routines, Mike will be helping to enhance MarketWide 2.1 by working on the client end-user interface. We all know he will fast become a valued addition to the Decision Software team.
DSI at ACCM Conference in Chicago, IL
May 10, 2006
Now that Winter is over, the guys from DSI hit their first trade show of the season—the Annual Conference for Catalog and Multi Channel Markers (ACCM) in Chicago! Jeff, Eli and Chris showed off MarketWide 2.1 and impressed everyone with its new user-friendly drag-and-drop PromoTrak as well as the blazing speed of MarketWide 2.1. And just to show that they have culture too, Jeff, Eli and Chris spent Tuesday night doing everything from cheering for the White Sox in a local sports bar to kicking back and grooving to music at the famous blues club Buddy Guy's Legends. SLIDESHOW.
Michael and Christopher Join DSI
February 1, 2006
DSI is proud to announce that two new people have joined our line up. Christopher Langford (no relation to Adam) is joining us in Client Services under Technical Support and Training. A graduate of Farleigh Dickinson University, Chris has lots of experience helping customers. We know that he will be a pleasure to work with.
Michael Holzer is joining us in Client Services as a document writer. As an English student at University of Maryland, College Park, Michael has plenty of experience in editing and copyediting others' work. This means that any mistakes are Michael's fault. DSI welcomes these two new members. We know that they will work hard and continue to make DSI a leader in the industry.
US Bank MarketWide Training
January 6, 2006
On January 4-6, Allen and Adam headed to US Bank for a training session. Between trips to see the Bucks play basketball and enjoying the town of Minneapolis, they taught US Bank the ropes in MarketWide. They even took time to create a production campaign that ran in 20 minutes. Before MarketWide, the same campaign took over 3 hours to execute.