Infor Interaction Advisor

Transcription

1 Technical Paper Infor Interaction Advisor Deliver customers targeted messages along all touch points Introduction In today s fast-paced Internet economy, new competitors can literally appear overnight. Compounding this challenge, customers are being overwhelmed by product proliferation and information overload, and are increasingly demanding personalized service. Acquiring, retaining, and developing customer relationships are becoming more difficult and more expensive to accomplish. These market trends are driving a new approach to marketing, one that is based on one-to-one customer interactions and occurs in realtime. Because of the diverse ways they interact with their customers, most companies must take a multichannel approach to marketing that encompasses contact centers, websites, , mobile devices, and other customer touch points. In addition, the frenzy for customer acquisition, customer retention, and revenue growth has compressed the allowable time to launch marketing campaigns. With real-time personalized digital marketing campaigns, customers get the right communication to meet their needs at the right time via the right touch point. Targeted messaging Deliver targeted messages to your customers across all touch points In this type of environment, successful companies need to anticipate and cater to the individual needs of an increasingly diverse pool of customers. These companies will need to deliver targeted products and services through whatever touch point their customers find most convenient. A real-time execution platform, such as Infor Interaction Advisor, has been designed from the ground up to incorporate and build upon these design principles. Interaction Advisor combines cutting-edge personalization analytics with an optimal, real-time execution platform to deliver targeted messages to your customers at all touch points. Enterprise marketing solutions must have key capabilities including: Proven return on investment Ability to easily plug in to existing systems Usage of real-time, self-learning analytics for optimal targeting True multichannel campaign execution Enterprise scalability Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 Architectural overview 5 Component overview 6 Reliability, continuous operation, and guaranteed level of service 9 Real-Time 12 Analytic Groups 14 Real-Time Administrator 15 Interaction Advisor Manager 16 Making campaigns 17 Monitoring campaigns using real-time reporting and analysis 19 Real-Time Studio 21 Real-time client component interfaces 22 Platform integration 26 Integrating Interaction Advisor with contact centers 28 Summary

2 Architectural overview Infor Interaction Advisor is the ideal solution to meet the challenges of today s multi-channel, real-time digital marketing environment. Interaction Advisor delivers intelligent interactions, using real-time decision engine technology that analyzes and determines the most relevant communication for an individual visitor or customer through the appropriate touch point. Unlike purely rules-based or traditional personalization approaches, the solution provides a rich set of personalization technologies that allow you to use rules-based systems, in combination with self-learning and predictive analytics in a seamless manner. This combination of the best personalization technologies allows the solution to deliver not only product recommendations, but also optimal targeting of communications for loyalty, retention, and incentive campaigns. The solution can provide targeted communications to customers via dynamic content, optimized mobile messaging, personalized web content, context based inbound/outbound calls via a call center, personalized offers to agent desktops for face-to-face offers, Networked devices including POS, ATM, and Kiosks, IVR delivery. In addition, Interaction Advisor s self-learning analytics can start delivering personalized campaigns just hours after launch, even with little or no previous customer data. Environment framework set-up During initial set-up, use the Real-Time Studio application to set up resources needed for campaign definition and delivery. Use the Real-Time Administrator application to configure and administer Interaction Advisor for use with other IT components. Real-Time Studio Technical end users utilize this component to set up sources of data such as marketing databases, and predictive models. Real-Time Studio communicates a full range of capabilities for setting up campaign building blocks from extensive use of predefined campaign elements to advanced customization of campaign elements and logic. These building blocks are used by marketing and technical end users (using Interaction Advisor Manager and Real-time Studio, respectively) to define campaigns. Real-Time Administrator IT administrators use this browser-based application to configure communication between the Interaction Advisor Real-Time and other elements of the real-time campaign environment. For example, you can tune internal performance parameters, configure security settings, configure campaign packages to be stored in database format, and set up data access options. Campaign design and management Use Interaction Advisor Manager to design and manage a real-time campaign. This application provides a browser-based graphical user interface and is designed so it can be easily used by a marketer and other business professionals. In addition, Interaction Advisor provides a series of management APIs so that certain configuration tasks can be handled external to the application and seamlessly pushed to the final campaign configuration. Interaction Advisor has several components, each of which is used in one of the three phases of real-time digital campaigns: campaign preparation, campaign design and management, and campaign delivery. 2 Infor Customer Experience Suite

3 Interaction Advisor Manager This browser-based application allows marketing professionals to make, monitor, and refine campaigns by presenting real-time campaign management functionality in easily understood marketing terms. The application allows users to create campaigns by defining appropriate parameters for campaigns and their associated communications. As campaign targeting proceeds, Interaction Advisor Manager provides feedback on campaign and communication results that helps determine whether and how to refine a campaign. It also allows end users to make quick adjustments to campaign and communication parameters based on observed results as a campaign is running. Interaction Advisor Manager API This easy to use and flexible API uses standards compliant REST services to allow external applications to provide campaign configuration integration to Interaction Advisor. An example of this is the use of Omni-channel Campaign Management solution that allows marketing users in the platform to configure any Interaction Advisor based campaign optimization within the Omni-channel Campaign Management tool. This allows users to be more productive as they don t need to learn a new user interface and don t need to switch applications to complete campaign configuration. These APIs can be leveraged just as well from third party applications as they can by different Infor applications. Targeted message delivery Interaction Advisor uses a lightweight, highly scalable, client and server architecture for delivering real-time campaigns. Clients can include web server or contact center applications that have been integrated with Interaction Advisor. Integration allows these applications to trigger real-time campaigns when certain customer events occur, and to present any resulting communication information. The server component, called the Real-Time, executes real-time campaigns when triggered by client application activities, returning communications to the applications as appropriate. Campaign delivery proceeds in three basic steps: 1. Client application notifies Real-Time of customer interaction. 2. Real-time uses attribute data to execute appropriate campaigns. 3. Communication information is sent to client for presentation to customer. Real-Time This server component processes and targets real-time campaigns when triggered by activities that occur in clients, returning communications to these client applications as appropriate for customer presentation. During campaign targeting, the Real-Time takes advantage of marketing databases, a real-time database (RTDB), and Interaction Advisor prediction capabilities to target campaigns using up-to-the-moment information. The Real-Time has the unique ability to learn from customer responses and behavior over time, maximizing the likelihood that the best available targeted marketing information be presented to every specific visitor. Real-Time Client Component Interfaces Real-Time Client Component Interfaces provide a rich variety of options for integrating Interaction Advisor into existing touch point applications in a manner that best suits the touch point application s architecture and programming methodology. Interaction Advisor Client Component Interfaces support industry- standard protocols covering a wide variety of integration techniques. Infor Customer Experience Suite 3

4 Architecture for real-time execution Interaction Advisor s architecture is based on several key design features: High levels of scalability and reliability with real-time performance Flexible interface options for easy integration with all major customer touch point applications across multiple channels. Open data access from a variety of data sources, including customer data marts, customer resource management (CRM) systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, product databases, click-stream databases, and third-party databases Thin client customer event processing with extensible functions Browser-based front-end applications for easy access and usage by administrators and marketers Interaction Advisor s real-time decision service architecture Real-time components together with marketing and operational data sources comprise Interaction Advisor s real-time decision service architecture. User Interfaces IA Manager Real-Time Admin Real-Time Studio Campaign Management Marketing Users Power Users and Administrators Administrators Marketing Users 4 Infor Customer Experience Suite

5 Component overview Real-Time The Real-Time is designed for high scalability and a large degree of operational flexibility. It is scalable to meet the needs of real-time digital marketing, for which the determination of appropriate communications must take place in the sub-second range. The Real-Time s flexibility is evidenced by its support for a wide range of campaign definition options and its ability to respond to configuration changes during campaign delivery. Functional components Internally, the Real-Time is logically partitioned into functional components called engines. At the heart of the Real-Time is an extremely fast multi-threaded JavaScript engine that provides high flexibility while maintaining performance, scalability, and ease of use. This design provides for great flexibility for future extensions to the Real-Time. Component engines of the Real-Time. You can view the Real-Time simply as a container of engines, plus as a listener for Socket and HTTP protocols. Listeners are threads that detect commands arriving on a TCP/IP Socket, and then arrange for the requests to be processed. Supported platforms The Real-Time is built on a platform-independent framework. On each supported platform, the Real-Time operates as a native application. For example, it runs as a service on Windows. The Real-Time is implemented in C++ to achieve maximum performance and flexibility on all platforms. For more information about the supported platforms for different components of Interaction Advisor, please refer to the Infor Platform Support Matrix. Infor Customer Experience Suite 5

6 Scalability The requirement to host thousands of client requests necessitates certain design principles to ensure maximum performance and scalability. To avoid request processing bottlenecks, requests for the Real-Time are queued for processing and constantly pulled from these queues by pools of engine threads that process these requests. In addition, the Real-Time resides on hardware that can be fully exploited. For example, when symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) is available, you should use it to enhance performance. The Real-Time is designed to exploit the hardware and the operating system to achieve the best performance possible, even under heavy loads. When the load exceeds the capacity of the Real-Time host, the Real-Time provides for native and transparent horizontal scalability by using deployment groups. A deployment group is a collection of one or more Real-Time s, organized in a primary-secondary configuration. Real-Time s within a deployment group run on different hosts, but are managed as a single logical deployment to facilitate the easy administration of campaigns across hardware boundaries. Updates are automatically distributed to all servers in a deployment group by the master node. Additionally, you can share incoming communication requests from clients across different servers in a deployment group. You can send the incoming requests to a load balancer switch that forwards them to an appropriate server based on several criteria (for example, server availability, server load, and session state). Reliability, continuous operation, and guaranteed level of service You can designate backup Real-Time s that are part of a deployment group to take over in the event of a loss of any other Real-Time. Each server can designate one or several backup instances. With this failover process, a designated backup server will automatically interact with clients of a non-available Real-Time until it is once again ready to use. Primary RT Secondary RT Real-Time Database Failover handling 6 Infor Customer Experience Suite

7 Interaction Advisor is designed for continuous operation via automatically synchronized master- slave server operation. This ensures the system will continue to provide service in the event of a failure of any given component. In addition, Interaction Advisor uses several failover options for delivering communications back to the client application providing a guaranteed level of service so a response to a decision request will be supplied within a preset period. The component interfaces provide extensive support for timeout settings and default communication handling to implement a guaranteed level of service. Security Security is an important concern for Internet transactions. Interaction Advisor supports a variety of authentication schemes, including those based on operating systems or enterprise directories NT LAN manager (NTLM), ADS, and lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP). Additionally, the solution supports single sign-on, facilitating a seamless user experience across enterprise applications. To maximize the safety of your real-time digital interactions, Interaction Advisor communications an enhanced security option that uses certificate-based authentication and secure socket layer (SSL) encryption for all communications involving the Real-Time. This SSL feature is supported by most of Interaction Advisor s component interfaces, including.net, Java, and HTTPS. If you select security enhancement, authentication is performed using digital certificates issued by a Certificate Authority a trusted source that verifies the identity of transaction initiators. The Real-Time does not process any requests unless they originate from a certificated initiator. Encryption encoding and decoding messages to safeguard their content occurs after authentication is performed. The method used for encrypting data and certificates is called a cipher. Interaction Advisor uses OpenSSL ciphers for secure communication with the security enhancement. When you use the optional SSL security, all communications between the web server, browser applications, and the Real-Time are conducted with the maximum amount of protection. In addition, Interaction Advisor Manager and Real-Time Administrator support the HTTPS security standard. Roles and privileges Users privileges to perform Real-Time activities are governed by their rights and permissions. Rights are Real-Time -level privileges that define the applications an individual can use to interact with a particular Real-Time. Possible rights include Administrator, Package Master, Marketer, Basic, and None. For instance, a user with Basic rights would only be allowed to send events to RT port, but not use any IA applications. Marketer rights allows no package level abilities in RT Studio, but all abilities are possible in IA Manager if permissions are setup to allow. Rights are setup in Real-Time Administrator. The term permissions denotes privileges at the campaign package, campaign, offer, and arbitration strategy levels. Permissions regulate changes users with Marketer rights can make to a particular campaign package using Interaction Advisor Manager. Permissions are defined in either of the RT Studio or IA Manager applications. Users with Administrator rights are not subject to permission settings. They will always have full abilities in RT Studio and IA Manager. Permissions are granted at the package and individual object level and include roles of Owner, Editor, or Reviewer. Infor Customer Experience Suite 7

8 Real-time profiles Whenever the Real-Time receives a request from a client application for a communication, the server creates a customer profile in memory using the profile s defined fields by querying the appropriate data sources such as database lookups, the current event, a JavaScript function, or other user-defined profiles. Profile types include: Event profiles Used for values relevant only for the duration of an event. Values are derived when the field is first referenced during an event, and all values are discarded when the event terminates. Cached profiles Used for values you want to utilize for multiple events but don t need to change from event to event or individual to individual, such as a daily interest rate. Cached profiles improve performance of access to data that is needed by multiple events, because cached data is not re-retrieved from a database or recomputed every time it is referenced. A separate cache is used during campaign targeting for every cached profile and every campaign package. Values for all the fields associated with a cached profile record are derived at the same time the first time any of the fields is referenced or accessed. Session profiles Used for values you want to accumulate and/or change during a series of contiguous interactions with a customer or visitor, known as a session. For example, a session might comprise a series of web page interactions, perhaps followed by a contact center contact. Sessions usually consist of a series of events across which you want the customer or visitor data to persist. Events can continue to use the session profiles until the session is terminated. Multi-row profiles These special types of session profiles are used for data that will contain multiple rows of values at a given time. Multi-row profiles allow you to represent hierarchical and complex data structures more easily within the application. You can map these profiles directly to a database source or set them in campaign package JavaScript. Multi-row profiles also utilize a special set of marketer-friendly rule operators to allow the creation of complex expressions that mimic those you might find in a structured query language (SQL) database query. Data mart profiles Like session profiles, the data mart profile provides values unique to a session consisting of interactions with a single individual in this case, an individual whose data resides in an Infor Omni-channel Campaign Management data mart. 8 Infor Customer Experience Suite

9 Real-time analytics Interaction Advisor includes powerful real-time analytical capabilities that help to facilitate optimal communication targeting: Real-Time Miner (RTM) and the Recommendation Engine (RE). Real-Time Miner A self-learning and predictive algorithm, is the only real-time learning algorithm capable of providing communication-likelihood predictions in addition to selecting the best communication for a given customer. The RTM s algorithm is a self-evaluating model that provides the optimal communication only when it has sufficient data for reliable likelihood analysis. In addition, RTM results produce valuable reports that provide insight into campaign effectiveness and aid campaign refinement. You can also use an RTM for product recommendations in certain situations explained below. Recommendation Engine Interaction Advisor s proprietary implementation of collaborative filtering technology. Collaborative filtering uses previous purchases, browsing behavior, and demographic data to recommend products from many thousands of possible products. Interaction Advisor provides a built-in Recommendation Model feature via the Recommendation Engine (RE). Integrated into the Real-Time as an analytical component engine, the RE requires a relational database. Real-Time The Real-Time has the built-in capability to learn which customer characteristics are most likely to indicate that a communication will be accepted. By using this information during ongoing campaign targeting, you can fine-tune your ability to match communications to customers. You can associate a Real-time Miner with any communication or campaign. The Real-Time uses an engine called the RTM, which incorporates multidimensional analytical profiler (MDAP) technology to maintain customer profiles for individual communications as campaign targeting progresses. MDAP is a proprietary analytical method based on Bayesian statistics. The RTM is seamlessly integrated with the Real-Time Targeting Engine, which executes targeting criteria associated with communications during campaign targeting. When Real-Time s are part of a deployment group, their associated RTMs can be configured for shared learning across master/slave servers. To use this feature, select the option for storing RTM data in relational database management system (RDBMS) format. Distributed RTM learning allows a newly deployed slave RTM to seamlessly gain the learning of all other RTMs in the deployment group upon startup thus allowing each new RTM to more quickly generate higher- quality likelihood predictions. Once one or more slave RTMs are in place, the learning across all RTMs is consolidated and distributed by the master RTM on a regularly scheduled basis. Infor Customer Experience Suite 9

10 How RTM works When you activate a RTM for a communication, the Real-Time examines customer characteristics you specify each time a communication is accepted, building an ever-morerefined profile of customers likely to accept the communication. Each time a new customer is a campaign target, the RTM measures how closely the customer s characteristics match the aggregated profile for each campaign communication and assigns a likelihood of communication acceptance. The acceptance likelihood is used in targeting criteria to determine whether to extend a communication to a customer. MDAP profiling takes each one of the customer s characteristics as a dimension. Along each dimension, it collects statistics on the values of the characteristics seen for each communication. These statistics are used to estimate the likelihood of the customer accepting each specific communication. The statistical estimation is like posterior probability, but it is normalized to account for the difference in the size of populations. This normalization is particularly important in campaigns, because the number of customers that accept a communication is typically smaller than the number of customers that receive the communication. The characteristics of customers who accept communications may be discrete values, like occupation, or numerical and continuous values, like income, age, and account balance. Traditionally in data mining, numerical values are categorized, or binned, to transform them into discrete values. The inherently dynamic and incremental nature of the RTM does not require predefined categorization; instead, it uses a dynamic binning algorithm. This algorithm dynamically builds a bin or category around each value. The size of the bin is optimized to contain a statistically significant sample. At the beginning of a campaign, when few customers have accepted a communication, the RTM assigns a null likelihood to all those customers, indicating that the number of customers seen is not enough for acceptance likelihood estimation. As new cases are seen, the statistics become more significant and the miner begins to produce real estimations of likelihood. The innovative MDAP technology allows Interaction Advisor to automatically enhance targeting accuracy as a campaign progresses. By using RTMs in targeting criteria, you can start campaign targeting even when you do not have sufficient historical data to generate predictive models or define extensive targeting criteria using customer characteristics. Using RTM for recommendations You can also use a RTM to derive recommendations for items likely to be of interest to an individual. The RTM recommendation function is best used when the number of possible items you might recommend is relatively small (from the 100s to the 1,000s). For instances with larger numbers of items, use Interaction Advisor s Recommendation Model instead. When a RTM makes recommendations, it can consider both the current interests of individuals (products they are examining on a web page or asking about at a contact center, or articles they are browsing through on web pages) and historical information products and articles these individuals investigated in the past, as well as demographic information. At the beginning of a customer session, you can initialize RTM fields with information you have about the visitor, most likely information you extracted from a database. When a new event provides new data, RTM fields are updated. The RTM delivers item recommendations upon an event-driven request for recommendations. 10 Infor Customer Experience Suite

11 Multi-level communication acceptance Interaction Advisor tracks the extended and accepted communications for all customers. Reports show comparative communication performance between customer strategy groups, the amount of lift of one group over another, and the accuracy of RTM predictions for a given group. You can also define the customer experience in several stages (that you can order by value) to gain deeper insight into the behavior of your customer base across these stages. Many users, particularly those with web channels, need the ability to differentiate across different levels of communication acceptance, such as click-through and actual product purchase. Interaction Advisor keeps track of the likelihood for each acceptance level for each communication. It generates reports that provide information about aggregated communication results for all acceptance levels, the likelihood of an acceptance level for a given communication, and the likelihood for transition from one acceptance level to another for a given communication. These reports empower you with valuable information you can use to enhance the customer experience and create initiatives to facilitate key acceptance level transitions that increase lifetime customer value. Customer Strategy Groups Customer Strategy Groups allow you to assign unique strategies to specific groups of customers, basing group membership on random assignment, direct assignment, or by function using logic with any applicable customer attributes. You can use customer strategy groups to implement a different set of behaviors for each customer segment, test and compare various tactics for customers against each other in real-time, and implement custom control group functions. To create Customer Strategy Groups within Real-Time Studio, define a percentage of customers who should reside in the group or map membership to a profile attribute. Once you have defined a Customer Strategy Group, you can define group-specific rules, RTMs, benefit scores, arbitration logic, or another custom campaign code. You can use Customer Strategy Groups for a variety of purposes, including: Implementing more sophisticated customer segmentation strategies by assigning different rules, arbitration logic, or RTMs to each customer segment Adding or removing RTM attributes and testing the result in a controlled environment Testing the effect of a campaign package change on overall communication distribution or lift Testing rules-based communication arbitration and RTM-based arbitration against each other Customizing control group behavior Infor Customer Experience Suite 11

12 Analytic Groups Analytic Groups are how you assign RTMs to communications or campaigns. Analytic Groups allow you to map RTM usage on several dimensions, including interaction channel, Customer Strategy Group, and RTM purpose (learning versus likelihood). Think of an Analytic Group as an abstraction of RTMs. An Analytic Group allows you to define a matrix of behaviors for example, the RTM you want to use on a channel or Customer Strategy Group, and for what purpose. You can then assign specific behaviors to any number of campaigns or communications. Using the concept of Analytic Groups, you can easily configure sophisticated RTM strategies. Using the Analytic Group function, IT users can set up blueprints for acceptable RTM activity, which marketers can then select as appropriate. A simple example is to set up an Analytic Group with one RTM for each channel and then assign that group to all communications. If you would like to set up a Customer Strategy Group as a control group without a miner, it would also be in the same Analytic Group. The most powerful use of Analytic Groups may be to help ease transitions. For example, you can use RTM learning from an existing channel for likelihood predictions on a new channel until the new channel s RTM has learned enough to predict on its own. Or you can learn for a new or modified RTM in all Customer Strategy Groups, while testing the use of its likelihood in only one small group to ensure it has the desired effect. Finally, you can use Analytic Groups to create overlapping time adaptive RTMs to ensure that only the most recent data is used for decision-making. By setting up overlapping time periods, you can allow multiple RTMs to learn at one time and then transfer customers to the newest RTM as soon as it begins to show better lift than the current RTM. Recommendation Engine Interaction Advisor s Recommendation Model allows you to use collaborative filtering techniques to recommend products. Collaborative filtering uses an individual s purchase history or preferences to find people with similar tastes and predicts which other products the individual will like based on the collective purchase histories or preferences of other like-minded people. Recommendation models are especially useful when you have thousands or even millions of items for example, products and articles of information from which to choose. These models are expedient in such instances because you do not need to predefine communications for each individual item. Recommendation models work best when the selection of items you recommend is driven by subjective preferences (taste) and when the target marketplace is very large (50,000 or more people). Sample items include books, movies, food, and music. Recommendation models consider primarily the current interests of individuals for example, products they are examining on a web page or asking about at a contact center, and articles they are browsing through on web pages. You can supplement an individual s current interests with historical information products and articles of interest from the past, as well as demographic information if you want to take it into account when making recommendations. 12 Infor Customer Experience Suite

13 Recommendation models are useful in several scenarios, including: A visitor is reviewing various products at your web site. You can display product recommendations that consider the products being reviewed at any time during the browsing process. A web site visitor places items in a shopping cart to indicate a purchase interest. You can display product recommendations that consider the products in the shopping cart. An individual contacts a clothing catalog contact center to order several items. You can recommend additional items based on the items ordered. How collaborative filtering works The proprietary recommendation model algorithm for collaborative filtering utilizes a set of user-defined input fields to calculate weighted influences of each input field to a set of user- defined output fields. The output fields are the set of items typically, products from which you want to choose a recommendation. Different products are rated by the current customer s implied preferences for those products based on the input field values. The list of products liked by similar people is sorted per a score based on closeness to the customer in question and product popularity. You then use the final output of this analysis to determine which products to recommend. During a customer session, some or all the input field information accumulates as events are triggered. The input fields associated with a given customer can come from a current event such as click-stream data and from other potentially persistent data sources such as marketing or purchase history databases. The Recommendation Model uses all the up-to-theminute accumulated input values to return the output values or recommendations to the client application when requested. In addition, the Recommendation Model has a built-in backup mechanism that allows the model to provide recommendations based on simple product popularity when there is not enough information about a customer to produce a personalized recommendation. At the end of each customer session, the Recommendation Model is updated with all the information accumulated during the session. Arbitration strategies Arbitration strategies allow business users to select the way communications are prioritized. There are four standard ways of prioritizing. Random Randomly selects qualified communications for presentation. Best benefit Prioritizes communications that are most important to your company. Likelihood Selects communications with the highest level of expected likelihood of customer acceptance. Best expected benefit Balances the likelihood and best benefit arbitration methods to consider both likelihood of acceptance of the communication and its benefit to the company. In addition to these standard methods the marketers can define their own arbitration strategy logic using economic factors and filters definitions for priority and campaign types. Functions can also be customized to include almost any method of prioritization using any data attribute available to Interaction Advisor including external sources such as inventory. Infor Customer Experience Suite 13

14 Real-Time Administrator Real-Time Administrator is a tool used for high-level configuration of the Real-Time. It allows administrators to adjust settings related to user permissions, database access services, logging, debugging services, and more. To support Real-Time Administrator access from a browser, a standard HTTP server is embedded within the Real-Time. In this case, the HTTP server acts as a supplemental component to the listener (previously mentioned in the Functional components section), not a general HTTP server. The following diagram further describes this concept. A standard HTTP server is embedded within the Real-Time. Backing up campaigns Interaction Advisor allows you the option to store campaign packages and/or RTM data in RDBMS format within the RTDB for easy backup and data management. This option is configured in the Real-Time Administrator application. When you select the RDBMS option, the campaign packages and RTM data still reside on the Real-Time in native file formats to optimize real-time performance. Interaction Advisor maintains consistency between the database and native file versions of the campaign and RTM data through automatic synchronization. Auditing changes to a campaign package Interaction Advisor allows you to track all the changes made to an existing package since its creation. Using this audit trail feature, you can determine individual users contributions to the creation of different package elements. You can also easily trace and roll back flawed campaigns that are inadvertently deployed. At the package level, Interaction Advisor tracks different types of operations, such as create, modify, copy, rename, and replace. Changes made to objects within the package are also tracked such as profiles, data sources, events, campaigns, and communications. At the object level, the solution records the add, modify, and delete change operations within a given package. In addition to package and object changes, Interaction Advisor records the user ID and time stamp for each recorded change in a package s audit history. Each time you save a package to a database, Interaction Advisor saves the audit changes in the RTDB. This feature is activated in Real-Time Administrator and works only with packages that are stored in databases. 14 Infor Customer Experience Suite

15 To take a closer look at audited campaign package changes, choose the audit history report in the Interaction Advisor Manager Monitor tab. This report allows you to review all changes that have been tracked in the campaign packages audit trail. It also allows you to interrogate based on user and date as well as to drill down and view the exact details of values both before and after the change. Auto archive Interaction Advisor allows you to automatically archive campaign packages upon deployment, making it easier to create versions of campaign packages and track past deployments. You can activate package archiving through the Real-Time Administrator tool and configure it to use the standard campaign package file format (*.mop) or an extensible markup language format (*.xml). You can choose to activate auto archiving automatically upon deployment for any given package. Alternatively, you can choose to manually export packages to either of the two file formats through Real-Time Studio. Interaction Advisor Manager Interaction Advisor Manager is the main application used by marketing end users to make, monitor, and refine real-time campaigns executed by the Real-Time. A key feature of Interaction Advisor is that it allows you to use manager component at the same time campaigns and communications are executing. You can access this application from a standard web browser, which allows for extremely flexible access independent of location. Communication editing in the Interaction Advisor Manager. Infor Customer Experience Suite 15

16 Making campaigns When you use the Interaction Advisor Manager to create a real-time marketing campaign, you define various campaign elements, and then deploy the campaign for testing or production use. When defining a campaign, you: Identify customer events that should trigger the campaign. For example, you may want to trigger a cross-selling campaign when a customer contacts you with an inquiry. When the customer inquiry occurs, the contact center or web server application automatically notifies the Real-Time to begin targeting the cross-selling campaign. You can trigger multiple campaigns from a single event. You can also trigger the same campaign from different events. Set up activation criteria the conditions under which the campaign should be available for targeting. You may want to activate different campaigns during different months, or you may want to use a campaign only when contact center operators are not experiencing an extensive call backlog. The Real-Time continuously monitors your activation criteria, initiating or terminating campaigns as you have specified. Define arbitration conditions that determine which communication or communications to extend when a customer qualifies for multiple communications. You can use different schemes such as benefit or acceptance likelihood to prioritize qualifying communications, and you can define the maximum number of communications to return. Define the channels on which you are going to use this campaign. You can automatically enforce a campaign s use based on the touchpoint through which a customer reaches you. Select an analytic group that has RTM assignments. Analytic groups are typically assigned just at the communication level, but they can also be assigned at the campaign level. Campaign-level RTM information is updated whenever a communication in the campaign is accepted. Extending communications When you use the Interaction Advisor Manager to extend real-time marketing communications, you define various communication elements, and then deploy the communication for testing or production use. When defining a communication, you: Specify communication content. Set up information to present to the customer, such as a script for the contact center operator or an animated message for customer viewing on a web page. Define qualification criteria or conditions under which to extend communications. You may want to communication a product to any customer who has not already purchased it, but communication it at a discount only to certain valuable customers. Or you may want to communication products based on age, income, or other demographic criteria that characterize a target population. Specify likelihood criteria, such as influence factors and a default likelihood source. This allows you to define how a communication s likelihood of acceptance will be generated during customer interactions. Specify benefit criteria that define the profitability and cost-related attributes of the communication. You can use these attributes during arbitration or for reporting purposes. If you desire, you can define benefit criteria at the Customer Strategy Group level. 16 Infor Customer Experience Suite

17 Define the channels on which you are going to use the communication. You can automatically enforce an communication s availability based on the touchpoint through which a customer contacts you. Select an analytic group that has RTM assignments. RTMs track information for individuals who accept the communication and help determine the communication s acceptance likelihood. Activation conditions, arbitration conditions, and qualification conditions collectively referred to as targeting criteria control which communications are extended and when. Using the most up-to-date information about the customer, the Real-Time applies your criteria and returns communications to the client application as indicated. Monitoring campaigns using real-time reporting and analysis After a campaign is in use, you can access information that characterizes its performance as well as Real-Time activity levels. All the following reports are available in the Interaction Advisor Manager and display up-to-date information, in real-time, even while a campaign is running. Campaign results This report displays information about communications that have been extended and accepted by date range, channel, or Customer Strategy Group. The report can also display values for multiple campaigns or communications, allowing easy comparison of success rates for different campaigns. Lift You can also access a lift report, which lets you compare results by Customer Strategy Group or channel. The lift report allows you to compare the effectiveness of different approaches (for example, the RTM versus a control group). You can also use lift to understand the costprofit tradeoffs associated with extending communications to a wider or more restricted group of customers. Campaign self-learning An associated Analytic Group accumulates three different communication-specific reports. You can select only one relevant RTM to report on at a time. To access the following reports, select monitor in Interaction Advisor Manager and then choose campaign self-learning : Overview Shows the degree of importance of each customer characteristic on predicting the likelihood of the selected communication being accepted. Infor Customer Experience Suite 17

18 Example of a Why Accepted report. Customer Profile Lists the characteristics of customers most and least likely to accept the selected communication. Statistics Shows how communication acceptance maps to individual customer characteristics. Real-time miner analysis This report displays influence factors and statistics. The report previews the Real-Time Miner for a given or typical profile and explores the contribution of different customer attribute values to a communication s acceptance. Recommender analysis Two types of reports are available for Recommendation Engine reporting. The following reports allow you to gain insights into the degree of purchase correlation between different products customers own, or in which they are interested. Overview Shows the relative influences of different input fields on an output item. Details Displays the impact of an input field s individual values on a selected output item. What if analysis In this report, you can view the impact of different Real-Time Miner fields to the likelihood of acceptance for campaigns, communications and levels of acceptance. Different values can be entered as input parameters that are then used to calculate the likelihoods for that set of values. 18 Infor Customer Experience Suite

19 Real-Time Studio Technical analysts use Interaction Advisor s Real-Time Studio an interactive tool to set up the campaign package file and its related campaign resources. Users can then access the file and resources through Interaction Advisor Manager while creating and refining campaigns. Real-Time Studio also communications advanced campaign definition support for special campaign or event processing when required. For example, you can associate JavaScript functions with a campaign for special processing that supplements the campaign activities you defined using Interaction Advisor Manager. Interaction Advisor Manager s definitions of targeting criteria and arbitration conditions automatically generate JavaScript constructs, which you can extend or supplement using Real-Time Studio. Plus, support is available for automatic time zone adjustments as well as automatic validation of targeting criteria. Simply specify the desired time and date values and targeting criteria in Interaction Advisor Manager. Campaign package setup After you define and deploy a campaign package using Real-Time Studio, you can use the package through Interaction Advisor Manager. You can create new campaigns in the campaign package or open existing campaigns to work on them. The campaign package serves as the primary method of grouping campaigns for use by client applications. When you set up a campaign package, you can optionally define a JavaScript function for the Real-Time to execute when the package is loaded or unloaded. Campaign resources Lookup sources Lookup sources identify the marketing tables where customer and product data used in targeting criteria are stored. Infor Interaction Advisor has built-in support for database tables and views as well as tables you can access using open database connectivity (ODBC) and American standard code for information interchange (ASCII) files. You can also use data stored in another format such as data maintained on legacy systems by writing JavaScript functions that retrieve the legacy data and make it available for use in targeting criteria. Tables Using Real-Time Studio, you can identify database tables to which you want to write the results of campaign processing. This information will be useful when you re determining whether to adjust a campaign to improve its success rate. As for lookup sources, a wide variety of data formats are supported. Stored procedures During campaign processing, you can execute procedures and functions that are stored in databases. The execution results, ranging from returned values to altered database contents, can be useful. Real-Time Miners RTMs are profiles of customers likely to accept a communication. Use Real-Time Studio to define the data you want to monitor for one or more miners. You can associate data from a wide variety of sources, ranging from marketing databases to data computed in a JavaScript function to data that arrives in an event message from a client application. Infor Customer Experience Suite 19

20 Recommenders Recommenders are collaborative filtering models that compare the collective purchasing history or preferences of a group of people (who are like the customer in question) to determine the best set of recommendations. You can associate data from a wide variety of sources with a Recommender, ranging from historical purchasing and preference information to existing contextual information such as the web page currently being browsed. Channels Channels are the touch points where an actual communication will ultimately be presented. They are associated with campaigns, communications, events, and RTMs. Before defining channels, ensure that the appropriate channel types are defined for the package object. Analytic groups Analytic Groups are how RTMs are assigned to communications or campaigns. Analytic Groups allow you to configure RTM usage on several dimensions. These dimensions include the interaction channel, Customer Strategy Group, and RTM purpose (learning versus likelihood). For more information on Analytic Groups, please reference the Real-Time Analytics section of this technical paper. Customer events When you define a customer event, you identify the information supplied by a client when the event is triggered. You then use this information during campaign targeting to characterize a customer. For example, an event message may provide a customer account number that you can use to retrieve information about the customer from lookup sources. You can also optionally define a JavaScript function for the Real-Time to execute when the event arrives at the Real-Time, and after campaigns associated with the event have been executed. Profiles Profiles are collections of data items you can place in Interaction Advisor Manager for use in constructing targeting criteria. Using Real-Time Studio, you can also set up profiles that facilitate date and time criteria definitions. Thanks to profiles, marketers do not need to know the source of information that is available for use in targeting criteria. The Real-Time Studio setup greatly simplifies campaign management activities. JavaScript functions When targeting criteria are defined using Interaction Advisor Manager, JavaScript is automatically generated into the campaign package. Using Real-Time Studio, you can directly edit generated JavaScript. You can also create JavaScript for very advanced targeting or to provide sophisticated attribute values for your profiles. In a campaign package, JavaScript is organized into functions for ease of reference anywhere in the campaign. The powerful and flexible JavaScript language provides the power you need to achieve very advanced control of campaign processing. 20 Infor Customer Experience Suite