Thinking Machines and Paragren Technologies Establish Strategic Partnership to Integrate Data Mining with Relationship Marketing
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Paragren Technologies, Inc. of Reston, VA and Thinking Machines Corporation (TMC) of Burlington, MA have announced a partnership to provide "out-of-the-box " functionality for enterprise relationship marketing. The two firms will integrate and jointly market Thinking Machines' Darwin, scalable enterprise data mining software, and Paragren's One-By-One marketing suite, a set of analytical marketing applications for optimized relationship marketing. This new offering provides a seamless, automated solution that allows marketing professionals to execute targeted customer acquisition, expansion and retention strategies more effectively and efficiently. With the integration of the two systems, marketers can select and mine data using high-speed parallel data extraction routines.

"The next significant advancement in marketing automation is closed-loop applications," comments Tim Harmon, Senior Program Director, of META Group, Inc., a leading industry analyst firm. "The integration of Paragren's One-ByOne data extraction and customer relationship marketing software with Thinking Machines' Darwin data mining software closes a gap we see in the marketplace. Thinking Machines and Paragren lead the way in addressing this critical next step in one-to-one marketing."

The two companies have created a seamless link from Paragren's Data Discoverer product that provides point-and-click access to the Darwin data mining software, thereby closing the loop between data mining and any relational database or flat file. Paragren and Thinking Machines are working on a second phase of integration. Users will have a fully automated system to register models constructed in Darwin and to deploy those models either dynamically or statically against customer records that they wish to score. With this automated approach, marketers can use output scores, decision flags and segment IDs to define and execute campaigns. By integrating analytical models within the campaign management process, marketers can selectively target individuals most likely to churn, most likely to purchase, and integrate these models into other applications that can help reduce processing and mailing costs and increase response rates.

The integrated Darwin and One-By-One products significantly reduce the cycle time and effort required to implement and improve campaigns. Because marketers are now able to automatically score and deploy predictive models in realtime within a campaign, they can adjust their efforts more quickly to respond to changing market conditions.

Robert Doretti, president and CEO of Thinking Machines, comments, "With Darwin, our customers are able to extract relationships hidden in large customer databases to build models that predict customer behavior on a "oneto -one" basis. With this partnership, companies can integrate Darwin models and Paragren's campaign management and customer touch point software. Now, the new business intelligence is deployed throughout the enterprise where and when it is most needed -- that's what data mining is all about."

"We recognize the need to tightly integrate model output with customer relationship marketing applications," states Magid Abraham, Paragren's CEO and president. "Paragren is excited that we can provide this functionality in conjunction with Thinking Machines. Darwin and Paragren's One-By-One suite will enable professional marketers to perform advanced data mining analysis on massive customer databases and gain real insight into the drivers behind consumer behavior."

Thinking Machines' Darwin is powerful, scalable, data mining software that provides business analysts the combination of power and ease-of-use necessary to extract actionable business intelligence hidden in large customer databases. Darwin enables businesses with large amounts of data to more precisely understand and predict customer behavior and easily integrates with existing systems to distribute the results throughout the enterprise. Darwin's predictive technology allows companies to design customer-focused business strategies and increase the effectiveness of marketing programs.

The One-By-One suite of marketing applications empowers marketers to execute targeted customer acquisition, expansion and retention strategies. One-By-One is based on an open, flexible and scalable architecture that is platform-independent and enhances existing investments in data warehouse, modeling and decision support systems. The suite consists of One-By-One Data Discoverer, for exploration, analysis and integrated data mining; One-By-One Campaign Manager, for customer acquisition and retention programs; and One-By- One Interactive Marketer, for real-time, one-to-one marketing execution. All One-By-One applications are powered by the One-By-One Application Server that rapidly organizes data, regardless of its source, into a unified, logical, customer-centric framework.

Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Paragren Technologies, Inc. delivers optimized relationship marketing. By integrating innovative software, services and market intelligence, Paragren enables businesses to discover, establish and grow profitable customer relationships. The One-By-One suite of marketing applications, enhanced with professional services and consumer-based panel data, empowers marketers to execute targeted customer acquisition, expansion and retention strategies. Paragren operates independently as an APAC TeleServices company. Additional information is available at http://www.paragren.com

Thinking Machines Corporation has industry-leading experience in addressing large customer data-driven problems and is a proven technology leader providing best-in-class data mining software coupled with skilled professional services, for the financial services, telecommunications, and database marketing industries. Thinking Machines' powerful enterprise-wide customer relationship management solutions help companies understand and predict customer behavior. With offices worldwide, Thinking Machines is headquartered in Burlington, MA, USA. For more information, visit Thinking Machines' Web site at http://www.think.com