Background: ESI International is a $90 million training company based in Arlington, VA. ESI International is the leading provider of project management training, contract management training and consulting worldwide. Despite its size and decades of success, ESI suffered from the common malady of being "Data Rich and Information Poor". This was the immediate challenge for DMSI to address. In 1998 ESI contracted with DMSI to accomplish two objectives: build a marketing database for direct mail activity and install the TeleMagic software package for a new outbound telemarketing function.

DMSI Solution: What DMSI found upon starting the project is common elsewhere: customer and prospect files in multiple places and no integration of customer data with order transaction data. Without this integration, it was not possible to answer the question we most often like to ask upon starting a project: "Do you know who your best customers are?." It is surprising how many organizations do not know.

DMSI began by designing a CRM-style solution that integrated multiple-user database components. We consolidated all customer and transaction data into the TeleMagic database. We then built a series of merge programs that refreshed the TeleMagic database with daily updates from the customer order entry system. Finally, we added an MS Access-based program that is now used by the direct mail department to analyze and select contacts for mailings. Part of this program includes analytics that calculate RFM (Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value) for each customer. The results, particularly in the Telemarketing function, were dramatic:

We went from $0 to $4 million in sales in our first year, thanks to software designed by Desktop Marketing. You kept things simple and you know both marketing and programming. We could not have done it without you! Jeffrey Deutch, Telesales Manager, ESI International, Arlington, Va.