WiseGuys was born, like many other things, out of necessity. Call it Arthur Hughes meets Microsoft Access.

In 2001, Bruce Gregoire, the president of DMSI, began teaching a course in Marketing Information Systems at Johns Hopkins University. He was (and still is) an adjunct professor in the Master of Science in Marketing program. Since the beginning, the textbook for his class has been Arthur Hughes' Strategic Database Marketing. This seminal text covers RFM analysis (and Lifetime Value Analysis) in considerable detail.

Mr. Gregoire created a hands-on laboratory exercise for each student, using Microsoft Access, to calculate RFM scores for a sample of customers. The success of this program led to the further development of a series of one-day seminars known as "RFM Boot Camp" for the Direct Marketing Assoc. of Washington.

From classroom experience, two issues became clear:
      1. RFM analysis was much easier in theory than in practice.
      2. No off-the-shelf program existed to provide RFM capability.

In 2003, DMSI clients began asking for RFM capabilities in their marketing database installations. One of the first was Sales Service/America, an affiliate of the United Way of America in Alexandria VA. By mid 2003, WiseGuys was born. Mr. Gregoire completed the initial design for WiseGuys, in Access, and installed it at a handful of client sites. The program was designed to link to any relational database, by customizing a linking interface. For users of the Mail Order Manager system, standard "out of the box" linkages were built in.

Today, WiseGuys Marketing Software can now interface with 6 additional software packages; MAS90 Accounting software (Sept 2004), Activant POS software (Nov, 2004), Natural Solutions (Dec 2004), CommercialWare Mozart (Dec. 2004), Ecometry (July 2005), and Microsoft Dynamics (May, 2006).

The response from clients thus far has been extremely positive. Here is what Melissa Anunson, Marketing Manager at PC/Nametag, had to say about WiseGuys: