Exploring the Cyber Frontier: Network Solutions

Network Solutions proves data immediacy is a competitive advantage in the online world—in real time.

Network Solutions, founded in 1979, boasts a longer history than most online businesses.

An early mover into the provision of Internet-based services in 1991, the company developed an Internet domain-name registration service as part of a 1993 grant from the National Science Foundation. The company quickly became one of the leading providers of domain names—the world's only until 1999—and has added an array of small-to-medium business services over the past decade. But as a privately held company, Network Solutions preceded the dot-com era. It was originally founded as a software applications development company. Over the past four years, the company's objective has evolved specifically towards providing online services to a growing legion of small business customers. Customer focus is the key ingredient to success within this segment, which calls for specialized solutions and a highly responsive, consultative approach.

At the center of that customer-centric attitude is Tracy Abdo, vice president of enterprise data services, customer retention and customer advocacy. She and her team are committed to putting data to work in order to realize the company's goals and vision. Their customer focus depends on their working together—"I'm nothing without them!" Abdo says modestly of her team.

We began our conversation with Abdo by asking about the company's pre-Teradata environment. It did not take long for the conversation to move to how a change in solutions took them to the very edge of the business frontier.

Q: Were there any particular challenges that led Network Solutions to look for an analytical solution?
A: We knew that in order to drive our business forward, we had to be able to do more with our data assets.

We needed to get beyond looking at what happened and why and move toward capabilities that included predictive analytics and event-based triggers. Our existing platform was limiting our ability to make the leap to operational decision making.

The challenges we faced and the objectives we wanted to accomplish simply could not be solved on our existing platform. We were dealing with both batch and query performance limitations and lack of scalability. And the business was growing, due to acquisitions and an expanding customer base.

We were spending money and dedicating resources to tuning rather than to development. Our existing platforms could not support real-time or even near real-time data access requirements. Fortunately, our management recognized the problem.

Q: Did you have management support for seeking a new solution?
A: Absolutely! Enterprise data services—my department—reports directly to the CEO, who completely understands that data is the keystone within our organization. Data drives strategy and enables intelligent decisions. We all aspired to cross the chasm to high-level analytical ability.

Q: What was your search process like?
A: We took six months to analyze our platform and application options and create a business case. That included spending a lot of time internally, talking with people about the types of changes that were needed, which included everything from individual applications to improved analytical capability.

We worked very closely with the business to understand what our overall customer products and strategies were. We knew that we wanted to support marketing and finance, to be able to close the books off the data warehouse and run marketing campaigns from it. We needed to ensure full Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Q: And what about the particular demands and challenges your business faced?
A: Our business requires that you personalize on a mass scale while also optimizing each and every contact in a customer's life cycle. Historical information becomes crucial as well, letting you focus on a customer's entire relationship with your company.

It's all about the data. Without a sophisticated BI infrastructure, acquisition, analysis and real-time business data, you have a very tough time in this environment.

Q: How does Network Solutions translate these values into operations?
A: In general, our belief is that one-on-one interactions need to translate to the mass scale. But we also understand that the individual customer experience is the crucial strategic differentiator. You must realize the value of every single customer contact: "We know you." We want our customers to come away from a transaction with Network Solutions knowing that we understand them and their needs.

Q: Ambitious goals. And what led you to select Teradata to help you to fulfill them?
A: When the dust settled, after assessing a number of vendors, we were impressed with the history of the company, with the fact that Teradata is, and has always been, business intelligence (BI) focused. The tools they offer are top-notch, very competitive with others we examined, and are well-integrated to allow us to efficiently leverage the platform for business forwarding initiatives (that advance or build the business).

I have to say that Teradata has an impressive consulting bench. They are highly experienced, they know what's going on in a multitude of industries, they could offer insight about whatever analytical or CRM challenge that I wanted to discuss. It was hard to come up with a scenario they hadn't seen or addressed. They offered an end-to-end solution, and that was important to us, as were scalability, performance, integration and manageability.

Real-world insight

Data warehouse technology needs to be tailored to the unique needs of an analytical/BI organization. Along these lines, specialized data warehouse platform vendors such as Teradata are filling a very useful role and also driving home the point that a data warehouse is not just another database. The ideal data warehouse would emphasize not just data acquisition and analysis but also data consumption and dissemination as well.

The data warehouse needs to be an integral part of the organization's service oriented architecture (SOA), allowing data to be consumed not just in conventional ways but in new ways by new applications.

— Tracy Abdo, Network Solutions

Q: All of which are crucial for any growing business. More crucial for an Internet environment?
A: In an online transaction, understanding the entire life cycle of a customer is important all the time—you need to understand them when they're looking around the site; when they're calling to inquire about products; when they're gathering information before the sale, during the sale and after the sale.

And for all of our growth, we maintain that small business customer focus. We build true relationships with our customers, and we take a consultative approach to them. We're here to help them, and the data we have that increases our understanding of the customer lets us give them the level of help they expect and deserve—and the level we demand of ourselves.

Q: How long did the migration process take?
A: The major migration took six months, but we had our first real-time customer service application go live within two months. This was an internally built application that provides customer service representatives with all of the relevant data points needed to service a customer more effectively.

Q: And faster?
A: Yes, it does result in increased agent efficiency, but this also translates into more effective and knowledgeable calls and, as a result, an enhanced customer experience.

Q: Which helps make the business case.
A: No question. And that's crucial for executive support: How does this help us get our business done on a day-to-day basis, and how does a higher level of BI help us reach higher levels of business? In other words, we're using the data warehouse to turn ideas into actions that are measurable and that have measurable ROI.

While real-time operation is an essential component of any data warehouse, currently the term "active warehousing" puts too much focus on the real-time movement of data. Instead the focus should be on the real-time utilization of data, regardless of where it exists. In general, successful Internet businesses will ultimately have a seamless integration of intelligence/analytics in their operational business processes. This is where the focus should be.

And of course that's just one example. Across the board, you have to show how you're going to turn data into dollars, proving that you're either going to make money or save money.

Q: You had executive support going into the project—did you seek or build support throughout the company?
A: You have to. You have to teach and evangelize, explain to people the power of data, and prove it. You have to show them how the data warehouse will change their lives, their teams and the entire organization.

And you also have to make clear that this is not just a one-time project. It requires care and feeding, ongoing investment of resources, all of it working in lockstep with the business, the business goals and business rules.

In short, you create a buzz within your customers inside the company, showing them that this is truly an enabling technology. It's important to make clear that the business change will continue to flow as data and processes are extended to other groups and other functions, as you build more pipes among groups to support even more sophisticated uses within the company.

The data warehouse is not "just another database." It's a very different, ever-evolving animal and it can be your critical competitive differentiator.

Q: Clearly you've given this a lot of thought. How much of that is influenced by the nature and sheer speed of your business?
A: Because our storefronts are on the Web and our customers interact with us over the Internet, our relationship with the customer is somewhat different from traditional business. All of the traditional business values apply, of course, and are practiced, but there's the added component that e-business brings—that immediacy of data and its application when it triggers a marketing event that's served up on the storefront.

You don't want customers feeling that they're being manipulated by data but that we use their data to focus more closely on their needs and wants. So you have a much closer relationship between IT and marketing and business. The ultimate goal is to blur the lines between the analytical and the operational, to reach the level of actual operational decision support.

Q: Is that where Internet commerce is headed?
A: There's no question that intelligent operations will become the key differentiating factor among e-commerce companies. Without highly intelligent operations you'll be trampled by your competition.

There's not going to be one "magic" application that accomplishes this; data has too many nuances. No application—or IT person—can be all things to all people. But if you know your business, whether it's an e-business or not, you can make use of the best technologies, integrate them intelligently, and use the power of information to drive your company's visions and strategies. T