SPSS - Customers

National Instruments

Situation

For more than 25 years, National Instruments has revolutionized the way engineers and scientists in industry, government, and academia approach measurement and automation. The company sells virtual instrumentation software and hardware in a wide range of industries, from automotive to consumer electronics.

Challenge

As National Instruments began to rapidly expand from its mid-sized roots, it recognized a need for more sophisticated data mining software to keep up with accompanying growth in sales leads and customers. Specifically, the company sought to identify the best prospects for its sales persons to target and segment customers for more strategic marketing programs.

Solution

By leveraging PASW Statistics Base and PASW Modeler, National Instruments was able to easily collect and analyze data and predict values of sales leads.

Interested in National Instruments? Download the PDF

Results

Generated increased, high-quality sales leads

Prior to 1998, National Instruments (NI) could only store 65,000 rows of data and perform rudimentary analysis in Microsoft® Excel®. With rapid growth worldwide and an increasingly diverse customer base, NI needed a sophisticated software tool capable of handling and analyzing millions of data points for more strategically targeted communications. PASW Statistics Base, a powerful statistical and data management software package from SPSS Inc., easily fulfilled NI's requirements.

"PASW Statistics allows us to conveniently aggregate data, especially when pulled from our global customer database," said Amanda Jensen, NI's analytics manager. "We're able to organize this data, for instance, by company, by address, or by person."

Jensen is part of NI's Business Intelligence Group, which includes the analytics, market research, data management, and reporting departments. Jensen also values how easy PASW Statistics is to learn and use.

"Most people in the group have been able to get up to speed on PASW Statistics by using the tutorial," Jensen said. "Additionally, this saves us training costs."

Our customer base was so broad and diverse across geography, industry, and even from customer to customer, that we didn't know if it could be segmented. By using PASW Modeler, we now have a robust profile of each of our market segments, which allows us to use direct marketing to customize messages delivered to each one.
Amanda Jensen
Analytics Manager
Business Intelligence Department
National Instruments

Generated increased, high-quality sales leads

NI's sales force was unable to keep up with the volume of leads generated from the marketing group. The company needed a data mining engine to identify a manageable number of high potential leads that the sales force could immediately pursue. After evaluating several vendors, Jensen's group believed that PASW Modeler, a leading data mining workbench from SPSS Inc., provided all of the necessary functionality at the right price.

"PASW Modeler had a graphical user interface that was easy for our employees to operate, which was important since we were fairly new to the realm of analytics and predictive technology," Jensen said.

To identify the main variables that determined a good sales prospect, Jensen's group used PASW Statistics and PASW Modeler to analyze data collected from the company's sales, marketing, and customer service departments. After refining the model using real-world sales as a benchmark, PASW Modeler helped the group narrow the list to seven variables.

"When we decided to bring in this type of [data mining] technology, we evaluated several vendors. PASW Modeler provided the functionality we needed at a price that was right for our budget, added Jensen.

The Business Intelligence Group also used PASW Modeler to establish how to weigh the seven variables according to each one's importance to sales lead conversion. For instance, the "purchase time frame" variable was weighted heavily since shorter time frames meant more of a need to buy product. The group then used PASW Modeler to create a raw score (from zero to three, with three indicating higher priority) and assigned top-tier leads to sales, while middle and lower tiers, as determined by PASW Statistics, remained in marketing for follow up and further qualification.