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Implementing Databases In-house

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DQI Bureau
New Update

At 6 pm Monday, the Signet Bank marketing

team gathers to review its new services proposal one last time before tomorrow's weekly

management meeting. One analyst has finalized his plans for market testing a new personal

checking account. His confidence is high-a marked improvement from last year, when he

relied on an outside data provider for the most current consumer data to help determine

which banking services would meet customer's demands. The marketing team often worried

that their ideas were based on outdated information, typically requiring several weeks to

retrieve data and then additional days to analyze it. With any luck, the team might

develop services before the competition.

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Today, the same marketing team members are

more prepared than ever. They have earned respect of executive management and can make

effective decisions with the full support of Signet's new in-house Silicon Graphics-Oracle

information system. The system updates customer profiles daily and provides more complete

information to the company's marketers. It even gives the team daily results from the

hundreds of marketing initiatives that continuously occur. At Signet, success no longer

depends on luck.

A foundation of information-based

decision making



Signet Bank, a financial

services company, attributes its healthy business outlook to the implementation of

innovative information strategies enabled by Silicon Graphics and Oracle technologies.

Originally targeting banking products only in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC,

Signet began an aggressive national expansion in 1994. The development plan called for

commercial and consumer business growth through the establishment of new business sites,

the creation of alternative delivery channels, and the enhancement of technology,

including the company's information management capabilities.

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While Signet has long been a

proponent of information-based decision making (IBDM), its managers quickly recognized

that a move into the competitive national arena required significant improvements to

existing data management systems and processes. Specifically, Signet marketers and

analysts needed better access to databases for marketing programs and analysis. Rick

Whittemore, MIS Manager for mass-market services, explains, "We take a scientific or

test approach to marketing. The database is used in the process. Marketing databases are

not new for us, but we needed to increase our capabilities. We needed to do more analysis

on expanded data and at the same time shorten turnaround times." Whittemore sites the

previous problem with information turnaround time. "For years, we used an outside

vendor for maintaining our marketing information files. It took eight weeks to get access

to updates. That was no longer acceptable." To deliver improved and expanded data

management services, Whittermore and his team investigated marketing applications from

software VARs. The ultimate selection was EDS' dbIntellect Technologies, not only for the

critical software functionality (the transaction engine), but for the company's expertise

in recommending and implementing a complete system solution.

Leading the search for high-performance

hardware, dbIntellect helped Signet evaluate various platforms, including products from

Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics and Sun. "For our type of application, the

dbIntellect benchmarks pointed to the Silicon Graphics machines. They were scalable,

extensible and could meet processing needs" according to Whittemore. The Silicon

Graphics platforms, with optimized I/O throughput, also offered maximized performance for

the Oracle database that would manage the company's large data warehouse.

Whittemore describes Signet's new

capabilities. "Because of the Oracle/Silicon Graphics combination, the response time

for queries is much faster, even if we're running a lot of simultaneous analysis on the

front end." The Signet configuration includes a Silicon Graphics server as a front

end handling the statistical analysis software (SAS), and another Silicon Graphics server

back-end that hots the Oracle database. In addition to SAS and dbIntellect's transaction

engine, the system software incorporates a range of data access tools for the Oracle

database.

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The networked Silicon Graphics systems

accommodate more than 150 users, with 50 to 60% of users considered extremely active.

While maintaining a familiar user interface, the new system delivers quicker access and

data turnaround than previously possible. Updates that used to take two months are now

available weekly. "We have a more up-to-date database with more flexibility for

adding data and making changes. And we now do a better job of tracking program results.

It's dramatically increased the overall productivity of our analysts," Whittemore

says.

The Oracle marketing database application

running on Silicon Graphics servers offers a competitive edge to analysts developing

deposit, investment and credit products for the consumer side of Signet's business.

Detailed forecasts and analyses of product performance in a dynamic business climate are

accomplished quickly, with reliable results. Signet is already planning to expand the

applications to more fully cover its credit card, mortgage and educational funding

services.

Whittemore believes that the breadth of

hardware and networking solutions from Silicon Graphics combines with Oracle software

provides novel approaches to marketing and business operations. He commends the EDS

dbIntellect Technologies, Signet, Oracle and Silicon Graphics team members for their joint

efforts. "From an end-user perspective, the project has gone extremely well- everyone

is very happy. Most importantly, the implementation of the marketing database system has

facilitated Signet's corporate goals for national expansion. "To be a national

financial services player as a direct marketer, we needed to have much quicker turnaround

on our market campaigns, more flexibility and more control over the data. Having this kind

of database is essential- it is part of the cost of entry." And has it improved

Signet's competitive standing? Whitemore concludes by saying, "Yes, I think we've

done things that other people are just talking about. IT gives us better capabilities and

a better environment to develop intellectual capital."

Courtesy: Silicon

Graphics

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