Even the best marketing strategy will fall flat if it is not aligned with day-to-day activities at operational level.

This is according to Deon Cilliers, Customer Intelligence Product Strategy Manager at SAS Institute, leaders in business intelligence. He says the importance of linking strategy with operational activities on the ground cannot be underestimated.

"Using the technological tools available to prevent the operational side from being disconnected from the strategy can improve profitability, customer satisfaction and retention," says Cilliers.

He says that in many organisations, the marketing strategy is designed to take cognisance of a number of internal and external factors, including competition, the marketplace and customer behaviour. The operational activities, however, such as those of the call centre or Web site, are often not in line with this strategy, and may even be counter to it.

For example, call centre agents may be rewarded for the number of calls they take in a certain period, and how short they keep them! They are not measured or rewarded for solving customers' problems. Cutting costs to the detriment of customers is unlikely to be in line with any organisational marketing strategy.

"SAS Solution for Customer Intelligence allows businesses to align day-to-day marketing activities with the marketing strategies by putting customer intelligence between them," says Cilliers.

"By analysing current retention, loyalty and profitability rates, for example, the solution provides real intelligence on which to formulate the strategy in the first place.

"It can then use the results of past customer behaviour analysis to predict future behaviour, enabling the business to target the right customer with the right action. These actions can then be carried out by operations. For example, the solution provides a list of the right customers to target for a certain campaign to the call centre."

Most importantly, the solution elicits feedback about the response to the campaign, leading to refinement.

The software thus creates customer intelligence, applies it to the business and measures its value. Through that process, businesses can constantly refine their marketing campaigns as they learn about their customers' behaviour, or as the environment changes.