InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

The DecisionEdge Campaign Management module is designed to help businesses personalize marketing messages and pass them to clients through direct mail, telemarketing, and face-to-face interactions. The product works with IBM's DB2 Intelligent Miner for Relationship Marketing.

Among the software's features is a load-management tool that lets companies give more lucrative campaigns priority status. "If I can only put out so many calls from my call center today, I want to make sure I make the most profitable ones," says David Raab at analyst firm Raab Associates. This feature isn't present in many competing products, he says.

DecisionEdge was built at the request of IBM clients, which led the vendor to include customized features such as integrated reporting tools that measure campaign success, Raab says. But he also says such tools may be too specialized for some users.

IBM last year folded its high-profile CRM venture, CorePoint Systems, and threw its support behind CRM mar-ket leader Siebel Systems Inc. It recently said it would roll out Siebel's CRM suite, which includes sales, service, and marketing tools, to 55,000 IBM users. But DecisionEdge will complement Siebel and even uses Siebel for its E-mail campaign management, IBM says. DecisionEdge will ship next week, starting at $75,000 plus $7,000 for each 100,000 customer records supported.