1. Making Smarter Business Decisions in Less Time

Abstract

A case-based information system helps to exploit data so that smarter business decisions can be made in less time and/or at lower cost. This is particularly important for customer relationship management (CRM). Customers need knowledge about products and often require help finding the best products to fit their needs. Once they have purchased a product, they often need technical support. Case-based decision support is uniquely able to help companies learn from experience, manage their corporate knowledge as a valuable asset, and support customers both in pre- and after-sales activities. Case-based decision support encompass both case-based reasoning (CBR) technology, which retrieves cases that are similar to a query, and data mining in order to analyze past queries to extract general patterns and rules. Consequently, case-based decision support plays a role both for operational CRM (front office) to help fulfill a short term customer request and for analytical CRM to extract knowledge about customers, enhancing a company’s understanding of their needs, behavior, and long-term expectations. This is increasingly important to corporations as they seek to establish long-term relationships with their customers.