[Hidden-tech] Tech Integration Project

[David Morf]

Dan,

 

You've got an interesting scenario.  You may want to consider faceted query
handling because the niche educational non-profit seems to have a large
array of items to purchase (presumably each falling within one or more
topics of interest or other descriptive facets).

 

People could check whatever they wanted across the facets (note that facets
can include topics, authors, dates, schools, institutions, funders,
affiliations, or whatever other ID fields or tags are both available and
helpfully discriminant).  Then the facets collapse to focus on the set of
items satisfying the query.

 

An added user option would be to set the facet collapse to identify all
items connected with any query facet, or to identify only the items
connected with every query facet.  And, if the business model is to be
customer-centric for attraction and retention, you also could enable the
buyer to weight the intensity of desire, and ascending or descending sort,
to be applied to each facet when collapsing and ranking the returns.  You
need to let users interact with facets in parallel, i.e., with all facets at
once, not one after the other, because the user needs the chance to sort out
his-her own thinking without the system reaching serially for premature
closure.

 

Faceted handling (especially with the added step of buyer preference
weighting) also generates valuable preference information for refining
future org research and fund-raising plans.  Finally, the preference
information can move beyond being just information.  It can acquire
actionable meaning if the context or intention of the query is ascertained,
e.g., why or for what purpose is the customer asking for the item(s), and
what is the customer's own working context, such as place of work, field of
research, etc.

 

You might get more joy from capturing query context if you explain how the
context can help zero in on ancillary material, or induce new and relevant
research.  Also, it's important to skip personal demographics-that's a
turn-off across the board for many people.  Note that asking for context
differs from statistical query analysis across what people sought and
bought, because that addresses what was done, but not why it was done.

 

       David

 

David Morf

Market Data Consulting

Complexity, context, pattern

136 Dartmouth Street

Holyoke, MA 01040

 

413-536-0944 (direct)

413-426-6059 (cell)

davidtoday at comcast.net 

 

A founding member of the Center for Semantic Excellence
www.semanticexcellence.org <http://www.semanticexcellence.org/> 

 

  _____  

From: hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net
[mailto:hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net] On Behalf Of Dan
Kirsch
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 10:14 AM
To: hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
Subject: [Hidden-tech] Tech Integration Project

 

Greetings -

 

I'm looking for some guidance from the list with the additional possibility
of a consulting gig for the right Hidden Tech member(s).
 
I'm working with a colleague to assist a long-established niche nonprofit in
the education field that is looking to overhaul their antiquated and
disparate data management systems.  Their aim is to build a single
integrated system for managing relationships and transaction data with
donors, members, subscribers, and customers (old-fashioned catalog and
e-commerce).  This org has a mailing list of 250,000 for their products
(publications) and 10,000+ journal subscribers.  Traditional donor activity
is relatively small compared to subscription and product sales but of course
they're working on growing that as well.
 
I've done some research (via TechSoup and Idealware) but I thought I'd throw
it out to the collective wisdom of this group for recommendations on
products that can fulfill this org's needs and expert consulting talent who
might be a good match to work on this project to select a solution and
implement it.
 
Thanks in advance.
 

Dan K.
 
-- 
Dan Kirsch

KirschLeuchs Consulting
58 Chestnut St
Florence, MA  01062
413.221.9521 
dankirsch at verizon.net

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