A team of graduates from Pforzheim University with Prof. Dr. Elke Theobald at the helm has reason to celebrate. MANAGEMENT MONITOR, a product brought to life by the Steinbeis Transfer Center for Business Development Pforz-heim University, was named the most innovate IT solution – and won first prize in the Business Intelligence category – at this year’s CeBIT. Several major corporations behind consumer brands, financial services and retail are already taking advantage of the highly efficient and innovative software.
Bestowed by Germany’s SME Initiative, this award also falls under the umbrella of the country’s Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. As a scaleable and adaptable Web-based platform, MANAGEMENT MONITOR merges marketing and market research data and displays them in a user-friendly way for a variety of groups. Over time, companies using the products create their own integrated Marketing Intelligence System that opens up key marketing information across the entire company.
Marketing is constantly beleaguered with the challenge of working with multiple formats and sources of data. Various internal and external sources of information feed massive piles of data that can seldom be managed with one digital solution. The Marketing Intelligence solution developed in Pforzheim amalgamates all kinds of information into a single data warehouse and uses OLAP to structure the data into areas that marketing professionals can use. Even better: all Office and SPSS files can be captured and made accessible as easily as highly standardized files (such as database information).
The system’s benefits are crystal clear. With a single comprehensive knowledge base, companies can see what expertise is available and take full advantage of it. What’s more, the add-on WEBSCANNER module continuously monitors blogs, social networks and rating sites to monitor opinions expressed online. Another module, WETTBEWERBSRADAR, follows what the competition is doing online and notifies those in charge if competitors update their websites significantly. MANAGEMENT MONITOR is a textbook example of successful transfer between universities and business: the team of developers and marketeers at the Steinbeis Transfer Center for Business Development Pforzheim University consists of Pforzheim University business informatics and marketing graduates.