Johannesburg, 16 Mar 2004
Tilos is completing research and development on a new product, codenamed "Firefly", that has the ability to render tactile information from management reports. It plans to launch the product in the second or third quarter this year.
Sybille McCloghrie, director of Tilos, says: "Generally, information derived from reports and systems is ephemeral, and is subjective depending on who performs the query. Because you don`t get a real feel for the data, you may be missing a segment of customers, for instance, that could be targeted with a variety of products and services.
"We aimed to create an environment where people could get in touch with their information, hence Firefly."
McCloghrie says if a financial institution, for example, is launching a new education policy for people with children, using Firefly it could run a query for customers older than 35, who earn disposable income of more than 15% of their monthly salaries, have children, and have bad debt.
Firefly has a unique visualisation in the form of a "magnet" that draws the customers close to the spheres of influence to which they belong. The weighting of the magnets can be changed, ranging from red (most important or hot) to blue (least important or cold).
The system is fully three-dimensional and operates in real-time, so the data can be viewed from a number of different angles, in a near-holographic manner.
"In this example, the financial institution would make the children sphere red, or essential. It would not want to attract anyone with bad debt, so that sphere would also be made red, and/or most important. Age might not be so important, so that could be made orange, and income could be allocated blue.
"Once the parameters and weightings have been set, users `release` their customers as 3D dots, or `fireflies`, into the area. The customers are attracted to different segments or spheres, depending on their characteristics. The most important characteristics can be grouped together by moving the spheres closer. The bad debt sphere can be moved further away and its weightings changed to separate those customers from the rest.
"The user then takes a virtual `net` and captures the group of customers attracted to the relevant spheres. The select group of customers gathered in this way can then be targeted for a marketing campaign for the education policy," says McCloghrie.
Any number of parameters can be set by the client. For example, in a human resources environment, the user can target previously disadvantaged people, those in management, or those who have been with the company a certain number of years. Employees matching any of those parameters will get attracted to the spheres most closely matching their attributes.
The set of customers/employees selected can be further refined by putting them back into the system, creating a new set of parameters and repeating the exercise, she says.
"After this secondary manipulation, a user might find there is a set of customers not attracted to any of the new sets of criteria. That could be because they do not match any of the criteria, but more often than not it is because they do not have complete information on those clients. This forms the basis for a customer relationship management drive to correct client details.
"The organisation could be aiming some kind of action at those customers, but is not because it doesn`t know enough about them. This kind of data cannot be gleaned from a normal management report," McCloghrie says.
She adds Tilos envisages Firefly being used as a "war-room" tool. "The ultimate idea is for users to gather in a room wearing sets of special goggles, project the customer data onto a glass screen, and physically move the spheres around, undeniably making the data tactile," McCloghrie says.
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