Once considered at opposite ends of the corporate spectrum, DBAs and DBMs now find themselves in complementary roles. DBAs are needed to handle the technical end of the information management puzzle, whereas DBMs must manage the information from several vantage points to learn more about customers. The job of the DBM is about analyzing the characteristics and needs of customers. It is harnessing technology to find out which marketing methods work and which do not. Where DBA and DBM once were separate functions, smart organizations are merging the two, according to Jeff Snedden, vice president of OffRoad Capital Corp., a San Francisco-based Internet investment bank.
Technical organizations have to become suppliers to marketing organizations.
The DBA's role is not just to maintain a production environment, but to create an environment marketers can use to analyze customer behavior. Simply, it's all about techies and marketing mavens squashing and isolating information so it can be used to learn more about customers. Like most smart marketing people passionate about their jobs, Snedden sounds almost evangelical when he speaks about the impact of information. The key to customer behavior is usually past behavior, which is highly predictive and correlated to future behavior. All of this priceless marketing information completely reshapes the way businesses acquire and interact with customers.