EXPANSION


After AIM's entry into Malaysia, it realised that it was difficult to meet the local clients' needs in terms of programme customisation and flexibility.


This brought AIM to benchmarking numerous programmes from around the region and concluded that it needed to develop its own programme in the year 2004.


"We found that it (the programme) was so complex and in terms of service with overseas licences, issues such as follow ups, time and zone started arising.'' he said.


This brought about the development of AIM's own programme by using the latest Open Source System, which makes the system more flexible and friendly before it is marketed.


Despite being a Singapore-origin company, AIM felt that it should and did capitalise on the MSC status in Malaysia, as most of its customers are in this country.


Obtaining the MSC status, AIM has been able to carry out its research and development activities and its programme customisation in Malaysia.




ENTERPRISE MARKETING MANAGEMENT (EMM)


What makes AIM's Enterprising Marketing Management (EMM)
solution different from other customer loyalty programmes is not only its flexibility in meeting different industry needs but the fact that it could also be deployed cross regionally and even online or offline.


"Large organisations are constantly worried that different countries use different software with local support in gathering customer information. We are helping them eliminate that; a few of our customers also want us to work with them regionally.


"On the EMM basis, we can cover different modules and they could be deployed in different industries and regions and could be customised to an organisation's needs," said Nyang.


Also called AIMS (Advanced Information Marketing System), the EMM solution has more than 20 key applications and functionalities.


Powered by a suite of applications, AIM's EMM solution gives organisations and marketers the tools to develop deeper customer understanding while delivering more personal and compelling marketing throughout the customer lifecycle.


The solution is based on the concept of shared-platform and a seamless deployment that enables utilisation by unlimited number of merchants and service providers. It also creates unprecedented efficiency of an organisation's loyalty programme without the need to incur large investment to manage the application.



Furthermore, this advanced technology serves leading customer centre organisations in diverse industries including financial servic-es, insurance and healthcare, busi-ness-to-business services, retail and catalogue and also FMCGs (fast-moving consunner goods).



The AIMS programme's key dis-tinctions include:

	A unique application framework that enables a multitude of organ isations to adopt and offer solutions at lower costs and on demand to their customers.
	Shared unified database which consists of customer database, product database, demographic database, trends and behavioural attribute databases are now accessible as a whole or on a modular basis to organisations.
	Seamless scalability and compatibility with its potential clients' across a wide range of industries and customer segments.
	Ability to generate accurate statistics and data mining capabilities across a wide range of industries and customer segments.

Extending beyond the provision of Loyalty Management application, the AIMS solution also includes other applications such as electronic procurement, electronic warranty management, business intelligence and others, which are designed to function on a modular as well as an integrated manner.


Among the 23 modules of the EMM solutions, six modules have been rolled out and they are Member Management. Points Management, Merchant Management, Fraternal Programme, Redemption Management and the OLAP API.



Other modules still in progress would include Catalogue Management, Inventory Management, Campaign Management, Member Segmentation, Payment Gateway and Data Mining API.


AIMS is based on the Linux technology platform, namely Enterprise Linux AS (Advance Server) that is based on the currently leading edge J2EE platform, a multi-tiered distrib-uted application model.



By utilising AIMS, organisations could service their customers via the Internet and in the near future via wireless gateway. AIM's clients can access the capabilities of AIMS in real time or via batch processing using a common infrastructure like the Internet and using wireless technology in the future.



What's more, the EMM solution also happens to be the backbone for AIM's subsidiary, Customer Loyalty Solutions Sdn Bhd (CLS), a managing consultancy company. that is already defining a new trend in outsourcing of total. integrated loyalty, marketing solutions.