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Unica compared to SAS CM, Alterian and Teradata
Updated April 11, 2015

Unica compared to SAS CM, Alterian and Teradata

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

various

Modules Used

  • IBM Unica Campaign

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Unica

The implementations I supported were primarily used by my clients' Marketing departments. IBM EMM (aka Unica) for these clients is primarily used for the very granular segmentation of customers for multi-channel marketing such as Direct Mail, eMail and Social. The solution (the application and underlying datarmart) allows the client to efficiently create segments and campaigns; capture promotion history and assign responses.
  • The application has very robust and flexible functionality while maintaining a relatively high ease of use. Relatively complicated segmentation logic can be created for a campaign by a knowledgeable user and the application design supports efficient execution.
  • The application supports the logical "storage" of campaigns in support of a multi-faceted marketing organization: multiple divisions; field marketing; different channels etc.
  • The application allows SQL to be hand coded and inserted into the segmentation process.
  • The application supports exit points for custom code to be executed instream.
  • I don't see a lot of areas for improvement in the actual application software - I see a lot of areas where you need to have someone that really knows what they are doing do the implementaton; configuration and tuning.
  • Different datamart mappings should be created for different groups of users or types of campaigns. I see a lot of implementations where the team was pretty lazy and just mapped everything and left it up to the user to sort it out. This slows down the creation and execution (running) of the campaigns as well as causing a longer learning curve for new users.
  • It would be nice to have more tracking on the components that are added to the templates section so that users know when it was last updated and by whom. I see a lot of companies set up templates and then either never use them (instead just copy/paste last months campaign) or worse - not maintain them and therefore potentially introduce errors.
  • I think that the primary impact on ROI is by being able to very quickly build and execute new campaigns therefore allowing faster response to market trends
  • another primary impact is on user efficiency - being able to copy last month's or last year's campaign to this month (ie. the Valentine's Day camaign) edit and execute quickly.
  • another strong point is in being able to review the campaign and see what was really done in all components - auditing.
Unica compares very well against other tools such as SAS CM and Teradata. It is easier to use. However, SAS CM has more built in value added components and Teradata supports highly complex segmentation and campaigns rapid execution a little better. Alterian does not support near the complexity of queries/segments that the others do but it does run them very quickly (the advantage of an index based solution).
I know Unica well and can make it do just about anything I need it to do. I love the abiity to call in custom code along the way for extremely complicated scenarios and optimum performance. Situations that would steer me to other applications are: If already a heavy SAS user with Enterprise Miner and/or Enterprise Guide I would seriously consider SAS CM; if already owning Teradata platform would seriously consider Teradata RM.
Key questions: 1. What can you afford? 2. What do you really need? 3. Do you need something that runs superfast like Alterian? or something that is slower but much more sophisticted and robust like Unica? 4. How complicated is your datamart? How many customer rows? How much transactional data etc. 5. How quickly and how often do you have to incorporate new data? suppression files; zip files etc.

IBM Unica Implementation