In a previous post, I illustrated the need for a direct marketing operating system ("DMOS"). In this post, I'll further explain the benefits of a direct marketing operating system and how the use of NextMark's DMOS facilitates the federation of direct marketing services.
The benefits of electronic commerce can be achieved without using DMOS. Marketing service consumers ("buyers") can interact directly with marketing service providers. However, the problem with this scenario is the number of connections required between buyers and providers which forces the constant "reinvention of the wheel" by both the buyers and providers.
As shown in the diagram above, each buyer has to establish a separate connection with each marketing service provider. Likewise, each provider has to establish a connection with each buyer. For example, in the case of 1,000 buyers and 100 providers, 100,000 separate connections would have to be established!
These connections are not trivial. Connecting to a web service is not much work. However, establishing a business class connection that is secure and reliable is quite significant.
The alternative to the cobbled together "point to point" approach mentioned above is the use of DMOS to facilitate communications between the buyers and providers.
Buyers need only one connection with DMOS to access all services available through DMOS. Likewise, marketing service providers need only one connection to DMOS to enable all DMOS buyers to utilize their service.
In essence, DMOS makes it easy for buyers and suppliers to conduct business.
But DMOS is much more than a matchmaking service. It provides the infrastructure that makes it possible to conduct secure and reliable business electronically.
The responsibilities of DMOS include:
- Directory- provides a registry of services available through DMOS
- Authentication - validates the identity of parties involved with a transaction protecting against impersonation
- Authorization - restricts access to services to protect against unauthorized access
- Confidentiality - ensures that requests and data are delivered confidentially through encryption to protect against eavesdropping
- Orchestration - coordinates the workflow of many tasks in a business process to avoid omissions and errors
- Message Delivery - guarantees the delivery of messages and data are delivered to ensure that no critical information is lost in transmission
- Transformation - transforms requests or data into the format required by the marketing service provider performing the task
- Monitoring - monitors the availability and performance of services to ensure high availability
- Integrity - ensures that requests or data is not tampered with in transmission
- Non-repudiation - provides assurance that an agreement or service request cannot later be denied by the parties involved
- Auditing - keeps a log of service activity to provide insight and accountability of the service
- And more...
Without DMOS, you would have to implement all of these services yourself or be exposed to significant security and service risks. This implementation requires a monumental amount of work. The implementation is so big that it often makes projects like this not feasible. This is probably why we've not seen much electronic commerce in the field of direct marketing.
With NextMark DMOS, you get all of these services by simply connecting to DMOS. So, you can focus on your business. Service providers focus on service delivery. Buyers focus on their marketing campaigns (and not technology).
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