MADTechBI Frequently Asked Questions

What is MADTechBI ?

MADTechBI  is the unified media and marketing data and business intelligence platform purpose-built for both MarTech and AdTech to serve both the supply-side and the demand-side including publishers, marketers, agencies and their enablers. It is well tested and operates as the heart of the iSOCRATES MADTech Operating System. You can see how it is successfully deployed as a part of a larger omnichannel media and marketing planning, activation and billing system here.

How does it compare to my current reporting and analytics solution?

That depends on what you may be using. A multi-purpose, general BI solution will likely require a great deal of labor, but is unlikely to accomplish the same things MADTechBI does now or can be tasked to do. More specific MarTech or AdTech analytical tools can provide point solutions, but may be more costly and do not offer MADTechBI’s enterprise-grade qualities, flexibility or highly accountable 24/7/365 support.

Is MADTechBI a replacement for or augmentation to other BI tools or systems?

This platform can either be a replacement or can serve to augment current BI solutions, depending on specific needs and interests.

Who is it for?

MADTechBI was developed for the use of publishers, marketers, agencies, and enablers like data and tech companies who supply them. It is for those on the buy-side or sell-side needing MarTech and/or AdTech help.

Why do I need it?

Consider how much more you and your team can accomplish with the time saved and better decisions brought on by simplifying and unifying your data, reporting and analytical needs. Know more sooner, with less difficulty, and at lower cost. Get the support you need and deserve from an always-on team that really understands the technology and what it takes to get business value out of this kind of investment.

Is this a Managed Service or Self-Service?

MADTechBI is available full-service with extensive customization and support as well as on a less costly, self-service basis.

How many different pre-built dashboards and scorecards are available?

There are well over 100 pre-built, tested and currently deployed reports, dashboards, scorecards, and alerts available for use.

How much does it cost?

Packages at the advanced level and above typically price from $5,000 per month or more plus a modest set-up fee, depending on the specific configuration required.

How hard is to get started with MADTechBI from scratch or if our firm already have reporting and analytics resources?

From executed contract to launch, typically client-partners are able to be operational within weeks, including training, whether starting from scratch or by transition.

What level of support is available? In what time zones? Can we speak with someone or is this just email?

iSOCRATES is proud to offer 24/7/365 a combination of onshore-offshore technical and client-partner support by an array of highly skilled, specially trained full-time professionals that can be reached online and by phone on a dedicated or shared basis.

What is the uptime promise?

Our Service Level Agreement guarantees 99.9%, though our actual experience is closer to 99.999% and is monitored continuously.

What’s the operating system and where are the servers?

iSOCRATES MADTechBI is home grown, Linux-based, run on the AWS cloud, and mirrored throughout the world for speed and security.

Are there different types of user licenses? If so, what are they (how are they different)?

There are three levels of access and features available: Viewer (read-only), Designer (limited customization) and Administrator (administrative and customization privileges).

What doesn’t the system do at this time?

iSOCRATES MADTechBI is not meant for: comprehensive accounting, media strategy (as opposed to media planning which it does offer), turnkey proposal generation, or self-service media activation without the help of human beings. But, it does a superior job at delivering affordable, unified data-driven media, marketing, and advertising reporting and analytics.

What type of white-label is available?

Depending on the version selected, firms may choose to include their own logo, logo plus look-and-feel, or even multi-tier private label with full parent-child branding.

What integrations and output options do you have available?

MADTechBI comes with 150+ MarTech, AdTech, DataTech, Operations, Finance, and various general data integrations and outputs with more under development. Learn more here.

What if I need data from or need to push to a source for which MADTechBI does not currently have a connection?

No problem. With or without API, structured or unstructured, documented or not, our data engineers and analysts would be pleased to help. Depending on timing, complexity, and the popularity of the resource, there may or may not be additional expense to add a new data resource.

Does this system include its own ability to consolidate and integrate external data including ETL (i.e., Extract, Transform, and Load) capability?

Uniquely, MADTechBI includes at no additional cost its own custom-built and well-tested ETL and Data Matching Table tools that both: 1) copy data from one or more sources into our system which represents the data differently from the source or in a different context than the source, and 2) provide a single view of a person, device, or household across personally identifiable and non-personally identifiable channels.

Does this system include a data warehouse?

MADTechBI™ includes at no additional cost a full-scale, highly-tuned data warehouse with the staff to support it included.

How often does the system update?

All client-partners seats and instances update continuously with data ingestion, processing and sharing available at regular intervals, on-demand, and real-time to the extent available.

Is there an alert system available?

iSOCRATES MADTechBI offers real-time, rules-based alerts that can be pushed virtually anywhere, anytime to anyone. It is hard to overestimate their importance and the positive impact they can have on your business.

You say the product is sophisticated. Sophisticated compared to what?

MADTechBI is considerably more sophisticated if you’re using spreadsheets or single purpose platforms. We have data visualization capabilities, but we also have pre-processing capability as well as a built-in data warehouse that’s already fully integrated. Real time rules-based alerting is built in. There are hundreds of pre-built dashboards and scorecards that are specific to different marketing and advertising roles. MADTechBI is high grade enterprise software that includes robust security.

What do you mean by Data Science?

If your requirements go beyond the stated data that’s being provided and the preexisting dashboards and scorecards that we offer, there are additional capabilities including tools, such as Python and R, as well as various statistical libraries and algorithms, which are available for modeling purposes. We have specialized team members who are trained in statistics and data science, and engineering that are available to support you in this area. But we also are creating built in data science solutions into MADTechBI, including machine learning and artificial intelligence. These are available as separate services on an as needed basis.

Is your data science built in? Or is it provided via managed services?

Both are available on a custom basis.

Will you build look-a-like/act-a-like/buy-a-like models for us?

Yes. We have executed this for a variety of client partners.

Can your platform analyze outputs from statistical packages, data analysis packages? If so, which ones?

Yes, we can work with most including SAS, SPSS, as well as several open-source solutions. MADTechBI can ingest from them and output to them. In addition, we can also push out to other BI systems, including Tableau, Power BI, Domo, Google Data Studio, and others.

Can I work with any OMS? Or only Fattail?

You can work with the order management system of your choice.

Can my finance team use this revenue forecaster as a source of record for billing?

It depends on the nature of the data that’s being provided, but they should be able to do so on the type of data and the frequency with which it’s being updated.

Can I set the rules for the alerts myself? Can I build my own filters?

Yes, you can build rules and alerts or filters on your own, or we can build them for you. This is also dependent on the user’s access level.

How do I analyze bounce rate?

Bounce rates are tracked in web analytics solutions. The data can be pulled into MADTechBI to track landing page engagement. Bounce rate is the percent of users who access a single page on your website and leave immediately.

How do I track performance by salesperson?

MADTechBI can import data from Salesforce or whatever CRM system that your company uses.

How do I track performance by sales channel?

This data would be pulled into MADTechBI from your order.

How do I track where on my site are people visiting?

Webpage tracking can be imported into MADTechBI from you web analytics solution (Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics, others).

Can I track time spent, CTR and CPC?

Yes, these metrics can be pulled into MADTechBI from you web analytics solution, order management system, or ad servers.

Can I login via my cell phone? Can I optimize reports to view them on my phone?

Yes, you can access MADTechBI from Apple or Android devices.

How many alerts can I set per day?

Alerts can push to phone, email, or apps such as Slack or MS Teams. There is no limit to the number of rules-based alerts that can be set.

How long does MADTechBI take to set up? What is the process for set up?

Set up can be done in one day or up to two weeks, depending upon the complexity of the requirements as specified by the client. Typically, it does not take more than a few days to get a start getting value out of the system.

What is the Level of Effort(LOE) to maintain MADTech each month for each account?

Very modest, but the Level of Effort depends on how complex your implementation is (e.g., number of users, number of data sources integrated, how often you need changes to data models and/or the UI). Importantly, MADTechBI has teams of full-time specialists that work around the clock to support and build the platform and to be available to provide timely service as needed for our many clients.

What is on the product roadmap?

There is extensive investment occurring in developing new dashboards and scorecards, as well as connectors for different kinds of data. We are adding extensive data science capabilities to the roadmap. The goal is to substantially further the pre-built solutions that are of greatest value to the buy side and the sell side of the industry in AdTech and in MarTech.

Where can data source integration information be found?

The list is located on the MADTechBI website in the MADTechBI drop down menu under Integrations.

Is there a limit to the number of dashboards/scorecards that the system supports?

No.

Why do you say unified data platform?

Uniquely, iSOCRATES MADTechBI can connect to advertising, marketing, financial, operations, order management systems, customer databases, website and mobile analytics, inventory systems and more by API or other formats using structured and unstructured data. Included with the unification is the availability of ETL software for pre-processing the data and TEMS (Trade Element Mapping System) to map on an identity basis: per person, households, or device across multiple channels of media and marketing activity.

What is data consolidation?

Once we have identified the source of the data that we seek there is a combination of extraction, transformation, and loading, which is a separate module that was created by iSOCRATES, specifically for the kinds of specialized needs that we have with large volumes of real time data with billions of rows of both structured and unstructured data. The ETL tool is built specifically for our industry needs. The second part of consolidation is TEMS, Trade Element Mapping System, that allows us to identify a same person, household, or device across different channels of media and marketing. This is important if you are trying to identify the efficiency and effectiveness of the advertising that you’re buying or selling.

Are you AWS compatible?

Yes, the out of the box solution is AWS based. However, we can deploy in Azure and in Google in a public or private cloud.

What data lakes have you worked with? Are you working with?

The data lakes that we’ve worked with typically are custom to individual clients.

Will you set up and manage our data warehouse for us?

Yes, at your option we can, currently do for others, and would be pleased to discuss.

Do I have to use your data warehouse? Can I bring my own?

You can bring your own. The system is built for you to be able to use whichever data warehouse you want. There is a data warehouse that is built in and included in our existing solution, but if you have an alternative, we’re happy to consider that as well.

Can we manage our own data warehouse/data lake?

Yes, you can. There are administrative privileges which are available under contract.

What is the MADTechBI investment?

The base platform fee is $5,000 a month plus $25-50/mo per user log-in charges based on the number and type of users for whom your company requires access. In addition, there may be set-up costs depending on if there’s some customization needed or pre-build requirements. Due to the wide range of different types of data companies seek to ingest in the system, cloud-related costs are charged to the client. That’s not a part of the platform fee, but is a customer-incurred monthly cost that is variable based on each customer’s actual needs.

What does self-service mean?

Self-service means that you can access data, models, and visualization without help from others. Depending upon the type of user account you have access to, you can create models, dashboards, scorecards, and your own custom alerts.

Why types of logins can I have?

There are three kinds of logins: Viewer, which is read only access; Designer, which allows you to create your own dashboards and scorecards; and Administrative Access, which gives you access to all aspects of the platform, both at the user level, as well as at the enterprise level.

Is there a glossary of terms?

The Glossary is located on the MADTechBI website under Free Resources.

Will you use my customer and user data?

Your data is your data. iSOCRATES used customer data for internal QA efforts and internal benchmarking purposes. We do not sell your data.

Do you have a community of users?

Typically, our users are not in touch with each other due to the confidential nature of their activities on the platform.

Do you have a support wiki?

Yes.

Can I white-label MADTechBI?

Yes.

Will you build this as work for hire?

We’d be glad to discuss your company’s needs.

How do these benefits compare to what BI solution I’m currently using? (Tableau, Staq, act)

This depends on the product your company is using. Contact us to discuss the benefits of MADTechBI.

Can we get rid of Tapclicks or other visualization solutions?

MADTechBI is a robust solution that likely can replace Tapclicks and other tools. Contact us to discuss your specific needs.

Are you a DMP?

No, we are an extended business intelligence platform that unifies desperate data purpose built for advertising and Marketing technology. We can take feeds from DMPs allowing for incremental insight for broader sharing access.

How many B2B and B2C customers are using MADTechBI? Of your total customer base, how many are marketers’ agencies publishers’ enablers?

All iSOCRATES client partners are using MADTechBI. We run our internal business on the system as well. Today, we have more than two dozen active accounts with dozens of concurrent users.

Why haven’t I heard of iSOCRATES MADTechBI?

iSOCRATES has spent years perfecting the tool, working with our existing customers to do a thorough job of testing, and documenting the tool and de-risking it for the market.

Who are your customers?

ViacomCBS, Audacy, Neptune Retail Solutions, RGE, IPG, Adform, Aletheia, Canvas, JLL, ComcastNBCU, Oxio, Sisense, Listrak, Bluecore, Univision, NewsCorp, P&G, ASL, and others.

Can I talk to your references?

Yes, we can provide references as needed.

What if you go out of business?

We won’t. iSOCRATES has been in business since 2015 and has been consistently profitable with diversified sources of revenue.

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