‘Personalisation’ is a term very much in fashion at present. It is used by vendors to sell their products, and promoted by website and intranet managers as a way of delivering a brave new era of functionality. Separate from debates regarding the merits and approaches to personalisation, there is considerable confusion about the meaning of the word itself.

As the use of personalisation spreads, this confusion has grown. Personalisation is now routinely used for everything from ‘my links’ functionality, to fine-grained targeting of information to specific staff roles.

The absence of consistent terminology in this space is now causing considerable difficulty for purchasers of technology, and organisations in general. Without a clear understanding of what is meant, it is often difficult to assess the value of products, and even harder to measure the success of personalisation features.

At the risk of introducing still more terminology into this fragmented marketplace, this briefing will draw a clear line between two separate functionalities:

• Personalisation, whereby individual users can choose or configure what is delivered to them.
• Segmentation, where organisations tailor or selectively deliver information or tools to specific audience groups.

This briefing will explore each of these categories, hopefully bringing some measure of clarity
to this space.

[CMb 2007-10, read the full article]