Factiva
aggregates content
for market intelligence
IBM WebFountain
sits beneath new service
InfoWorld, March 2004 By Ephraim Schwartz
Market intelligence will get even smarter by early third quarter when Factiva
is expected to
launch an application
dubbed Reputation
Management.
In the early adopter phase at the moment, somewhere between post-beta and pre-production,
Reputation Management
will allow companies
to detect and analyze
business and social
issues that might
affect their brand
product or service.
The
solution combines
Factiva's ability
to aggregate large
content sets, which
number as many
as 9,000 horizontal
and vertical media
outlets in 22 languages,
according to Dennis
Cahill, associate
vice president
of technology and
IBM's WebFountain
technology.
WebFountain
provides a single
integrated platform
of unstructured
data, aggregated
from various content
providers, for
text analytics.
Once the content
is delivered to
the unified architecture,
called Unstructured
Information Architecture,
Factiva can plug
in numerous text
analytics programs
of its own and
of IBM's that use
natural language
understating, statistics
and probability,
machine learning,
pattern recognition,
and other artificial
intelligence tools.
"If
you make unstructured
data look enough
like structured
data, you can apply
data mining to
it," said Dan Gruhl, chief architect for WebFountain.
WebFountain
technology, a research
program which will
see its first production
version go live
with Factiva, uses
a process of "disambiguation" to refine searches by looking at the words around the name, said Gruhl.
For
example, using
disambiguation,
a search of Shell
Oil company would
filter out marine
sites referencing
sea shells, said
Gruhl.
Reputation
management will
both monitor trends
from a list of
client issues that
the client is concerned
about and discover
issues that the
client may not
realize are relevant,
said Cahill.
The
solution discovers
the additional
trends not listed
by the client by
finding all mentions
of a company, its
executives, products
and services, and
the most frequently
occurring words
and phrases surrounding
those references.
"A
lot of early warning
signs tend to be
ignored," said Cahill.
For
example, Cahill
cites the current
furor over obesity,
where debate escalated
from discussion
groups, message
boards, and blogs
all the way to
class action law
suits similar to
the type experienced
by the tobacco
industry.
"The
signs were there
with the number
of mentions growing
over time. It was
clear this was
coming to a head," Cahill added.
Despite
the recent congressional
action to disallow
such obesity suits,
companies such
as McDonalds have
already changed
their menu, dropping
super sizing for
example, in essence
to manage their
reputation.
Factiva
also partners with
another market
intelligence company,
Biz360, which has
a slightly different
take on how companies
can manage the
consumer perception
of a brand.
Biz360
measures sentiment,
both negative and
positive points
of view, from the
media and analysts,
using on average
12,000 publications,
and turning speech
to text to monitor
broadcast media
in the top 100
markets. Its two
solutions are Market360
and Market360 Analyst.
The
Analyst solution,
introduced four
months ago, measures
sentiment by monitoring
published reports
of industry and
financial analysts.
Sometimes
searching for mentions
and extrapolating
from there to say
whether the article
was positive or
negative is subjective,
according to Nick
Patience, senior
analyst at The451
research group.
"Biz360
knows that, but
they present it
from the customer's
point of view," Patience said.
Biz360
will give a client
30 to 90 articles,
asking the client
to rate each one
as positive, neutral,
or negative
What
is considered positive,
neutral, or negative
varies by company,
according to You
Mon Tsang, Biz360s
chief marketing
officer and founder.
"If
an article says
a company is an
aggressive and
in-your-face company,
Oracle would consider
it a positive point
of view. Say the
same thing about
an insurance company
and they would
see it as negative," said Tsang.
Today
more than ever,
a company needs
to gather and understand
feedback on brand
perception from
all sources. In
the past, perceptions
were usually shaped
by major publications,
said Tsang.
"Today,
a random blogger
saying a random
thing can bring
down a company," Tsang said.
Patience
said that there
must be a willingness
to suspend disbelief
in order for a
company to put
its faith in these
types of market
intelligence applications,
but they do work.
"These
guys employ algorithms
that use statistical
measurements and
they have been
well-tested in
various search
engines," Patience said.
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