Biz
Intel That Drills
into Tech Press
InternetNews, June 21 2004 By Erin Joyce
Public relations and corporate communications firms have long tracked how their
companies are covered
in the press, from
traditional "clipping" services to building databases of articles, writers, and topics, and rating
their coverage.
But compared to other business intelligence packages, such as customer relationship
management (CRM)
and sales analytics,
media and marketing-related
packages are still
largely seen as
a soft science
because of the
difficulty in analyzing
how all that media
coverage adds up.
Now,
Biz360, which specializes
in business intelligence
analytics packages
that slice and
dice how media
coverage plays
online and off,
has ramped up its
lines in order
to provide even
more granularity
in tracking how
media coverage
impacts a company's
bottom line.
The
San Mateo, Calif.-based
company said its
main product, Market360,
now includes optional
consulting services
in order to help
corporate PR and
marketing departments
establish benchmarks
and measure the
impact of communications
on global reputations
and brands. The
Market360 application
has also undergone
a redesign so that
it can be integrated
with internal PR
departments' own
workflow.
Also
part of its upgrade:
several next-generation
metrics, including
MediaSignal, and
an addition called "Feature Equivalence," which helps determine the value of media coverage compared to competitor coverage.
The
latest release
from the business
intelligence provider
comes after it
beefed up alliances
with key database
providers, such
as Factiva and
LexisNexis, whose
databases are piped
into the company's
own hosted database
engine.
Biz360's
products take all
its data feeds
of media and builds
extensive graphs
and data trackers
for customers,
such as fever charts
that track how
many negative stories
compare with positive
ones, or neutral
ones for that matter.
The database includes
the traditional
media sources,
such as TV and
print and major
media databases,
Web publications,
online trade publications
and, yes, even
blogs, as well
as what Biz360
calls "influencers," such as pundits or known analysts.
Biz360
isn't the only
company looking
for more market
share in this sub-sector
of business intelligence.
Packages with deeply
integrated analytics
are rapidly gaining
steam, as technology
spending continues
to recover and
more companies
find themselves
rich in data but
poor in understanding
of what it all
means to their
strategic focus.
IBM,
for one, is working
with Factiva in
developing its
own kind of business-intelligence
system and is expected
to launch a product
around that effort.
In addition, Microsoft's
commitment to building
out its search
functions includes
its News Tracker
and Blog Tracker
features, which
counter Google's
own popular news
and blog trackers.
Doug
Laney, vice president
of enterprise analytics
strategies with
research firm Meta
Group, said Biz360
has found a way
to weave in media
metrics with customer
metrics to help
measure a PR firm's
performance on
behalf of the company
it hired to help
manage its news
flow.
"PR
heretofore has
been a touchy-feely
type of exercise," said Laney. "What this company has done is lay the groundwork for defining an almost standard
set of metrics
and even optimization
processes around
those metrics.
The product is
looking to tap
into a larger trend
that, from a business-process
perspective, all
businesses are
trying to find
a way to measure
what they do and
do it better."
He
said PR, marketing
and communications
are typically seen
as a soft spend
compared to other
business-intelligence
packages. But the
company has "built quite a bit of intelligence into the product so that you can not only gauge
things like hits,
but whether they
were positive,
negative or neutral.
From a PR perspective,
this eliminates
a lot of the gruntwork" of those kinds of metrics.
The
privately held
Biz360, which is
backed by Granite
Ventures and BA
Ventures, counts
over 70 customers
who include Astra
Zenca, Bank of
America, Harley
Davidson, Oracle
(and PeopleSoft),
MetLife and Verizon.
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