Scribe Software Leads Pack in Integrating CRM with Enterprise Search
December 21, 2012
A leader in CRM data integration recently announced impressive Q3 results and consistent growth, thanks to long-term investments, CRM integrations, and increased ISV partner adoption. Scribe Software also states that integrating CRM with enterprise-wide systems is all about accelerating business pace, according the article “Scribe Reports Consistent Year Over Year Growth, Up 22% YTD” on MarketWire.
President and CEO of Scribe Software, Lou Guercia, continued on the success of the company:
“Today’s businesses need their data and need it now — to better serve customers, to make their sales and account teams more effective and efficient, to close more sales faster, and to earn better return on their technology investments. We enable ISVs, systems integrators and businesses to integrate critical customer data while saving time and IT costs and we do it well, as our business results show."
The company was also recently recognized as one of the industry’s top software companies and for having the best cloud application, we learn in the same article.
We completely agree that successful integration of management, search, and back-end functionality is a critical component for comprehensive information solutions. Options exist and one that you may want to pursue is with IBM’s Pure system, coupled with the mature, open-source based Intrafind enterprise search solution.
Andrea Hayden, December 21, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
PolySpot Takes Charge in Putting Big Data into the Right Hands
December 21, 2012
In seeking big results from big data, many smart companies are assessing their needs and formulating a plan. When those steps have been taken, it is then an appropriate time for technological solutions to be sought out. A recent article posted by The Drum called “Define Your Big Data Strategy With These Key Steps” fills us in on more details for how to go about developing such a strategy.
One of the initial steps is to assess the state of current data sets and initiatives. Just because big data is a relatively new phenomenon does not meant that a company has been operating without existing large data sets.
The article informs us of a few subcategories to check out within this assessment:
-Data quality: Check how clean the current data is, assessing volumes of duplicate records across individuals and whether data items captured across different source systems been captured to consistent documented rules
-Data Linkage: different sources of data may operate on different references, e.g. email subscriber lists compared to website transactors. Organizations need to assess how best to link this data together to meet their objectives, again this could be enhanced by considering external data assets
The end goal for many organizations and companies is to increase productivity and create new opportunities for the company at-large. Access to data by any employee that needs it when they need it becomes the most fundamental need for any plan to extract value from big data. Luckily, there are solutions such as PolySpot’s Information at Work that aid in enabling this goal to become a reality.
Megan Feil, December 21, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Elasticsearch 2013 Training Schedule
December 21, 2012
Elasticsearch is a Big Data search and analytics company. Their 2013 training schedule has been publicized and aims to equip users to solve Big Data challenges with Elasticsearch. Read more in MarketWatch’s full report, “Elasticsearch Selling Out Training Classes Worldwide; Announces 2013 Training Schedule.”
The article begins:
“Elasticsearch is open source search and analytics software that has emerged as one of the most popular open source projects in the big data market and is already being used by thousands of companies all over the world. The Elasticsearch training course provides a solid foundation in search and information retrieval, starting with basic fundamental Elasticsearch concepts, best-practices, key features and distributed search application development. The sessions are interactive with time built in for discussions and case-study presentations.”
Elasticsearch appears to be doing well, but there are more established companies who offer specialized enterprise software based on open source technology. LucidWorks has been in the field for several years, with industry-vetted software solutions based on Apache Lucene and Solr. While they may seem like two equal options, LucidWorks offers Solr training and commercial support. However, LucidWorks is truly invested in the open source community, employing one quarter of the committers on the Apache Lucene/Solr project and creating SearchHub, an online meeting place for open source developers.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 21, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
New Offering from Attensity Poised to Blow Up ROI
December 21, 2012
Analytics tools from social-minded vendors are now using text analytics technology to report on market perception and consumer preferences before the product launch. BtoB reported on this new offering in the article, “Attensity Releases Analytics Tools for Product Introductions.”
Now, businesses will be able to monitor product introductions with this new tool from Attensity. It is only a matter of time before we start seeing specific technology solutions to evaluate and analyze every specific phase of the product development cycle.
Both new insights for further developments and opportunities to avoid risk will be possible with New Product Introduction.
The article states:
“The tool uses text analytics technology to report on market perception and preferences before roll out, uncovering areas of risk and opportunity, according to the company. It then tracks customer reception upon and after the launch to determine the impact of initial marketing efforts. Attensity said the New Product Introduction tool is one in a series of planned social text-analytics applications devoted to customer care, branding, and campaign and competitive analytics.”
Many organizations will be chomping at the bit to utilize this technology since it offers an easy way to improve ROI.
Megan Feil, December 21, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Buzz Words for Clustering Abound
December 21, 2012
As the end of the year 2012 approaches, media mavens are abuzz with new buzz words. We have sighted another in the recent Clearwell Systems blog post on e-discovery 2.0. The article, “Q&A with Predictive Coding Guru Maura R. Grossman, Esq.” points out the idea of technology assisted review(TAR).
Technology assisted review is described as being synonymous with clustering, concept search or other early case assessment tools.
One question addressed is the number one mistake practitioners should aim to avoid when using these tools. The article tells us that accuracy can be misleading because it is usually impacted by the number of relevant documents in the overall total collection.
Delving deeper into this scenario, the article states:
“Consider, for example, a document collection containing one million documents, of which ten thousand (or 1%) are relevant. A search or review effort that identified 100% of the documents as non-relevant, and therefore, found none of the relevant documents, would have 99% accuracy, belying the failure of that search or review effort to identify a single relevant document.”
Many vendors report that their tools boast 99% accuracy. This word should obviously be taken lightly, or at least within the proper context.
Megan Feil, December 21, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Capability Smart on Route to Becoming New Buzzword
December 21, 2012
The countdown to 2013 is here in the form of predictions of technology trends. This year ‘capability smart’ popped up on Gartner’s recent list. Soon after,Connotate posted a recent article called, “Gaining Insights from Big Data and Analytics Requires Companies to be “Capability Smart.”
We learned how Connotate sees this idea manifesting at their company: partnerships. They have partnered with Clarabridge, Crowdsource, Digital Reasoning, Luminoso, SJV Associates, and Temis.
While capability smart veers off into many possible directions as far as a definition, the most fundamental level suggests:
“[T]hat we shouldn’t spin our wheels trying to build in-house solutions when there is a perfectly good commercial technology available that can do what it is that you need. For instance, when it comes to leveraging Web data for your Big Data projects, it’s not necessary to ask IT and Developer resources to build web scrapers to monitor products, pricing, reviews, asset sales, inventories or any other kind of accessible Web data, you can use a commercial solution.”
Now that Gartner has called 2013 the year where vendors must become capability smart, we might be seeing this phrase more often than big data. Capability smart means, amongst other definitions, that buzz words still work.
Megan Feil, December 21, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Concept Searching Does Social Media
December 20, 2012
I wanted to snag this before it slipped through the goose’s Web feet. Concept Searching has beefed up its social media presence. The company’s persona is Cate Evans, a marketing manager. The persona posted this question, “How many times can I pick the wrong search results?” My answer is, “Every time.” Search requires that the user know what he or she is looking for. If the user is clueless, guessing what combination of terms or which misunderstood link is the “right one” is a trial-and-error affair. The less clever the searcher, the more clicking required. A mouse click and reading without comprehension do not a good searcher make. That’s why library schools work so hard on reference interviews, pre-research, and the use of commercial database systems. LinkedIn is more of a job hunting service in my opinion unless one is lucky enough to have a LinkedIn expert toot a company’s horn. If you want to track Concept Searching’s persona, I noticed it in the subgroup “Information Access and Search Professionals.” If you have an answer to this Concept Searching question, head on over and share your wisdom.
Stephen E Arnold, December 20, 2012
Quote to Note: FTC Goes Slow with the Google
December 20, 2012
I read “U.S. Inquiry of Google Is Expected to Press On.” The story could 404 by the time you are reading this. But you probably have a dead tree edition of the New York Times handy. The story is dated December 18, 2012. I have no comment about the source or the story. I do want to highlight one passage as a quote to note:
The commission was prepared to accept Google’s written assurances that it would alter some practices related to search, according to the reports. The F.T.C. could enforce compliance with such a written assurance.
I know that writing on the chalkboard “I will not talk in class” a 1,000 times worked really well. I am sure a written note will have an enormous, lasting impact on the GOOG.
Stephen E Arnold, December 20, 2012
Predictive Coding: Who Is on First? What Is the Betting Game?
December 20, 2012
I am confused, but what’s new? The whole “predictive analytics” rah rah causes me to reach for my NRR 33 dB bell shaped foam ear plugs.
Look. If predictive methods worked, there would be headlines in the Daily Racing Form, in the Wall Street Journal, and in the Las Vegas sports books. The cheerleaders for predictive wizardry are pitching breakthrough technology in places where accountability is a little fuzzier than a horse race, stock picking, and betting on football games.
The godfather of cost cutting for legal document analysis. Revenend Thomas Bayes, 1701 to 1761. I heard he said, “Praise be, the math doth work when I flip the numbers and perform the old inverse probability trick. Perhaps I shall apply this to legal disputes when lawyers believe technology will transform their profession.” Yep, partial belief. Just the ticket for attorneys. See http://goo.gl/S5VSR.
I understand that there is PREDICTION which generates tons of money to the person who has an algorithm which divines which nag wins the Derby, which stock is going to soar, and which football team will win a particular game. Skip the fuzzifiers like 51 percent chance of rain. It either rains or it does not rain. In the harsh world of Harrod’s Creek, capital letter PREDICTION is not too reliable.
The lower case prediction is far safer. The assumptions, the unexamined data, the thresholds hardwired into the off-the-shelf algorithms, or the fiddling with Bayesian relaxation factors is aimed at those looking to cut corners, trim costs, or figure out which way to point the hit-and-miss medical research team.
Which is it? PREDICTION or prediction.
I submit that it is lower case prediction with an upper case MARKETING wordsmithing.
Here’s why:
I read “The Amazing Forensic Tech behind the Next Apple, Samsun Legal Dust Up (and How to Hack It).” Now that is a headline. Skip the “amazing”, “Apple”, “Samsung,” and “Hack.” I think the message is that Fast Company has discovered predictive text analysis. I could be wrong here, but I think Fast Company might have been helped along by some friendly public relations type.
Let’s look at the write up.
First, the high profile Apple Samsung trial become the hook for “amazing” technology. the idea is that smart software can grind through the text spit out from a discovery process. In the era of a ballooning digital data, it is really expensive to pay humans (even those working at a discount in India or the Philippines) to read the emails, reports, and transcripts.
Let a smart machine do the work. It is cheaper, faster, and better. (Shouldn’t one have to pick two of these attributes?)
Fast Company asserts:
“A couple good things are happening now,” Looby says. “Courts are beginning to endorse predictive coding, and training a machine to do the information retrieval is a lot quicker than doing it manually.” The process of “Information retrieval” (or IR) is the first part of the “discovery” phase of a lawsuit, dubbed “e-discovery” when computers are involved. Normally, a small team of lawyers would have to comb through documents and manually search for pertinent patterns. With predictive coding, they can manually review a small portion, and use the sample to teach the computer to analyze the rest. (A variety of machine learning technologies were used in the Madoff investigation, says Looby, but he can’t specify which.)
IT Encouraged to Get Back to Basics for Cost Optimization
December 20, 2012
I recently came across “IT Basics: Cost Optimization for Small and Medium Business” on ZDNet and was impressed with the article’s focus on simplifying and getting back to basics. The article encourages IT to pay attention to service delivery and project execution; essentially, execute and deliver on the basics of business and operations. It can certainly be easy for one to get caught up in innovations and big data trends, all while losing sight of what really matters.
The article confirms:
“Business executives will listen to a CIO who delivers the basics really well.
The importance of basic IT operations means it is worthwhile to review topics such as infrastructure, productivity based on technology, efficiency, cost savings, and establishing strong relations between IT and lines of business. For smaller organizations, in particular, these issues are the day-to-day lifeblood of IT activities.”
While this article focuses on small and medium businesses, IT cost optimization is important for any size business. In an enterprise, it is challenging to find the right search solutions that offer reliable, secure, and comprehensive capabilities. Intrafind is one way to get more optimization, with its user-friendly and high-performance solutions.
Andrea Hayden, December 20, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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