A Plan for Achieving ROI via Text Analytics
December 6, 2014
ROI is the end goal for many big data and enterprise related projects and it is refreshing to see some information published in regards to if companies achieve it like we recently saw in a Smart Data Collective article, “Text Analytics, Big Data and the Keys to ROI.” According to a study released last year (further discussed in“Text/Content Analytics 2011: User Perspectives on Solutions and Providers”) the reason many businesses do not get positive returns has to do with the planning phase. Many report that they did not start with a clear plan to get there.
The author shares with us an example from his full-time work in text analytics. One of his clients that was focused on sifting through masses of social media data and data from government applications looking for suspicious activity needed a solution for a text-heavy application. The author responded by suggesting a selective cross-lingual process, one which worked with the text in its native language, and only on the text that was relevant to the topic of interest.
The following happened after the author’s suggestion:
Although he seemed to appreciate the logic of my suggestions and the quality benefits of avoiding translation, he just didn’t want to deal with a new approach. He asked to just translate everything and analyze later – as many people do. But I felt strongly that he’d be spending more and getting weaker results. So, I gave him two quotes. One for translating everything first and analyzing later – his way, and one for the cross-lingual approach that I recommended. When he saw that his own plan was going to cost over a million dollars more, he quickly became very open minded about exploring a new approach.
It sounds like the author could have suggested a number of similar semantic processing solutions. For example, Cogito Intelligence API enhances the ability to decipher meaning and insights from a multitude of content sources including social media and unstructured corporate data. The point is that ROI is out there and there are innovative companies like Expert System and beyond enabling it.
Megan Feil, December 6, 2014
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