Why does a CIO need text analytics?

Text Analytics News’ Ritesh Gupta recently spoke to Claire Thomas, Solution Manager, Text Analysis, Intelligence Platform & NetWeaver Group, SAP BusinessObjects division, about the utility of text analytics.

Claire, who is scheduled to speak at the 6th Annual Text Analytics Summit, to be held in Boston (May 25-26), shared why unstructured data is a topic that should be on the top of every CIO’s mind. Excerpts:

Why does a CIO need text analytics?

Claire Thomas: A recent Forbes Insights survey of 200+ business and information technology executives at leading global enterprises reported that data-related problems cost the majority of companies more than $5 million annually. One-fifth estimate losses in excess of $20 million per year. If we consider that 85% of all data stored is held in an unstructured format (Butler Group) and 80% of business is conducted on unstructured information (Gartner Group), with unstructured data doubling every three months, we can clearly see that making sense of unstructured data is a topic that should be on the top of every CIO’s mind.

Text analytics helps unlock the valuable information hidden in the treasure chest including comments on forms, email communication, blog posts and other text-based data. When this unstructured information is overlooked, business decisions are made with limited knowledge. Text analytics solutions should be designed to provide business units with an insight into unstructured sources while leveraging data warehouse investments and with minimal effort by IT departments. Line of business users can then holistically examine the entire set of available knowledge on a topic, adding greater confidence to their decisions.

What challenges does a CIO face and how does text analytics solve them?

Claire Thomas: Business units are looking for deeper understanding of their data repositories.  Textual content is now important for sales, marketing and many other corporate divisions. For example, consider a customer complaint emailed to a vice president. That executive needs to know whether the complaint is an isolated occurrence or a red flag indicating deeper problems for the company. Turning to IT, the vice president will ask if customer complaint insight can be analysed using existing systems.  Unfortunately, analysing customer complaints is beyond the abilities of existing systems which can’t derive insights into unstructured data.  Other initiatives that require IT support include ensuring compliance with regulations and protection of sensitive information.

Individual departments might look at point solutions to perform unstructured data analysis. However, implementing a different solution for each division of the company creates great costs and support burdens for IT. Ideally an unstructured solution should interface with existing business systems investments and enable all departments to leverage unstructured knowledge.  

Can you cite an example of how the user benefitted by using text analytics?

Claire Thomas: One great example is a large energy company where employees struggled to work effectively in the global workplace. They couldn’t find what they needed in the mountains of data, both internal and external. Additionally, an entire generation of workers was approaching retirement age.  An initiative was started to capture and share their knowledge that would improve productivity by leveraging research on information that others had already done.

The solution they implemented used SAP BusinessObjects Text Analysis and Intelligent Search integrated into Microsoft SharePoint. The solution enabled them to pull in content from the web, subscription sources and other sources, identify relevant topics and associated terms/phrases, extract the themes and topics from the documents and categorize each document into a business relevant taxonomy. This topic based hierarchy was rolled out across the enterprise so users could directly access or submit trusted content.

As a result of this infrastructure project, teams across the company reported improved productivity. They loved the easy access to high quality content when they had an information need. Not only did they experience productivity gains by getting their unstructured content under control and protecting their intellectual capital, they even saw an increase in revenue due to more effective knowledge sharing that lead to improved operations.

What trends should a CIO look for as far as text analytics is concerned? What should they be wary of?

Claire Thomas: With organisations ranking investment in business intelligence solutions in their top 10 priorities (see Gartner’s 2010 CIO survey), CIOs across all industries are chartered with helping the business make better decisions. It follows that better information leads to better decisions. CIOs should look for vendors and partners that understand that the more complete the information sources, the more insightful business can become. SAP, a leading EIM vendor and the market leader for business intelligence solutions according to Gartner’s 2009 BI market share report, recommends that organisations look for vendors that recognise text analytics functionality as part of an enterprise information management strategy and offer prebuilt integration with business intelligence solutions.

How do you expect the adoption of text analytics by CIOs going forward?

Claire Thomas: We see strong interest from our customer base in integrated text capabilities within existing IM and BI systems and as a way to gain access to currently inaccessible sources of insight. This is confirmed by industry analyst surveys, such as from Gartner 2009.

Interest in text analytics has been driven by the explosion of user-generated content in social media sites, blogs and wikis and the massive growth of email resulting in huge sets of unstructured data and vulnerability of company brands. Industries such as Retail, High Tech, and Financial Services are leading the way in adoption of text analytics. We also expect to see continued use within the early adopter industries like Publishing and Public Sector (government).

6th Annual Text Analytics Summit

6th Annual Text Analytics Summit is scheduled to take place in Boston (May 25-26). 

For more information, click here

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