Kapow Katalyst Blog

I recently participated in an intriguing discussion with Seth Grimes and Dana Gardner in a podcast on the Importance of Web Data Services for business Text Analytics solutions.

I want to highlight one important part of the discussion here:  the pitfall of using wrong data sources.

Text analytics is really a form of business intelligence where you analyze different data sources to draw conclusions and even make automated business actions based on the results.

Obviously, any conclusion drawn from BI or text analysis is no better than the quality of the data sources.  As they say, “junk in, junk out”, right?

There are four extremely important parameters to consider for optimizing data sources:

• The right data sources: Don’t settle for second-tier, sub-optimal data sources simply because they’re easily accessible or the only data currently available.
• A full picture of the data: It’s important to have data sources that provide a 360-degree view from the endless sources of data provided by internet users around the world, 24×7.
• Noise-free data: Eliminate irrelevant and extraneous data, while ensuring structure and context are accurate.  In addition to getting rid of advertisements, link tables, and duplicate content, you can specify parameters and filters such as dates and location to further eliminate noise that will impact your analysis
• Timeliness of data: Companies around the world rely on real-time stock quotes, banking transactions, and currency changes to manage their business and gain strategic advantages.  The world is rapidly changing around us and companies need to not only react to market changes quickly, but also need relevant, timely data to predict what will happen in the very near future.

How do you best address these four critical data source requirements?  Our approach is that if you can see the data in a web browser, you can access it.  You can now get 100% data coverage in near real-time for all the relevant data you need.

When you successfully address these four points in your text analysis, your critical business decisions will be more accurate, leading to competitive advantage, growth and profit.  What business would not want that?

I encourage you to listen to the whole podcast on Web Data Services for Text Analytics.  It includes great examples of how companies use Web Data Services to successfully power their business critical Text Analytics business solutions.

By:  Stefan Andreasen