The Dawn of a New Era—
Meaning Based Computing
By Randy Cairns
Leaders of Global 2000 companies operate in a world of high-stakes risk and reward. Consider the following scenarios:
- The product you recently recalled suddenly becomes the target of a well-coordinated and damaging attack on social media sites.
- Your chief competitor just sued you—and you need to know within 48 hours whether to fight or settle.
- A hip celebrity shows up on blogs and video sites wearing your latest apparel item, and you need to move quickly to capitalize on the buzz.
- You are about to launch that “bet the company” marketing campaign. But do you really know which messages and ads will move the market—and how to most effectively target each of your customer segments?
A new movement is on the rise—based on the premise that we now live in an era of unstructured data—and is designed to help businesses and governments succeed in a seemingly chaotic world. Your customers and your employees live in this world—a world of emails, blogs, video, social networking sites, and call center conversations—rather than one in which data is squirreled away in rigid, structured databases.
This is the future of information computing, and represents a fundamental shift in how businesses and people interact with information. A fundamental shift requires a fundamentally different approach, called Meaning Based Computing (MBC). This movement is universal, sweeping every industry, powering corporate growth as well as proactively eliminating organizational risk.
Customers Do Not Send You a Database
The customer database—with its neat rows and columns, historical data, and incomplete picture—is fast becoming less relevant in today’s world. Customers are now in control of how they communicate with or about your business—on Twitter, Facebook, and You Tube; on mobile devices; and via email, activity on your website, and conversations with your call center.
Meaning Based Computing recognizes that all these forms of unstructured data represent a bountiful set of information to be mined and understood, and then acted upon, in real time. Next-generation MBC technologies connect to these various forms of information, recognize relationships and concepts, and then automatically trigger action across all customer-facing channels.
For instance, after observing a dramatic spike in positive sentiment on Twitter around a particular product line, a company automatically updates its homepage to give that product more prominent billing. The company then tests which messages about that product are most effective in engaging customers on its website, and then passes along those insights to agents in the call center, and updates its online advertising campaigns. By injecting this understanding throughout every phase of the marketing cycle, a business can maximize revenue across all channels.
Do You Know What’s in Your Data? Really?
We now live in a world where corporate events can quickly turn catastrophic for a business. General Counsels can lose their jobs over a “smoking gun” email or voice recording that emerges during a high-profile case. The problem quickly spills over to the CMO, who has to do damage control for the brand. And finally the CFO feels the pain, as sales drop as a result of the crisis, and he or she must manage a loss of investor confidence.
And the “kernel” that started it all? An email or voice mail—a piece of unstructured data that may live in any number of systems throughout a global corporation. Meaning Based Computing helps General Counsels, CIOs, CMOs, and CFOs protect their business by delivering an automatic understanding of an organization’s entire set of data. The world’s largest banks and over 1,500 law firms rely on MBC technology to manage risk and maintain compliance.
Advanced MBC technology can index all forms of a company’s data, and recognizes relationships between various words and concepts. This yields a myriad of critical applications in the fields of eDiscovery, records management, and archiving, and is a powerful asset when a company is trying to understand if it is culpable for illegal behavior. For instance, MBC technologies can identify “code words” used by employees to describe illicit activity.
Meaning Based Computing recognizes that all these forms of unstructured data represent
a bountiful set of information to be mined and understood, and then acted upon, in real time.
Drive Growth and Profits with Meaning Based Computing
The Meaning Based Computing movement is delivering powerful results for businesses and governments around the world:
- A leading American car rental company has quadrupled its online revenue by understanding, acting on, and optimizing its content and offers to customers.
- A global supermarket giant increased online sales five-fold by segmenting site visitors and delivering targeted, relevant content to members of each group.
- A leading home improvement supply retailer formed an automatic understanding of its entire constantly changing set of data. By understanding the “meaning” within its information, the company is always instantly prepared to respond to any lawsuit or compliance reporting project, saving the company money and helping it achieve better legal outcomes.
- An Asian government seeks to better protect its citizens from another SARS outbreak by analyzing patterns in information coursing through hospitals, media outlets, and social networking sites. By identifying patterns earlier, the government’s state health organization can act quickly to reduce the impact of an outbreak.
Autonomy—the Pioneer of Meaning Based Computing
Founded over a decade ago by the world’s leading researchers in pattern-matching technologies at Cambridge University, Autonomy has pioneered the Meaning Based Computing movement. Today, over 20,000 customers depend on Autonomy technology for a range of business applications, all designed to understand the meaning in unstructured data. This unique and powerful technology has fueled Autonomy’s tremendous growth over the past decade, and enabled the company to establish a leadership position in multiple markets.
To learn more about what Meaning Based Computing can do for you, please visit www.autonomy.com.
