Edmunds.com to Identify and Analyze Information in Online Discussion Forums
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Aug. 9, 2004--| Attensity PowerDrill Helps Pave the Way for New Revenue Streams, Including Enhanced Early Warning Systems for Automotive Manufacturers |
Attensity, an innovator in unstructured data applications, today announced that its patented Attensity PowerDrill(TM) is now in use at Edmunds.com, the premier online resource for automotive information. The most advanced information investigation application available, Attensity PowerDrill allows organizations such as Edmunds.com to quickly analyze vast amounts of text-based data and immediately discover linkages that form important and previously undetectable patterns.
Most organizations are overwhelmed by massive amounts of information in the form of field reports, customer satisfaction surveys, e-mail and more. Until now, analysis of this rich, text-based information has required significant human intervention and been limited by ad-hoc query and search techniques. With a substantial editorial staff, a huge online community of automotive buyers and professional moderators directing online discussions, Edmunds.com possesses a wealth of information of value to consumers and automotive manufacturers alike, but because of the sheer volume of unstructured data, it has been labor intensive for them to quickly spot common trends and issues.
"Our online forums are an especially timely, comprehensive way to capture information about particular vehicles and related topics directly from consumers," said Kerry Kim, Director of Syndicated Applications at Edmunds.com. "We have always appreciated their potential, and anticipate that Attensity PowerDrill will allow us to more efficiently extract value from these massive quantities of content -- both structured and unstructured -- and turn it into information that our customers can use. Our ability to explore and mine data based on the relationships contained will enhance our ability to market both early-warning systems and consumer product intelligence back to automotive manufacturers."
Attensity PowerDrill delivers a completely unique approach to information investigation and analysis in verbatim text. Using sophisticated linguistic technologies to extract the individuals, actions and objects described in free-form text, Attensity PowerDrill then organizes information into a relational database that can be combined with other structured content and easily explored. The product features a dynamic user interface that allows users to quickly sort through even vast amounts of data with the utmost granularity. Attensity has already secured five patents on the software's underlying technology.
"Attensity PowerDrill is the first element of our software suite designed to help companies unlock the power of text. It is also the only solution on the market that enables organizations to quickly discover critical information by interactively exploring and performing 'what-if' analysis on text joined with structured data," said Craig Norris, CEO at Attensity. "With Attensity PowerDrill, organizations like Edmunds.com can immediately start putting all of their text-based information to use. It helps them spot new trends and critical events, and opens up the door to any number of possibilities in terms of new product offerings and improved customer care."
Easy to Customize, Simple to Use
Attensity PowerDrill seamlessly handles "noisy" information, including incorrect grammar and syntax, misspellings, abbreviations and unknown terms, and can be quickly customized to meet the needs of any organization. It supports input sources from any JDBC compliant database, text files, HTML sources, CSV documents and even web sites. Users simply select specific sources for analysis, and then use the software's intuitive interface to query data by people, locations, entities and actions.
Attensity PowerDrill is also the first solution that allows organizations to easily categorize issues into areas of interest. For instance, a commercial organization might have categories for sentiment and product failure, whereas a government organization might have categories for weapon or location. Categorization is stored in CSV format for simplified modification and import of existing product hierarchies or taxonomies, and query-based results can be exported into CSV compliant format for pivot table analysis and charting using Microsoft Excel or similar tools.
Attensity PowerDrill is easy to deploy and users can be trained in a matter of minutes. It operates on any Windows-based PC and supports Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
About Attensity
Attensity Corporation is an innovator in unstructured data applications for commercial enterprises and government agencies. Attensity's solutions are the first to join structured and unstructured data, enabling organizations to perform analytics that speed response to critical events and issues that, until now, have been difficult to detect and resolve. For more information, please visit www.attensity.com.
Attensity and Attensity PowerDrill are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Attensity Corporation. All other company or product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective organizations.