Extending Business Intelligence with Text Exploration Technology.
Extending Business Intelligence with Text Exploration Technology
A Whitepaper
Rick F. van der Lans
Independent Business Intelligence Analyst R20/Consultancy
June 2013
Sponsored by InterSystems

Management Summary
A wealth of information is hidden in the vast amounts of data being created every day. The challenge for every organization is to extract valuable business insights from this mountain of data that allows it to, for example, optimize its business processes, improve the level of customer care it offers, personalize products, and improve product development.
Almost every organization knows how to turn their own structured data that has been collected by business processes through the years into valuable insights. Countless reporting and analytical tools are available to assist them.
But what about the textual data that has been gathered in emails, document management systems, call center log files,chat or instant messaging transcripts, and voice transcripts from customer calls? And what about all the external textual data, such as blogs, tweets, and Facebook messages? Most organizations have barely scratched the surface with respect to analyzing textual data. This is a missed opportunity.
This whitepaper describes the latest technology for analyzing textual data, so-called text exploration technology.
Text exploration enriches the palette of technologies already deployed in business intelligence environments.
Table of Contents
1 Management Summary
2 Business Intelligence and Text Exploration
What is Business Intelligence?
Reporting Tools Versus Analytical Tools
Self-Service Tools
Exploration Tools
Text Exploration Tools
3 Textual Data is Available in Abundance
4 Textual Analysis Explained
Use of Text Analysis Today
What Exactly Do We Mean With Analyzing Text?
The Prehistory of Text Analysis
Indexes and Thesauri
Techniques for Stripping Text
5 Text Exploration Technology
The Need for Text Exploration
Three Requirements for Text Exploration
6 InterSystems Corporation and the InterSystems Platform
InterSystems Corporation
The InterSystems Platform
7 How Does iKnow Work?
The Classic Approach of Text Analysis
iKnow’s Approach to Text Exploration
Results of iKnow’s Text Exploration Approach
iKnow and the Three Requirements for Text Exploration
8 The Architecture of iKnow and the InterSystems Platform
Caché
iKnow
DeepSee
Ensemble
Importing Text from Other Sources
9 Two Case Studies
PCS and Social Knowledge
Parnassia
About the Author Rick F. van der Lans
About InterSystems Corporation
Appendix A: Summaries Generated by iKnow of the Whitepaper
Download article (.PDF) Extending Business Intelligence with Text Exploration Technology
Copyright © 2013 R20/Consultancy. All rights reserved. InterSystems Caché, InterSystems Ensemble, InterSystems HealthShare, InterSystems DeepSee, and TrakCare are registered trademarks of InterSystems Corporation. InterSystems iKnow is a trademark of InterSystems Corporation. Trademarks of companies referenced in this document are the sole property of their respective owners.