Daily Archives: September 8, 2009

Bazaarvoice, the market and technology leader in hosted social commerce applications that drive sales, today unveiled new Social Network Accelerators to help its clients effectively leverage social networks in their social commerce strategies. Bazaarvoice, which pioneered the social commerce market, launched ShoutIt! in 2007 to help marketers amplify the voices of their most influential customers on social networks. The company continues to lead the industry in defining new ways to maximize measurable ROI from social initiatives.

With the new Social Network Accelerators, Bazaarvoice ensures that companies achieve more from social commerce by using social networks like Facebook and Twitter as a distribution channel for user-generated content created on brand sites. The new capabilities also help companies strategically plug into social networks to drive participation and gain valuable customer data that can be used to optimize the user experience on eCommerce and brand sites.

“Twitter is posting 1,928% year-over-year growth. Facebook has more than 87 million unique monthly visitors and is the fourth most visited website in the world. Clearly there is a tremendous marketing opportunity in these numbers, but most efforts to date have fallen flat,” said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. “Our new Social Network Accelerators give brands a blueprint for plugging into social networks in the right way to drive sales. It all starts with engaging users through social commerce applications such as Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, and Stories – and gives brands an integrated strategy to tap into social networks for better distribution, participation, and profile information.”

“Bazaarvoice has been a consistently forward-thinking partner in terms of social media,” said Dmitri Siegel, Managing Director of Urban Outfitters. “We’re very excited to continue to work together to engage our community through social networks and get measurable results from our social commerce implementation. We are very happy to have Bazaarvoice as a key strategic partner in our integrated social strategy.”

Like all Bazaarvoice offerings, the Social Network Accelerators are designed to meet the needs of large brands with the industry’s best technology, client services, community moderation, analytics, and partner integrations.

New Capabilities:

In conjunction with the announcement of its new Social Network Accelerators, Bazaarvoice is coupling new best practices through Community Managers who are dedicated to helping clients gather more user-generated content to further sales and recommend how to do it in a measurable way. Additionally, through its Radius partner program, Bazaarvoice integrates with a broad ecosystem of more than 30 partners in order to help its clients accelerate social commerce adoption and maximize measurable ROI.

“We’re hearing directly from clients that the social networks are important, but it’s been difficult to extract any value historically,” said Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice. “Advertisers are rushing in with the same broadcast medium strategy, and it fails to work in these intimate environments. We’re connecting the reach and visibility of social networks with the relevance and structure of our Social Commerce platform. This will help our clients turn this complex new medium into measurable results.”

About Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice’s Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions have served more than 60 billion pieces of customer-generated content on more than 575 brand web sites like Best Buy, Costco, Dell, Macy’s, Overstock, P&G, Panasonic, QVC, and USAA in 36 countries. The company connects organizations to their influencers through a unique network that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe, enabling authentic customer-powered marketing. Through syndication, analytics, partnerships, and consulting, Bazaarvoice brings the voice of the customer to the center of their clients’ business strategy, proving “social” can drive measured revenue growth and cost savings for manufacturing, retail, travel, and financial services companies. Headquartered in Austin, the company has offices in London, Paris, and Singapore. For more information and access to client success stories, visit www.bazaarvoice.com, read the blog at www.bazaarblog.com, and follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bazaarvoice.

To prevent 2009 from becoming the “Year of the Phish” in Asia Pacific (as opposed to the Year of the Ox), SAS, the leader in business analytics, has launched innovative new software to fight fraud, but also to better understand customer sentiment. SAS® Social Network Analysis and SAS’ social media analysis solution help organizations uncover hidden relationships between individuals and data; detect patterns and trends; and mine text and other unstructured data.

From phishing and skimming to claims fraud and money laundering, increasingly sophisticated fraud techniques are causing huge losses and harming customer relationships. So too are negative online comments that quickly spread through Web sites, blogs, Twitter and other channels, resulting in lost business and damaged brands.

The rapid adoption of social media has given the public a platform for expression and generated huge amounts of data on customer likes and dislikes. Financial transactions also generate vast quantities of data, with potential fraud buried deep. In this era of relationships, the same business analytics that sift through data volumes to detect hidden fraud patterns can also strengthen brands by revealing insights in customer interactions.

“Today’s interconnected world generates mind-boggling data volumes,” said David Hughes, SAS’ Vice President of Asia Pacific. “In 2008, data from Web sites, emails, RFID chips, networks, YouTube videos, industrial processors, and other sources soared to 487 exabytes1 — nearly 500 billion gigabytes. With data growth predicted to accelerate, organizations need an intelligence strategy to uncover its value. This data is a treasure trove of information about how customers interact and influence one another, and about operations, finances, compliance, product quality and more. Organizations that use it intelligently will survive and thrive. Those that do not will fail.”

Mining social networks

SAS Social Network Analysis applies link analysis to fraud detection and prevention, marketing, customer segmentation and more. Released recently in the USA, it is now available in Asia Pacific. Using it within the SAS® Fraud Framework, insurers and government agencies can pinpoint suspicious individuals and transactions and stop additional fraud. Telecommunications and bank marketers can measure and predict the influence of different customer segments on acquisition, retention and up-sells. With this intelligence, companies can boost new offerings by initially targeting the highest-influence segments.

“Social network analysis software can help companies delve deeper into their customer and transactional data to discover patterns, linkages and connections,” said Avivah Litan, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. “Effective social network analysis is based on very strong analytics such as data mining, and sophisticated visualization technology. In making the invisible visible, social network analysis is an effective and emerging tool for fighting fraud but also for better understanding customers.”

To fight fraud, SAS Social Network Analysis helps investigators go beyond transaction and customer views to analyze all related activities and relationships within a network: shared addresses, phone numbers, employment information, account ownership and other transactional data. The software’s visualization capabilities speed access to full customer details and all related parties and networks, resulting in quicker case assessments and better dossiers. Analyzing networks graphically makes it easier to identify key opinion leaders and associated communities of interest, and uncover previously unknown relationships.

SAS Social Network Analysis includes patent-pending technology, Net-CHAID, which helps fraud investigators and brand and marketing managers examine and manipulate very large clusters for easier analysis. SAS CEO Jim Goodnight helped write code for this technology.

“Once they identify a suspicious individual, investigators need a quick and accurate way to discover that person’s networks. SAS Social Network Analysis provides this important ability,” said John Brocklebank, Vice President of SAS Solutions OnDemand and head of the SAS Advanced Analytics Laboratory. “Are they linked to other risky individuals? Is the institution exposed monetarily as a result? It’s critical to know if it’s an isolated individual or part of a criminal conspiracy.”

Analyzing social media

SAS’ social media analysis solution — coming in the fourth quarter — is powered by Sentiment Analysis Manager from SAS’ Teragram division. Through natural language processing and text mining, the software captures consumer product reviews and brand comments from mainstream sites such as Amazon and Overstock, message boards, and social media outlets like blogs and Twitter.

Sentiment Analysis Manager automatically locates and analyzes digital content in real time to determine the writer’s emotion, spot changing trends, and uncover potential product defects at an early stage. The software searches and evaluates positive, mixed and negative phrases in text, including tricky phrasing like, “this is not the best camera available.”

“Leaving online comments and posting reviews on computers, books, and many other products is becoming more and more common. So too is the use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. This trend has caught the eye of marketers who are wrestling with how to include social media as part of their overall marketing outreach,” said IDC analyst Sue Feldman. “Using text mining, natural language processing and other emerging technologies like those found in Sentiment Analysis Manager from SAS’ Teragram division, marketers can glean intelligence from these sites, gain a more complete view of their brands’ reputation, and better understand the sentiments of their customers.”

R&D Innovation

Development of SAS Social Network Analysis was led by the SAS Advanced Analytics Lab, a premier analytical consulting group formed in 2007. “Working closely with customers and SAS R&D, the Advanced Analytics Lab is one of SAS’ many centers of innovation. It leverages SAS’ core analytical expertise to apply the latest statistical and mathematical techniques to solve important customer problems,” said Brocklebank.

Today’s announcement was made at The Premier Business Leadership Series event in Singapore. Presented by SAS, The Series event brings together more than 650 public and private sector attendees from across the Asia-Pacific region and around the world to share ideas and knowledge on critical business management issues. (See event press kit at http://www.sas.com/singapore09.)

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

After extensive planning, strategizing, and consulting, Capsule, the leading provider of medical device connectivity, has announced that they are expanding their marketing program to include social media. From Twitter, to Capsule’s very own Facebook fan page, Capsule is ready to engage and gain new insights in order to better serve the clinical and HIT community. Capsule’s main goal is to be a trusted source in the industry and to provide useful content and meaningful commentary and feedback. They plan to do so by engaging in meaningful conversations on topics related to connectivity, patient association, clinical workflow requirements, HIT and patient safety and providing their own contributions as well.
“The marketing team is really excited and eager to engage in social media,” says Heather Hitchcock, Director of Marketing at Capsule. “We want to let the medical and IT communities know that we are here to answer questions, to share ideas and get feedback, and to be supportive of their choices involving device connectivity solutions.”

Research has shown that many healthcare vendors are not actively involved in social media yet. This is likely due to the strict regulations and policies that public companies have. As a privately held organization, Capsule has the advantage of being able to engage with the community and to respond to their suggestions more quickly. “We plan to take a more personalized approach to the community and hope to serve as a trusted source for providing information related to our technology, to the market, and to the health care industry as a whole,” adds Hitchcock.

The market for healthcare information technology now represents a $36.7 billion per year industry. It therefore seems more important than ever before to find alternative ways to gather and share information with the community. Social media could be an ideal vehicle for such sharing. In fact, research shows that the health care community agrees. According to Edison Media Research, over 250 hospitals currently use some form of social media. Facebook, for example, is a growing phenomenon, with over 175 million active users, including 80 hospitals with their own Facebook pages. Twitter™ is another trend that is rapidly growing; currently, over 160 U.S. hospitals have Twitter accounts. Additionally, 131 hospitals in the U.S. publish videos to their individual YouTube channel. So it would appear that the social media trend in healthcare is only growing and that Capsule is poised to be in the right place to take advantage of this trend.

“Capsule believes it is important to become an active participant in all that the social media community has to offer, especially since the trends in health care are rapidly changing. Technology continues to evolve; unfortunately, often technological changes don’t take into account how they are going to affect the clinicians who are asked to adopt these technologies. We therefore believe it is essential to hear from the community on what they need, hear what their opinions are related to technological advancements, and to respond appropriately to those suggestions. Social media is just one more way for us to reach the community we serve and we are excited to embark on this journey,” Hitchcock concluded. “Social media could be the wave of the future. Only time will tell for sure but it will be fun to watch.”

How to Join Capsule’s online community

Capsule is hopeful that members of the clinical and HIT community will join our efforts to share ideas, gain feedback, answer questions and simply learn from one another. To follow Capsule please visit us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. You can also visit our website at www.capsuletech.com for direct links to our social media pages and for the latest articles, blog posts, and news that we have found on the web related to device connectivity. We look forward to sharing with you.

About Capsule

For more than 12 years, Capsule has been the world’s leading, award-winning provider of solutions for medical device connectivity. The company has established market leadership through its 510(k) cleared software and medical grade hardware products, its unique expertise in device protocols and firmware, and its strong partnerships with major medical device manufacturers and HIS companies. Capsule’s solutions are proven, with over 415 installations at leading healthcare institutions worldwide, and its technology is secure, with the largest device driver library available in the industry — over 400 and growing and proven connectivity to over 30,000 devices and over 187 billion bits of clinical data transmitted.

As the leading provider in the industry, Capsule received the Frost & Sullivan Global Technology Leadership Award in 2008 and Deloitte Technology Fast 50 and Fast 500 EMEA Awards 2 years in a row. And Capsule’s recent launch of the new Capsule Neuron(TM) provides even further proof of their continued leadership and dedication to improving device connectivity around the world. This innovative platform adapts to leverage existing technologies and clinical workflows and features Enterprise Device Connectivity solutions for integration across the enterprise. For more information, please visit the company’s Web site at http://www.capsuletech.com/ or contact the Company’s U.S. Marketing & Public Relations at 978-482-2337.