2009 September | Business Intelligence Blog

Leveraging Web Data to Anticipate Real Estate Market Trends

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

In early September, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said home prices have another leg to drop, perhaps another 25% over the next two years as high unemployment levels continue. While S&P/Case-Shiller shies away from predictions, David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee, thinks Ms. Whitney’s estimate is too negative. Moody’s expects a drop of about 10% from current levels.

How could web data help you determine which (if any) of these predictions is accurate before Commerce Department figures are released?

Monitoring, collecting, and aggregating precise real estate data points from the web can help you anticipate market trends as part of your day-to-day routine.

Imagine the unique insight you’d gain by automatically extracting and aggregating thousands of data points every 24 hours from home builder, MLS, for sale by owner, and/or foreclosure websites. In 1 place you’d be able to view average price, average price per square foot, total count of inventory, data on employment, interest rates, rental prices, sentiment and other quantitative or qualitative variables you deem important. This information could be further segmented by price point and region.

As examples, the 2 screen shots below are the result of Connotate’s intelligent software Agents collecting thousands of real estate data points from 8 U.S. Homebuilders every 24 hours. This data gives unique insight into new home sale pricing trends before Commerce Department figures or Earnings are released.

Agents monitor and collect data on your behalf

The intelligent Agent technology interacts with data sources the way you and I would, but on an automated basis — and at a disciplined and scalable pace (that would be impossible for us to do ourselves). Agents are smart, tireless and effective, and may provide you with unique insight.

Those firms equipped with the tools to transform the infinite Web (and internal sources) into a focused set of actionable, highly personalized and differentiated data will be the clear winners in this turbulent and competitive market and well beyond.

For more information on creating real-time feeds of real estate data (or any other kind of data feed) contact Connotate at 732-296-8844 or try out a free 2-week trial of Connotate’s On-Demand Library Beta.

Posted in General, Intelligent Agent Technology, Agent Applications in Finance | Comments Off

What can Fantasy Football Sites teach Content Oriented Businesses and Intelligence Professionals?

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

The participation in and popularity of fantasy football has exploded over the last decade. By some estimates the industry grosses more than $1 billion a year.

In early September I began gearing up for a twelve team fantasy football league that uses an auction style draft. With little spare time, I wasn’t looking forward to the annual task of manually collecting and aggregating predicted stats, point totals and other data on the top 200 players/defenses from disparate sources and monitoring news sites for player news and updates that might make them more or less valuable.

ESPN.com came to the rescue eliminating the tedious tasks that drain 40% or more of my time preparing for the fantasy football auction. ESPN provided not only player’s aggregated point totals for the season based on my league’s scoring but also links to really useful, up-to-date player information and alerts about breaking news.

This illustrates two important lessons for content oriented businesses and intelligence professionals:

Content oriented businesses can differentiate themselves by offering a one-stop solution that is comprehensive (yet actionable), timely and relevant to their consumers needs.
Being able to focus your time strategizing versus collecting and aggregating data from the web can be the difference between being in the game versus prospering.

In all the economic gloom many people have forgotten that we live in the most extraordinary technological age in history. While my fantasy competitors had access to the same ESPN data as I did, in the real world, your competition is (or may soon be) using intelligent Agent technology to monitor, extract, aggregate and normalize data, text and graphics from tens of thousands of Web Sites or internal sources– effortlessly, for competitive advantage.

To learn more about how intelligent Agent technology can help you gain a competitive advantage in the real world visit Connotate.com.

Interested to see an example of how I used intelligent Agents to help me with fantasy football last year? If so, please view the chart below (in Internet Explorer 7). In summary Agents collected and graphed data on the number of touches (defined as the number of handoffs and receptions combined) by player helping me figure out who to start and/or pick-up. My take away from the example below was to sit both Hightower and James towards the end of the season because the Cardinals were increasingly passing the ball.

Unfortunately the data source I used to collect this data last year isn’t available….so if anyone knows where I can find data on the number of handoffs and receptions combined by player for this season please send me a comment and let me know.

Posted in General, Intelligent Agent Technology | No Comments »

How can Your Business Benefit from Using Twitter?

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Twitter, the social networking site that allows users to post short, 140 character updates on what they’re doing right now, passed a big milestone in July. According to comScore, Twitter passed 50 million unique visitors worldwide in July.

How can your business benefit from using Twitter?

In March 2009 Gartner released a report listing 3 ways enterprises are using Twitter to benefit their company. In summary:

Direct - Using Twitter for marketing, public relations, and customer relations purposes. JetBlue offers Twitter-based customer service (they even provide the names of the customer support employees currently working).
Indirect - Letting employees use Twitter to enhance their own personal reputations; as the company’s reputation is also enhanced by proxy. This list of Forrester analysts on Twitter offers a great example.
Inbound signaling- Tuning into Twitter conversations to get early warnings of problems, collect feedback on product issues or ideas, or monitor the competition.

How can your organization automate the monitoring of inbound signals on Twitter to?

Mitigate information leaks (and other potential brand liabilities)
Spot opportunities to engage consumers
Derive brand sentiment (or other intelligence) over time from what might otherwise be an information overload

With Connotate’s Twitter Search Agent – live sample Twitter Agents we have running on the swine flu, the Beige Book, and Obama’s health care plan can be seen below — keeping on top of Twitter is easy.

Multiple Twitter Search Agents can be created, each with their own search term, to keep your content segmented by topic; or use multiple search terms for a single Twitter Search Agent to combine your deliveries into a single view. Have agent results delivered to your email or to the Connotate Portal. Want to try creating Twitter Agent(s) for yourself? Try out a free 2-week trial of Connotate’s On-Demand Library Beta.

There are plenty of strategies for approaching Twitter. Signing up for a free trial of Connotate’s Twitter Search Agent is a great way to dip your toes into the water.

To sign up for Connotate’s free ODL trial visit our sign up page here.

Posted in General, Intelligent Agent Technology | No Comments »

Optimizing Pricing Strategy Wins Back-to-School Shoppers this Season

Friday, September 11th, 2009

With many students returning to school this week, it’s a great time to look at back-to-school shopping trends and the lessons they offer product managers, retailers, and shopping search engines this holiday season.

Back-to-school spending (second only to the winter holidays in the USA), offers a great opportunity to boost sales and traffic. How could price intelligence be used to achieve these dual objectives? “As people focus primarily on price, strong promotions and deep discounts will ultimately win over back-to-school shoppers this year,” said Tracy Mullin, President and CEO of NRF.

Let’s take college text books for example. Students are strapped for cash so they’ll check the local college bookstore, Amazon and a plethora of other budget conscientious options for purchasing their books. Being on top of your competitor’s price and inventory can help you better adjust your pricing to attract those budget-conscious students.

Automating the collection, sharing and publication of key product and pricing indicators could be used to:

Better educate consumers and provide more up-to-date information (increasing the stickiness of a site while decreasing reliance on employees and other companies to update feeds).
Drive business decisions on product, pricing, distribution channels and promotion to optimize margins and profits.

As the leader of Web-monitoring and mining solutions, Connotate Agents access, share and deliver pricing intelligence at the speed of the Web. Pricing applications include:

Price change alerts– alerts to targeted data about discounts and promotions within minutes
Product pricing – track product pricing trends of specific items or product lines across channels and regions using the sources you rely on
Consumer sentiment – track blog and news sites for product sentiment.

Consumers will soon begin shopping for the 2009 holiday season. With the pressure of the economy, holiday shoppers will likely spend time:

Researching products online and looking for amazing deals
Checking for coupons and sales before hitting the stores.

If you’re a retailer, many potential customers will be lost because a competitors’ price is slightly below yours. If you’re a shopping search engine, potential customers could be lost because a competitors’ site is more informative, engaging or up-to-date. Optimizing timing of price promotions and tracking and publishing consumer sentiment or other unique product information from sources across the web are strategies that can help you boost sales and traffic this holiday season.

Interested in tracking information from the Web? Sign up now for a free 2 week trial of Connotate’s On Demand Library Beta.

Posted in General, Intelligent Agent Technology | No Comments »

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Archive for September, 2009

Leveraging Web Data to Anticipate Real Estate Market Trends

What can Fantasy Football Sites teach Content Oriented Businesses and Intelligence Professionals?

How can Your Business Benefit from Using Twitter?

Optimizing Pricing Strategy Wins Back-to-School Shoppers this Season

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Archive for September, 2009

Leveraging Web Data to Anticipate Real Estate Market Trends

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What can Fantasy Football Sites teach Content Oriented Businesses and Intelligence Professionals?

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How can Your Business Benefit from Using Twitter?

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Optimizing Pricing Strategy Wins Back-to-School Shoppers this Season

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