The QuestionPro Blog: How To “Engineer” Your Unstructured Data

How To “Engineer” Your Unstructured Data

Posted: 17 Jan 2011 03:30 PM PST

Engineers are all about structure. Especially the civil engineers. I should know. I’m married to one. It’s fascinating (and boring at times) to know how much research is done just to build a road, tunnel, or bridge. That includes sample testing, design, and quality assurance to ensure the dirt below the foundation is structurally stable enough to build on and to make recommendations on which materials to use. Failure to do so will result in major catastrophes and lower the quality of life in particular environments. My husband loves to tell people that “engineers saves more lives than doctors.”

Taking everything I’ve soaked in about engineering I thought about how we as researchers may apply it to the research industry. Obviously the more structure we have in place the more efficient we will be in gathering, segmenting, and analyzing data as well. With the growth of the internet and social media marketing many companies are wondering how to better understand what clients are saying when they are leaving comments on the company blog or speaking to them via Twitter or Facebook. “How can I compare my open-ended comment answers from a survey with what Facebook fans are saying?”

In the old days text analysis will be out-sourced to a research firm with a coding department where actual people would thumb through paper surveys that were sent in the mail and mark/sort them according to the categories set forth by the client. These days new text analytics technologies are popping up everywhere to fill the void and cut costs while allowing analysts more control over the process. Trend watchers say text analytics technologies is one of the top 15 trends to watch in the next 3 years.

If you are interested in learning more about this growing trend and want to know more about how to bring “structure” to your unstructured data I urge you to join us for tomorrow’s webinar:

Tuesday 1/18/10 at 9:00 AM PST

Unlock the Power of Text Analysis with DiscoverText

Dr. Stu Shulman, President and CEO of Texifter, LLC, will present the following:

* How to augment your research with powerful, time-saving text tools
* Import thousands of documents from various sources and formats
* Discover information using powerful software and human techniques
* How easy it is to get started!

We will then show you an example using existing data from SurveyAnalytics and how easy it is to send your text files to DiscoverText, set-up codes, and reporting capabilities.

The session with conclude with a Question and Answer Session.
All slides and recording of webinar will be available on blog.surveyanalytics.com within 24 hrs of the presentation.

Space is limited so register today: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/967147715

About The Presenter:

Dr. Stuart Shulman, CEO and founder of Texifter, LLC is a spin-out company based on text analysis research He is also the founder of QDAP-Pitt and current Director of QDAP-UMass. Over the last 10 years, Dr. Shulman has conducted research primarily in the domain of electronic rulemaking, with a specific focus on the development of human language tools for reviewing large numbers of public comments. Over the past three years, he has been sole inventor on five distinct software applications that support tasks ranging from text classification, blog capture, and manuscript review management, to the development of better annotation for improving optical character recognition. New research focuses on the detection of threats and novel ideas communicated in public comments, blogs and other media. Texifter is a vehicle for the commercialization of new tools developed in the QDAP labs.

Timing is the Next BIG Small Business Trend

Posted: 17 Jan 2011 04:03 AM PST

I have a knack for picking movies in a series that have some kind of common thread. Now, I don’t do this intentionally. It just happens. In fact, I’m not even aware that I’ve done that until we watch the films, a pattern emerges that seems almost eerie.

Well, apparently, I do the same thing with books. Over the last couple of months I’ve either picked up a book at a books store or received a review copy from a publisher and started reading — only to find that they have a certain theme or lesson that I couldn’t have designed better myself.

This month the theme looks to be “Timing.”

Shift!: Harness The Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers. What if you could predict the exact moment when your customer would be most interested in buying your product or service and then you’d be there at the right place at the right time? Talk about using observation as an analytical tool. Craig Elias decided to delve deeper into his successes and discovered a magical window of opportunity — actually he calls it a “Window of Dissatisfaction” where his prospects were most open to change and listening to his offer.

Watch my interview with Craig Elias here and check out my expanded book review.

Selling to the C-Suite is a book I couldn’t resist off the Amazon “You might like this” recommendations. And I was right. There is no shortage of sales books about how to sell to the CEO – but this particular one is based on in-depth-interviews with over 500 companies. Not only that, but when you buy the book, you’ll get tons of templates and tools that you can use in your preparation for the sales meeting with the CEO.

So, can you guess what the KEY learning was in THIS book? TIMING, of course. CEOs get involved early in the buying cycle — while they are still thinking strategically about the problem. The idea is for you (as the seller) to have done your homework on what issues your potential customers might be having and focus your selling on the problem they are trying to solve and not the solution that you offer (just yet).

I’ve already told you about The 24-Hour Customer. It’s one of my favorite books for 2010 because of it’s focus on time. In my previous article, I gave you lots of examples from the book about how companies used time and time slicing to squeeze themselves into the ever smaller bits of time that customers have to allocate.

Have you noticed a “Timing” theme too? In what ways has timing affected market research?