The 4th Annual Text Analytics Summit

I had the opportunity to attend the 4th Annual Text Analytics Summit this week in Boston. It was well attended with representation from the vendor community, users, and Industry Analysts. Seth Grimes did a great job moderating the session and providing insight into the world of text analytics. I’d say my biggest take-away from the Summit is that Text Analytics is moving mainstream.  A couple of other observations: “Voice” is a dominant theme – whether it’s voice of the customer or voice of the market, there is a great deal of focus on understanding that voice. I would personally like to see more activity in other applications of text analytics. There are so many other business problems to solve with this technology. One big one that I expect to see more activity around is fraud detection in the Insurance industry. Sentiment analysis was the capability that was discussed the most. There are obviously many ways to apply sentiment analysis to create value and Lexalytics and Jodange had very impressive products in this space.  There were a number of great products on display at the Summit. Mainstays like Attensity, IBM, Clarabridge and others showed off their capabilities. The exhibit area was crowded for the full two days. The presentations were packed with information and very engaging. As I mentioned above, I’m seeing a greater awareness of text analytics in the Insurance industry as it relates to fraud detection. The ROI associated with finding fraud earlier in the process is very compelling. I’d be very interested in your thoughts regarding your uses of text analytics. Here’s a list of possible solution areas that we’re seeing: Voice of the Employee, Customer, Community and Market; Patient Safety, Drug Discovery, Clinical Analysis; Law Enforcement, Intelligence Analysis; Litigation Support / eDiscovery; SOX Compliance, Corporate Governance; Investment Analysis; Marketing Campaign Analysis, Advertising Analysis; Claims Analysis, Warranty Analysis; Product Innovation; Reputation Management; and Intelligent Messaging. Let me know what you are seeing and if you have any experiences with any of the above that you can share with us.