Building a Database to Predict Customer Needs

Since the early 1990s, organizations have used data warehouses and data-mining tools for business planning and decision-making. For example, more than 95 percent of the 250 companies surveyed by the Meta Group in 1995 said they planned to build a data warehouse, up from only 15 percent in 1994. Data warehouses and data-mining tools are able to provide a retrospective look at customer behavior through online analytical processing and other common statistical tools, but businesses want to forecast production changes and anticipate customer needs. Continuum Software, Inc., decided to construct a predictive modeling tool that the average business user could use easily. The technology was seen as too high risk, however, to attract private sources of capital, and so, in 1997, Continuum applied for and received an Advanced Technology Program (ATP) award. By mid-2000, Continuum's research in predictive models had led to the development of patented technology that classified tens of millions of web pages solely on the basis of predicted user interest. This technology also aided in the development of a classification tool that automatically classifies content from any text-based electronic document and assigns it to a topic to aid in the organization of electronic data. During 2001, Continuum (which by then had changed its name to TopicalNet) acquired several companies. TopicalNet's ATP-supported technology and its subsequent acquisitions have allowed the company to provide its customers with traffic verification, analysis, and research solutions for the World Wide Web.