Information Builders Uncovers Business Impact of Social Media Conversations

NEW YORK, NY and GRAPEVINE, TX--(Marketwire - Mar 18, 2013) - Today at the Gartner Business Intelligence and Analytics Summit, Information Builders, a leader in business intelligence (BI) and analytics, information integrity, and integration solutions, announced the launch of WebFOCUS Social Media Analytics. The solution uses data from social media interactions to provide insight into sales and marketing, product quality, and other customer-centric issues, leading to better corporate strategy and new revenue opportunities.

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels have become vital sources for uncovering the voice of the customer. However, the majority of platforms that analyze this data don't link to sales, marketing, or other enterprise data sources because organizations are struggling to tie these conversations back to the bottom line. Information Builders' Social Media Analytics solution addresses this issue, drawing on the uniqueness of the company's integration capabilities to unite social media data with enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and other on-premise or cloud-based information resources. As a result, companies have unprecedented insight into customer sentiment and its impact on sales, brand awareness, and corporate perception. In addition to facilitating deep analysis of structured and unstructured data, the Social Media Analytics solution also enables historical trend reporting and time-dependent analysis. As such, organizations can analyze how customers responded to previous campaigns, products, or services and use this social media intelligence to inform future decisions.

The Social Media Analytics solution uses a customizable self-service BI portal with intuitive dashboards for users to:

• Conduct sentiment analysis on all posts, blogs, and other social media messages
• Mash up content into a single view to immediately detect patterns and trends across channels, geographies, customers, and other categories
• Analyze how spikes in positive and negative sentiment on competitor channels affect company sales
• Determine which products sell best in which locations, and uncover the reasons behind this trend
• Build interactive dashboards and charts demonstrating data correlations
• Extract word frequencies and view visual depictions of written content to identify popular topics

With this information, users have a more holistic view of social media brand perception and can adjust their performance in real time as a result. For example, a retail manager can analyze how a negative customer experience at another store location is playing out across social channels and, as a result, be better prepared to handle any customer inquiries. Because the solution is accessible via the mobile platform, users can obtain and analyze this social media intelligence regardless of their physical location.

"The rise of social media channels has given customers an unprecedented voice and power over brand perception," said Gerald Cohen, president and CEO of Information Builders. "Without the ability to analyze the impact of this voice on campaign effectiveness, sales, and other data, however, companies have been unable to truly capitalize on social media's popularity. Drawing on the strength of Information Builders' data integration capabilities, our Social Media Analytics solution arms our customers with the tools they need to do exactly that. By providing complete insight into what people are saying online and integrating this information with other enterprise data and systems, the solution highlights how social conversations relate back to the state of the business."

About Information Builders
Information Builders helps organizations transform data into business value. Our software solutions for business intelligence and analytics, integration, and data integrity empower people to make smarter decisions, strengthen customer relationships, and drive growth. Our dedication to customer success is unmatched in the industry. That's why tens of thousands of leading organizations rely on Information Builders to be their trusted partner. Founded in 1975, Information Builders is headquartered in New York, NY, with offices around the world, and remains one of the largest independent, privately held companies in the industry. Visit us at informationbuilders.com, follow us on Twitter at @infobldrs, like us on Facebook, and visit our LinkedIn page.