SAP AG introduced a new solution to help organizations gain real-time insights into market trends and customer sentiment. The SAP rapid-deployment solution for sentiment intelligence with SAP HANA is intended to allow users to analyze customer sentiment from social networking sites, communities, wikis, blogs and other sources, and combine the information with CRM data. Users can evaluate customers’ insights through easy-to-read views on their mobile devices, tablets or desktops, enabling them to take immediate action. This is the latest offering from SAP to help customers quickly adopt effective “big data” analytics solutions.
Customers that have had success getting started with big data analytics are the ones that have set out to solve a very specific use case or set out to solve a specific problem, David Jonker, director of marketing for database and technology at SAP, tells DBTA. “The rapid deployment solution for sentiment intelligence does exactly that,” he says. “If you are in marketing and you want to explore big data and how you can leverage big data for your sales and marketing effort start with sentiment intelligence, you can get the business value very quickly. Within 6 weeks, you can have it set up and running, and in the process you are actually deploying core infrastructure that you can use for your big data analytics in other ways. You are taking a very measured step to quick value while at the same time building for the future in terms of your infrastructure.” The net effect, Jonker notes, is that the solution allows users to dip their toes into the big data ocean with a targeted project that will produce quick benefits to the organization.
The SAP rapid-deployment solution for sentiment intelligence with SAP HANA loads text data from Twitter, Facebook, the SAP StreamWork application and any other web channel with a publicly available API. It then applies semantic analysis using text data processing capabilities from SAP Data Services software. Decision-makers can visualize customers’ sentiments toward their products and brands in real time using SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software and the SAP HANA platform. The solution also combines pre-configured content, best practices and pre-defined services to quickly deploy the solution with immediate cost-savings.
“Most companies have been listening and monitoring,” when it comes to social media, observes Swati Sinha director, Solution Marketing, Analytics at SAP. “Where SAP comes in is by going beyond listening and monitoring to help customers convert their big data into information data.” With the solution, sales and marketing departments can analyze large volumes of text data to identify relevant morsels of information and that information can then be integrated with structured data such as sales and marketing campaigns residing in the SAP CRM application for additional insights. Organizations can also evaluate the impact of these campaigns and events on consumer awareness, sentiment, behavior and intention to better understand demand for products and services, or to receive early warning of defects and shortcomings.
SAP has also previously rolled out other bundled SAP rapid deployment solutions aimed at helping customers achieve specific goals while at the same time becoming familiar with big data analytics, says Jonker, such as SAP Predictive Analysis software, which gives business analysts and data scientists a user-friendly, graphically rich tool for predictive modeling and advanced visualization of “big data” in real time when coupled with SAP HANA. Additionally, SAP Visual Intelligence software gives decision-makers and managers self-service tools to explore data across multiple information sources and visualize it in real time with SAP HANA.