Netgenesis, Digimine, and other vendors roll out business-intelligence products and services
NetGenesis Corp. this week will debut NetGenesis 5.0, the latest version of its E-commerce business-intelligence software.
NetGenesis competes against a number of E-commerce business-intelligence tools vendors, including Accrue, E.piphany, startup I-Impact, which will unveil its Market Drive E-business analysis software this week, and WebTrends.
But a growing number of vendors offer outsourced E-intelligence services. Also this week, startup DigiMine Inc. will disclose the availability of its hosted data warehousing and data mining services. Last week, WebSideStory Inc. unveiled version 6 of its HitBox Enterprise service, which collects E-commerce data from the Web for analysis.
Startup Quova Inc. this week will roll out a service designed to let companies target content and products based on customers’ geographic locations. And ComScore Networks Inc. is rolling out its Customer Knowledge Platform, a service that helps companies collect behavioral data on Web visitors.
All these tools address a common cause: Where a Web site’s “hit rate” was once the measure of its success or failure, businesses today want to identify their most profitable customers, learn what content drives sales, and judge the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. “Once you start asking more complex questions, you need a more sophisticated analysis package,” says Guy Creese, a senior analyst at the Aberdeen Group.
Allrecipes.com, a Seattle food and community site, began using DigiMine’s services on Sept. 1. Tim Hunt, senior VP of technology and production, says Allrecipes.com went with DigiMine because it wanted to devote its IT resources to other things. “Our core competency isn’t data mining or [Web]-log analysis,” he says.
Meanwhile, Internet entertainment Web site ICast Corp. uses NetGenesis to monitor site traffic, judge content popularity, and determine the effectiveness of referral ads. “A service really isn’t going to understand our business,” says analytics manager Sarah Webber, noting that the company frequently uses NetGenesis for ad hoc queries, while service providers generally provide static reports.
By: Rick Whiting and Beth Bacheldor
Source: Information Week / PDF