In the Information Age, data-driven decision making gives the competitive edge for organisations. Traditionally, companies used Quantitative data analysis to understand key trends and forecast future outcomes. This paradigm is now shifting towards mining insights from voluminous unstructured data.


A Simple UseCase

To understand the actual value of analysing unstructured data, let us take the case of customer experience in the mobile industry and see how analysing textual data opens up new perceptions for making smarter decisions.

The smartphone industry is evolving at a rapid pace, and the shelf life of a product has come down from a couple of years to countable months. New phone models get released every day! Let us see how “Contextual Analysis of  Textual data” opens up new dimensions for taking product decisions. Major handset manufacturers release their flagship models under a brand name every year and bet largely on its success rate. Nexus, Galaxy and “i” series are few examples of this scenario.

Every smartphone manufacturer wants to make a better product than its predecessor model, solve all its problems/improvements suggested by their consumers and, more importantly, wants to understand in what areas their competitors outperform theirs.

Given this scenario, time to hit the market is extremely short and hence desperate to get the usage reports to consume the customer feedback in a short period.

Public review forums and customer service centre data, (which is majorly available in the form of text) are vital information sources for mining customer feedback and recommendations. In the case of public reviews, you not only get access to yours but also your rivals. Now that you have access to this type of data and if you could set up a powerful text analytics team that can mine all this and come back with reports similar to this, Can you not get actionable Insights?

Compare Competition


Customer’s thoughts on the different Aspects


Change in Customer’s Requirements across Geographies

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Tag Cloud explaining the actual pain points


As one can see, a basic text analysis can help one to get valuable Insights in a short  time that can help businesses to

  • Keep competition closer within the radar.
  • Realise maximum revenue from a new product
  • Become a Company that is driven by the consumers and not by mere hypothesis.

Though these are some of the fundamental capabilities of text analytics, you can build a more robust analysis that could provide vital insights into decision making.

“Quantitative Analysis can make a company smarter, but Qualitative will create the most valuable company that can survive in this Customer-Centric Market.”

Are you interested in learning more about text analytics? You can view the excerpts of my TE Talk on  “Sentiment Analysis Demystified”.

About the Author:

Deepak Murugaian is the Co-founder and CEO of TeachEdison, an EdTech startup solving the Quality Education Crisis. He is an analytics professional, helping Fortune companies for deriving actionable insights, especially from unstructured data sources. Deepak also delivers training sessions for renowned research labs and prestigious academic Institutions. He holds a Masters degree in Artificial Intelligence from Heriot-Watt University and a Computer Engineering degree from Anna University.

About TeachEdison:

TeachEdison is an EdTech Startup solving the quality education crisis by leveraging technology to build a knowledge ecosystem that makes online learning: Equitable, Credible, and Impactful.TeachEdison provides scalable solutions that connect the various stakeholders (Mentors, Organizations, Universities, Learners) of the knowledge economy to mutually exchange values.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position or viewpoint of TeachEdison. Neither the author nor TeachEdison endorses the product/services mentioned.