LeveragePoint will be attending SemTech 2009 in San Jose in the week of June 15. There's an important reason why we are presenting there. We are focused on helping companies to activate, embed and evolve their marketing strategies. We do this by providing eWorking environments that blend tools for implementing marketing frameworks with the data needed to execute, and we support these applications with rich learning and collaboration. Semantic solutions lie at the heart of the advanced capabilities of this integrated approach.
So why be in San Jose? SemTech is the premier event for applications of semantic technology and the semantic web. The focus is applications and not the underlying standards (RDF, RDFS and OWL) or the many fascinating academic issues. And the applications of the semantic web are many and growing. One of last year’s stars, PowerSet, was acquired shortly after by Microsoft and has recently reemerged as the new search engine BING. This year will feature applications from healthcare, intelligence and eCommerce and new approaches to search and data integration.
These are important to LeveragePoint and the value we bring our customers. In today’s world marketing depends on deep understanding of how value is created for customers (which is what LeveragePoint for Value Management does). This understanding is built on a set of concepts such as the how people buy (buying process), market segmentation, customer profile, brand benefit ladder, multichannel marketing mix and so on. This interconnected set of concepts is informed by data, and in today’s rapidly changing environment marketers must balance the need for consistent messages and strategy with rapid response to changing circumstances. The old practice, in which marketing strategy was captured into large PowerPoint slide presentations, often prepared by consulting firms, backed by data organized into spreadsheets and the occasional database, is just too disjointed and difficult to manage to be effective in the 21st C. It is too far from the people who actually implement strategy (and should be part of how it is made) and from the customer conversations that are shaping our world. A new approach is needed.
The new approach will leverage the semantic web. The semantic web makes it possible to organize and link together large sets of concepts, to connect these concepts to relevant data, and then use this model to make inferences about additional concepts. The best known example is the Gene Ontology but companies such as LeveragePoint are now emerging to apply this approach to business challenges. A new trend in the data, or a change in the underlying concepts, can instantly be propagated through the system to see, for example, how a change in value driver can make a company rethink its segmentation strategy and adjust its pricing or its value messages. The result is real-time change management. Companies can keep in better touch with their markets and align more quickly to changes in strategy and external conditions.
At Semtech LeveragePoint will be participating on a panel on Semantic Wikis organized by Mark Greaves of Vulcan. This panel, on Tuesday June 16 from 2:00 to 5:30 will go into depth on the technology behind semantic wikis such as the Semantic MediaWiki, new directions for development, and real world applications (this is where we come in). LeveragePoint uses Semantic MediaWiki, Semantic Forms and the Halo Extensions to provide some of its advanced functionality.
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Steven Forth
CEO
