Bryan Bell of Cogito reports that financial companies are wise to turn to semantic metadata for better Big Data analytics. Bell writes, “Financial institutions are looking to linguistics and semantics as the best option for managing and taking advantage of their unstructured data, using it to better understand customers and competitors, to identify impactful market trends or simply to automate the process of answering common customer questions. As one Chief Data Officer put it, ‘We are the stewards of one of our firms’ most important assets, data, and we have been charged with bringing meaning to the data. I believe semantics offers a consistent, long-term capability and change in how data will be managed’.”

Bell continues, “The ability to understand words in context is where semantics has proven to excel above all other technologies—here’s how: (1) It allows organizations to better leverage the variety of data typical of financial institutions: risk analysis, transaction data, customer service feedback and socially generated content is a mix of structured and unstructured information that any financial institution can leverage for corporate and market intelligence. (2) It breaks down the data silos acquired and built over time. (3) It supports a unified view of information for competitive advantage. In a highly competitive environment, using linguistics and semantics can help companies learn more about customers based on their activities and preferences, noticing even the weakest signals and patterns in information. This new-found insight benefits many day-to-day areas of operations including: marketing, sales and product development efforts.”

Read more here.

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