What do personnel at top consumer packaged goods companies like Clorox, General Mills, and Procter & Gamble know about Internet searches that you might not?
In a word: Accelovation (www.accelovation.com). The company's proprietary, powerful Internet search program uses what it calls natural language processing, or business semantics, to extract deep meaning from text.
"It's a new way of doing research that really incorporates the wealth of information on the Internet," says company co-founder Michael Osofsky. "We're able to filter out the less important information and get to the heart of what's needed to innovate."
Accelovation claims its software can take you down the search road less traveled and get you to your desired destination more accurately, says Osofsky. "By the time a document is popular, appearing above the thousandth result on a Google search result, it's often too late."
Jens Tellefsen, VP of marketing and product strategy, says that Accelovation searches address two core markets: marketing, and research and development.
For marketing, its software can uncover emerging market needs, trends and the implications of those trends. On the R&D side, Accelovation's software is used for technology scouting to find innovative technologies, products and methodologies that provide particular benefits found in research journals, patents, news announcements and blogs.
Its model works for all types of searches and many of its searches relate to packaging in some way, Tellefsen says.
Adding premium content
Accelovation is also adding "premium content" that reaches into a broad range of scientific journals. "We index about four billion business-relevant open Web pages and are adding more coverage from premium content providers'" Tellefsen adds.
Rather than entering in keywords in an open-ended search box, the software enables the user to specify what he or she wants to find (e.g. technologies) and what characteristics they are seeking (e.g. maintains freshness).
The search yields what the company refers to as "highly targeted results" in summarized lists linked to the snippets (or citations) mentioning the claim.
The company offers its product in several ways. One is a yearly subscription for a group of users that can cost up to several hundred thousand dollars. Tellefsen says companies can justify the software when compared to using a consultancy or market research firm.
For those companies that can't justify such an expense, there's good news: Accelovation is developing a simpler—cheaper—alternative product.
"It will be significantly lower in cost and more accessible to individual users," says Tellefsen. "With no training, you can start to use the product." The company is expecting to roll that new product out in early 2008.
For examples of user testimonials, see Accelovation testimonials.
For more information, visit www.accelovation.com.
To listen to a Podcast of this interview with additional details, click here.
