The problem for Doug Levin is the noise.
The noise is around “big data,” the increasingly nebulous field of technology that involves businesses managing huge amounts of information and trying to glean insights from things like customer transactions, browsing habits, and behavioral trends.
For all of the companies calling themselves big data, Levin asks, are they really about big data? Or are they about analytics? Or are they big data and analytics?
The distinction lies in whether companies are developing new kinds of databases and other systems to store and manage data, or whether they’re developing software and algorithms to make sense of the data. Levin’s latest startup, Cambridge, MA-based Quant5, is clearly focused on the latter. (You can catch Levin at Xconomy’s “Future of Big Data” conference in Boston this Wednesday, where he’ll be moderating an investor chat.)
But there’s still plenty of noise in the analytics sector. Quant5 aims to start cutting through that noise today, with the general rollout of its marketing analytics software. The basic idea is to help companies make better use of their marketing data and records, so they can streamline efforts, target the right customers, and ultimately make more money. Quant5 is starting out by selling to brick-and-mortar retail stores, e-commerce companies, and high-tech firms and app stores.
Here’s how it works. Say you’re a mid-size e-commerce firm looking to improve your marketing processes. You can buy Quant5’s software-as-a-service and get access to five modules, Levin says: The “targeted offers” module tells you which products to recommend to specific customers via
