Project: Web Mining Analytics
The aim of the WMA project is to develop a technical solution targeting the needs for webmining (i.e. searching relevant and useful information on the web) of professional users in various businesses. This new and rapidly growing market is a major opportunity for European SMEs to take a leadership position, and represents for them a very strong potential for business expansion and economic growth over the next years._x000D_The success or failure of almost every company depends upon the agility with which it is able to understand and react to its environment. The web has become a major information source for the business development and strategic marketing departments of companies and the efficiency of their webmining activity has a significant impact on the company's business performance._x000D_General purpose search engines such as Google are easy to use and everyone now has access to several billion information items. But users, particularly in a professional context, often have the impression of drowning in a mass of information and, at the same time, of not getting the right information. General purpose web search engines are unable to answer business-specific requests such as: which companies are at the forefront of this niche market? Which mergers and acquisitions have occurred in this market? Which technology can solve this problem? etc. These search engines would just provide a list of information sources containing certain keywords. But the manual selection and evaluation of this type of information is by far too time-consuming to treat a large information volume._x000D_There are many companies in Europe, the US and east-Asia who attempt to develop technical solutions targeting the needs of professional webmining users. However, available solutions are too limited as regards the performance of processing algorithms and knowledge bases sizes. The most advanced algorithms perform well with small information volumes, but are unable to process larger ones at an acceptable speed. _x000D_Some solutions are dedicated to specific market sectors, such as e.g. the pharmaceutical industry. They are however in general limited either to the extraction of simple predefined data (companies, people, etc.), or to very specific and rigid data extractions tasks. They are not flexible enough to respond to changing webmining needs of the user or to different requirements of other businesses._x000D__x000D_The objective of the WMA (Web Mining Analytics) project is to develop the technology capable of providing highly relevant information to professional users in various businesses. WMA will make it possible to “industrialize” web mining and content analysis by processing a wider scope of predefined types (>100) from a very large database and to offer the end-user simple functions to extract specific data automatically. _x000D_Furthermore, WMA will be ahead current state-of-the-art by enabling two important additional services:_x000D_• adding meaning to the extracted data (context, concept, subject, etc.) _x000D_• analyzing the meaning of the data (evolution, relation, cause, strategy, etc.) _x000D_WMA technology will be able to analyze the meaning of the content and hence be part of the search and extraction process within the business decision-making cycle. This will be a significant progress in the capability to provide meaningful (useful) data for specific business requirements. WMA provide:_x000D_1. The capability to process a sufficiently large database with an acceptable speed. We consider that the system must be able to handle 2 billion pieces of information and that an efficient system must be able to process more than 1 million information items/pages per second and per processor. _x000D_2. Highly autonomous automatic extraction and structuring algorithms. The aim is to identify concepts from the downloaded data and to weave relations between them. _x000D_3. Analytical algorithms able to answer the users’ questions. The user should be able to select from a rich set of extraction and content analysis tools, that efficiently meet his/her webmining request._x000D_The aim of WMA is also to ensure that the user interface is intuitive and easy to use, whilst at the same time delivering answers that are more relevant than ever before in both, form and content. _x000D_The success of the WMA project will have a significant impact on many professions and industries.. In the scope of the project, WMA will target specific business sectors in order to have a sufficiently precise focus and means to evaluate the project results with end-users from these sectors. However, a successful implementation of WMA will also drastically reduce the cost required to adapt the solution for other businesses. _x000D_Since professional webmining is a new market with no dominant players and a very strong growth potential, WMA will provide an excellent opportunity for European SMEs to become leaders in this market.
| Acronym | WMA (Reference Number: 5075) |
| Duration | 01/10/2010 - 01/06/2012 |
| Project Topic | The WMA project aims at offering to professional end-users a technolgy able to extract automatically specific data and to provide highly relevant information. WMA will make it possible trough “industrializing” web mining and content analysis from a very large database. |
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Project Results (after finalisation) |
The CO deliverable of the WMA project was the launch of the WMA website, entitled WhoGotFunded. It consists of a technical solution for webmining, meeting the needs for web based data mining of various businesses. Since M28 (January 2013), WhoGotFunded has been implemented and marketed as an SaaS product to which the clients can subscribe. Currently, the solution used to develop WhoGotFunded is being used in the area of fundraising: specifically, it allows to search any organisations that has been active in fundraising recently in any activity doCO. _x000D_Since the project ended at M24 (September 2012), DIGIMIND and DEADALUS have continued their collaboration in the frame of a traditional bilateral relationship so as to improve the technological developments (including the upcoming evolutions)._x000D_Both in terms of marketing and technology, the Ps will continue to implement the methodology set up during the WMA project, the “agile development” method which consists in performing rapid cycles of specifications, development and testing._x000D_Today all efforts are oriented towards the introduction of WhoGotFunded on the market. |
| Network | Eurostars |
| Call | Eurostars Cut-Off 3 |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | DAEDALUS-Data, Decisions and Language, S.A. | Partner | Spain |
| 2 | DIGIMIND SA | Coordinator | France |