Know your company, your Reputation explains it.

Reputation represents your standing, status, distinction, and renown about your company. All companies want to have a good impression to the Industry to gain respect and continuously patronized by others. To know your reputation status, gathering data or researching will answer your concerns in mind.

Before at the early century, gathering data is a hard task and most of the needed data cannot be collected at any cost. Manual gathering of data like researching and conducting surveys is the effective way to do it and yet it cost a lot and it consumes a lot of time to do it. Some finishes it but it was not needed anymore due to the time duration.

Since Internet connection was invented, transferring of information from one place to another channel is now possible. It makes the researcher task more easier and faster compare before and it is more reliable. Websites should have a strong integrity and reputation to put in the list updates or reference of sites.


Taking advantage to the use of the Internet is part of the competitive advantage. Building your own E-portfolio like resume, blogs, biographical information and gallery are just some of the examples that will definitely market you online and create a name in the internet world. This should offers information that can contribute to solve the problems that others are experiencing. E-portfolio should be understandable based on the viewers your company has.

Why, When, Where, and How to Monitor.

Somehow you cannot control what others think about your company that is why; you have to be aware about what others think about you and the reputation you have. It is suggested to monitor in answering what to monitor are about the company’s own brands, Company name, Products and Services, Executives and Spokespeople, Marketing Campaigns, Industry Trends, Competitors and lastly your known weaknesses. It can be monitored where? In Industry Blogs, Vertical Communities, Employee Hangouts and Business Locations are some of the category to choose from. There are a lot of monitoring tools available on how to gathered information from different 12 conversations (from Radically Transparent Book).

Do It Yourself

Monitoring your reputation through different kinds of online monitoring tools is available and accessible way for an individual user and most especially in the corporate industry. This will help the company to develop and solve several problems at the fastest way and at the same time understanding the situation of the customers, stakeholder, competitors and other viewers.

According to the book of Radically Transparent by Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss, stated about “Three Essential Do-It-Yourself Monitoring Tools."

· RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) Reader
It filters the needed information into specific content. One of the best RSS readers is Google Reader. Lot of information shows using this reader, most of the websites even shows the number of subscriber per website which somehow helps the user to choice what is more reliable sources. Customizing your own RSS Reader page is also available at Netvibes.com

· E-mail Updates
It is very suitable for those who have no time to search with the updated news and does not know to use RSS Reader but this will definitely flood your e-mail due to the lots of updates (based on my experience). It is very user friendly and no hassle at all, you can also unsubscribe whenever you do not want to receive any updates anymore. FeedBlitz.com is another example which converts RSS reader into e-mail.

· Tracking Software
Copernic Tracker is one the best and reliable monitoring tools but it is quite expensive but onetime fee of estimated fifty dollars (or P2,500). Tracking Software helps to tracks what they called “untrackable”. Every changes in the web content will be known and inform to the tracking software subscriber. Knowing the immediate changes will result to a good execution of decision in the within the company.

There are other information that are hard to find and even hard to categorize just to be more specific in getting the needed information. In prestigious company, categorizing or dividing the task in collecting data is easier for the presenter and to who to present the data to be understandable at the same time organize.

Like what happened in the (Government Service Insurance System) GSIS, the company is encountering a problem in DB2 database management software of IBM Corporation started last March 30, 2009. According to the GSIS, “About 90 percent of the GSIS’s operations were adversely affected by the IBM-DB2 crash. Thousands of loans and claims of GSIS members could not be processed, membership records could not be updated, transactions could not be recorded, and a sizeable data in the GSIS database were either corrupted or lost temporarily.”

This problem will not only affect the company but at the same time, the customers and its stakeholders will be affected. GSIS for sure will receive several comments, suggestions, questions, and complaints from different people. The company should be aware about how the reputation they have in this situation and how does will affect the company in the long-run.

Gathering data from 12 conversation channels are social media and blogs, Google’s network, Industry news, Stakeholder conversations, Social communities, Social bookmarking sites, Multimedia content, Forums and message boards, Customer reviews, Brand profiles and Web analytics will be helpful as a guide to solve those reactions.

The GSIS will not just suffer in terms of cost (at least P5 billion) in actual damages as a result of the system crashes but at the same time the GSIS will suffer the reputation they have.

While in PhilHealth, the company has its own division for Health Informatics, an office of the Quality Assurance Research and Policy Development Group, accountable for the development of Health Informatics (Medical Database) for simple reference of Officers in-charge in the improvement of health-related policies/guidelines. The division shall also perform on-line studies about drugs and health technology among others here and abroad, sort out the information gathered depending on the need of the group and update the database for easy recovery.

PhilHealth can use the available monitoring tools to gather information to conduct the desired research easily, not time consuming and in reliable way. Monitoring tools does not just about know your reputation but is will also help the company to solve the problems and serves as the basis in conducting a research.

In a big companies like PhilHealth, it is suggested to use Copernic Tracker or Technorati or other online monitoring tools that would cater such company because dealing with lots of needed information every single days or even hours means a lot to the company. This will improve the services that would meet or rather exceed the customer’s expectations and satisfaction.


Reputation Manager

After choosing what monitoring tools to use for the company, there should be assign personnel that can be in-house or outsource, depends on the company’s choice. Dealing with a lot of information, someone especially in a big company, there should be a division allocated that deals with the result of the monitoring tools used. Without the proper separation or filtering of data from the result, the gathered data will be useless and a waste.

But it is suggested to hire within the company because out-sourcing personnel might think that specific information is not important for the company and yet for the company’s manager perspective it is. The employees within the company know the company itself and the loyalty, responsibility and strong tights the employee has, will filter the data accordingly which will solve the problems and improve company’s status.

If the comments from the net become essential and talked about, it is the time where the company needs to be alert and monitor the comments posted. BlogPulse and Technorati are some of the tools that can be used for the comments updates regarding to your company.

One of the professional monitoring services is the Sentiment Analysis Spreadsheet. Benchmarking in monitoring tools results by showing the percentage of the positive and negative outcomes about your company will be shown.

While the Automated Monitoring with Manual Analysis like ACS’s Serph (without any cost) monitors sites like Technorati, Google and Flickr, without too much effort in searching, this automated monitoring will make it easier for the user to show the result with the different monitoring tools all are in the same time.

According to the Radically Transparent by Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss, “In fact, at our last count more than 80 different vendors around the world offered some kind of professionally managed reputation-monitoring services.”

It really depends on the user what tools is appropriate for them to use that will feel them comfortable and appropriate. There are a lot of tools available, some are expensive but others are affordable.

Like what Insurance group in our Datamin class at De La Salle University - Canlubang under Mr. Duremdes, our group use different Monitoring Online Tools to track down information in different conversation channels using Google alert, ACS's Serph, bloglines.com, Technorati and Boardtracker.com, we also track down information regarding to our five main competitors.

Trying different monitoring tools won’t hurt you instead it will expand your knowledge and gathered more useful data for your company.

Always keep in mind that if ever there are either good or bad that attacks regarding to your company, reputation-monitoring tools will lead you to track down things easily.

Data Mining Tools creates Efficiency

According to Management Information Systems, “Data mining tools are the software tools you use to query information in a data ware house”.

It is the manipulation in the databases that include query-and-reporting tools, intelligence agents, multidimensional analysis tools, and statistics tools. A lot of queries need answers at the fastest and most reliable way. Data mining tools is one popular and effective way to do it. Data mining tools are useful in forecasting trends and behaviors that allow businesses or organizations to have better information that will contribute in the decision making which leads to a competitiveness.

The concept of Data mining is used decades ago in different industries and incredible progress as the years goes on that meets the needs of the user in decision making.

Evolution of business data to business information are Data Collection (1960s), Data Access (1980s), Data Warehousing and Decision Support (1990s) and last but not the least Data Mining (emerging today). Businesses collected data from surveys, research information and analyzed information and previous transactions that are large quantities inputted in databases. As the needed information of every business arises, the evolution of business data creates a way to diversify the information into a specific detail with a high percentage of accuracy and rapid response.

The Scope of Data Mining
Thearling discussed about the new business opportunities take place because of the two capabilities of data mining:

-Automated prediction of trends and behaviors, this answers can be easily detects from the data quickly even in the large databases.

-Automated discovery of previously unknown patterns, this data mining tools classify previously hidden patterns in one step in the databases.

This is very effective in Statistical Qualitative Control to avoid having deficiencies and errors in the production area. It will give a better forecasting that will minimize cost and will make a gain to compete in competitive advantage. Using the previous data, the abnormality will be easily detected based on the unknown patterns and having this information, management or operation management will immediately analyze the cause and decide which solution or strategy will be executed to the given situation.

A Database needs a reliable and appropriate Hard disk drive, RAM (Random Access Memory), ROM (Read Only Memory) so that it will perform well. The faster it works the more chances for the users to experiment and test all the data mining tools to get the appropriate solution and easily understand complex data.

According to Gartner Group Advanced Technology Research Note, “With the rapid advance in data capture, transmission and storage, large-systems users will increasingly need to implement new and innovative ways to mine the after-market value of their vast detail data, employing MPP [massively parallel processing] systems to create new sources of business advantage.”

The concept of data mining is known before and much more when the evolutions of technology boost in the market. The demand of the use of data mining is high and the development of this computer tools is continuous. Especially to the large business and organization, data mining tools makes the decision making easier to decide and quick to achieve the result.

There are different kinds of data mining tools available in the market and after choosing what data mining tools to use, building appropriate model is important.

Ever since building model are applied before the beginning of computers or data mining technology. Building model will help to know the answer in the certain situation using the data you have. If the formulated model is good, there is a high chance of getting the optimal answer you want to apply in the current situation.


DNA of a forensic accountant is one of example that used data mining tools in the field of science. DNA of a forensic accountant which used data mining to analyze large quantities of information that identify trends or inconsistencies, ambiguous facts in a inclusive and well-organized method using “intelligent” computer applications. Like other computer software and application tools, it aims optimization that reduces costs and maximizes profits and develops a strong customer relationship.

An Algorithm is a step by step instructions created by the users to solve a problem in a specific situation. While in the concept of data mining, algorithms are formulated to find relations and in sets of data in a database.

Excerpted from the book Building Data Mining Applications for Customer Relationship Management by Alex Berson, Stephen Smith, and Kurt Thearling.

Two sections of the most common data mining algorithms use today:

-Classical Techniques: Statistics, Neighborhoods and Clustering

These techniques are widely used since early 1980. Statistics is a mathematical approach that is known to its probability which predicts the possibilities of outcomes that might occur or takes place. Neighborhoods is a technique that shows the similarities in the databases. While Clusters allows the data to group together based on the needed information of the user.

In Philhealth (Philippine government corporation), questions like what are the chances of 20% increase of new customers? Which patterns are significant in previous customer records? Those are just an example of questions that most people want to know that statistics can contribute. While Neighborhoods, shows the similarities in the records of customers just in a minute, depends how large the database is. Lastly clustering data, like for example the age, gender and address of the customers can contribute in marketing and other queries that can develop better services to the customers. PRIZM system and MicroVision are the two examples of clustering systems that can be used. Using data mining tools, Philhealth management can come up in planning the finest decision possible.

-Next Generation Techniques: Trees, Networks and Rules

It is the most common techniques used that build a predictive models, this leads to discover new information. Decision Tree breaks down the information in the databases that will show the useful information to the question you want to answer. Networks can detect patterns or trends in connected networks or nodes that can solve difficult problems and create decisions. A Rule has limitation to gather the needed data with the use of “if this and this and this then this”.

DATAMIN course and our Professor Mr. Duremdes at De La Salle Canlubang help us to somehow relates in deciding data mining tools to use in a certain situation in I.T perspective. Data mining tools are quick to run and give result at the minimum time, to determine the best techniques, trial and error can be done to see which techniques to use however decisions are made by the user whether to use the result in data mining tools or not. Knowledge worker should choose the most appropriate data mining tools based on what information in the database is all about, when to use the chosen techniques which leads to a competitive advantage, why it is needed in the business or organization and who will create and apply the data mining tools.