ClickStream Technologies Blog

Q: I work at a software company that is developing a newer version of our most popular product for release next year.  We think that we have a firm grasp on our current user group, but we can’t be sure of this and we don’t want to spend extra time coding for X-specific group if they make up an insignificant portion of our user base.  Moreover, we don’t have a very good idea of where our users spend their time on the internet and in applications, and we need that information to inform the advertising. 

Last month, I had an idea.  I received an e-mail from a politician seeking re-election, and unlike those generic phone messages and TV commercials, it really resonated with me.  They had a clear idea of what I wanted in a candidate, and I know that it wasn’t a coincidence—political microtargeting received a lot of attention during the last election.  It made me wonder:  Why not apply this strategy to technology consumers to help with our software development?

A: The term “microtargeting” is synonymous with “optimizing your marketing.”  Microtargeting’s popularity reflects the growing desire on the part of companies (and politicians) to better navigate an oversaturated marketplace by connecting with more specific demographic groups.  Here at ClickStream, we specialize in knowing who does what with your product.  

Through a combination of usage monitoring (by our patented ClickSight software), on-site visits, and self-reported surveys from thousands of users, we can report data customized for your needs, including:

· current user profiles (age, location, job function, etc.)

· preferred web tools (search, e-mail)

· machine information (HDD, RAM, location, language, screen aspect ratio, internet connection, laptop vs. desktop, number of monitors, installed programs, installed vs. use analysis, fonts, custom-capture of machine heuristics)

· application cluster analysis (what combinations of applications are the most popular among users (by day or during a specific suite/application session)

· application usage patterns (which can be mapped to specific demographic information per customer needs)

· new market identification based on profiling of competitors’ users

After extensive testing and development, ClickInsight was released GA today! It’s an exciting step in the company’s development, as we enable our technology to be used in organizations of all types. Building this product was a lot of fun and we are already looking forward to further innovations in ClickInsight.

The scope of available information is immense, and we are able to create fun and useful reports directly applicable in our not so huge team.

You can learn more about the ClickInsight here http://www.clickstreamtech.com/enterprise

Read the press release here http://www.clickstreamtech.com/03.23.07.html

If you wonder whether certain information that would be valuable in your organization can be captured and reported through ClickInsight, give us a call, or send an email.

Please stop by our booth to learn more about ClickInsight™ for Enterprise. 

Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2007 runs from January 26-30th at the San Diego Convention Center.  For more information about MMS, please visit http://www.mms2007.com

The launch of ClickInsight at Microsoft Management Summit was a definite success.

We received a lot of positive feedback from potential customers and partners, as well as Microsoft folks. We know that proactive knowledge of operation efficiencies reaps immediate ROI, while technology owners finally have a tool that will help show the value IT investments bring to their organizations.

The ClickInsight Early Adoption program is still open. If you are interested in participating, please give us call 510.868.1020.

I recently spoke with a former colleague, at a major knowledge management company. I told him about ClickStream’s enterprise product, ClickInsight. His initial reply was:

“This is so Big Brother — we would never go for that.”

I don’t have an older brother, but I am one – and I know my little brother is grateful that I was there to hold his hand when he was younger, and keep him out of trouble when he was older (although he hasn’t needed me for the latter in a while). Of course, there were times he wished that I would shed my protective nature and let him do whatever he wanted.

This contemplation led me to the topic of user transparency in a corporate environment. While this practice yields large benefits to organizational development, it also raises employee privacy concerns. The main one being “I don’t want my workplace to turn into a policed state.”

First, let’s examine the benefits an employee could receive from a technology usage monitoring approach. By the way, don’t assume that your computer activity is not being tracked already.

Wouldn’t you love it if:

–your computer detected that you were having problems with Excel, and connected you with an expert user within your company?

–the IT department made your computer faster by uninstalling programs that it knows you never use; and had a way easier time troubleshooting why some of your apps tend to crash (am I the only one whose application crashes were troubleshooted by IT for hours if not days)?

–you could see your hourly productivity rates (clicks per hour) and the amount of time spent it in each application on your computer, and could use this information to justify an adjustment to your work schedule?

Sounds great, right?

While the idea of your boss knowing which websites you visit (we choose not to collect that, by the way) or how much time you spend working in Outlook or playing Solitaire can be unnerving, there’s no question that the larger aggregate information is critical to the business as a whole in this age of information. We’ve already seen the results in our small company. The real question is, can you trust your boss to use the information effectively and not micromanage your technology use? (For the bosses reading this, this issue can easily be avoided by anonymizing the data at the initial point of collection.)

Our software is designed not as a policing tool—it’s intended for IT professionals and business managers to understand aggregate activity trends. Plus, if you’re not spending all day building your avatar, chances are you don’t have anything to worry about. The benefits above are just a few from a long list of ways that technology activity tracking can make you and your company more effective.

What’s you perspective on this?

Here is an abstract of the talk to be given by ClickStream CEO and founder, Cameron Turner:

Software Instrumentation: How to Developer Smarter Products with Built-in Customer Intelligence

Microsoft and other companies have long used product instrumentation to create a feedback loop to connect users to developers of their products. Using customer experience feedback, the product development process becomes more intelligent, dynamically enabling developers to focus on profitable features and relieve testers from covering unused features. During this session we’ll explore the concept of instrumentation, discuss successful examples of product instrumentation from Microsoft’s product teams, identify opportunities for test matrix reduction and discuss how Windows developers can instrument their own applications today, including topics of user sample generation, key performance indicators and lawful user monitoring.

ClickStream Technologies founder and CEO, Cameron Turner, will be speaking at the Software Business 2007 conference in Santa Clara, California. We’ve been invited to offer a discount on conference passes to our partners, customers, and blog readers Just visit http://www.infowebcom.com/speaker_reg.php or offer the code SBKR to receive the discounted rate of $695, and be sure to check out Cameron’s track on software instrumentation at 11:15AM on October 3rd.

ClickStream Technologies will visit InterOp ‘08 in Las Vegas, NV next week. Will you be there, too? Let us know: info (at) clickstreamtech.com