Press Release
QL2 Unveils New Market Intelligence Services for Marketers and Other Business Professionals
New on demand services provide real-time information to help businesses make faster and more accurate decisions
SEATTLE — November 5, 2007 — QL2 Software today introduced four new services designed to help companies drive faster and better business decisions about product and price mix, competitive positioning, and consumer opinions and preferences. QL2's new market intelligence services feature a dashboard designed to meet the needs of business decision-makers, customizable pre-defined reporting, and powerful data visualization and graphing functions that allow business users to rapidly analyze and apply intelligence in their jobs. More than 250 companies in 38 countries are currently using QL2 services, including seven of the top 10 global airlines and three of the top five global pharmaceutical firms. QL2 market intelligence services are also targeted at retail, consumer products and information services companies.
Market intelligence includes important information on customers, competitors, channels, and other business-critical information such as regulatory filings and compliance information. While much of this information is publicly available, much of it is on the Web in unstructured form (for example, found in web pages or online documents), making it difficult to extract and translate into actionable intelligence. QL2's on demand platform gathers and analyzes both unstructured and structured information, and delivers output in common formats to match a client's needs.
"The magnitude of external information that a marketer has to sift through and analyze to make smart decisions is completely overwhelming." said Glenn Hasen, CEO of QL2. "QL2's new services give marketers key information that helps answer fundamental questions, allowing them to make more informed, more accurate and faster business decisions. Because it's delivered on demand, QL2 is highly customizable and can be deployed rapidly and without the involvement of information technology professionals."
Clients Praise QL2
Companies are using QL2 for everything from pricing airfare routes and healthcare plans to determining trendy colors and styles in women's fashion and tracking competitive regulatory filings – all in real time.
"As a low cost carrier committed to keeping fares as low as possible for our customers, JetBlue relies on business partners like QL2 to provide us with the market intelligence we need to make sure we offer the best services at the right price," said Rick Zeni, JetBlue's vice president of revenue management.
"In the rental car industry, a real-time view of the market is critical," said Stewart Brown, Vice President of Revenue Management, Dollar Rent a Car. "QL2 provides us with market intelligence that is unparalleled in its reliability. Armed with this information, we are able to make better pricing and availability decisions."
New Services Provide Actionable Business Intelligence
QL2's on demand platform is comprised of four core business services, which are delivered in real-time over the Internet to meet clients' specific business needs. The new services include:
- PriceTrack – guides competitive pricing and revenue optimization decisions by continuously gathering product pricing and promotional information from a wide variety of public data sources.
- ProductMix – helps retailers make faster and more informed merchandising decisions. ProductMix queries Internet-based information sources (including web sites, catalogs and product listings) in real time and captures how retailers categorize, display and present product offerings to consumers.
- MarketScape – acts as an "early warning" system for competitive and market shifts by providing a real-time view into the competitive and industry landscape. This service captures and organizes news, website information, regulatory and other market content and serves as a key enabler for marketing and executive decisions regarding branding, product positioning, and competitive response.
- MarketVoice – helps companies gain insight and knowledge about market and consumer perception by serving as the "eyes and ears" into the voice and mind of Web consumers. QL2 MarketVoice collects and organizes user-generated content found on Internet-based blogs and comments, message boards and user forums, and product reviews.
"To improve operational and financial performance requires effective business decisions that demand real time and relevant external information called Market Intelligence," said Mark Smith, CEO & EVP Research at Ventana Research. "QL2, as a leading provider of market intelligence, has proven that immediate access to information can enable an organization to be more intelligent and aligned to their potential."
No More Need for Slow, Outdated Market Intelligence Methods
In the past, companies used expensive and time-consuming methods for gathering market intelligence, including purchasing syndicated market research, commissioning custom research studies, or conducting manual searches using basic search tools. These methods offer limited effectiveness and accuracy particularly with web-based data, which changes rapidly and can be hard to find. For small- and mid-sized companies, in particular, the cost and delays of such methods mean they are unable to make critical decisions using the best available information.
Each month, QL2 collects 500 million individual data points, from 5,000 unique data sources on the Internet, using five million customer and industry-specific agents. Delivered directly to clients as an on-demand service, QL2's market intelligence services are highly scalable and flexible to meet client demands. As clients' information needs change, QL2 can be easily and quickly adapted to provide the intelligence to meet these new requirements.
Pricing and Availability
QL2 on demand services are available now. Pricing varies depending upon the mix of services and volume of intelligence a client requires.
About QL2 Software, Inc.
QL2 is the leading provider of Market Intelligence On Demand, supplying companies with instant access to critical information from the outside world. QL2's on demand services deliver market intelligence directly to business users when they need it – without the time lag or technical complexity common with other approaches.
More than 250 clients in 38 countries rely on QL2 to drive business decisions on product and price mix, competitive positioning, and consumer opinions and preferences. QL2 clients include 7 of the top 10 global airlines, 3 of the top 5 global pharmaceuticals, and market leaders in retail, consumer products and information services. Founded in 2003, QL2 was named to the 2007 Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies, and has been included in KMWorld's "Top 100 Companies" and "Trend-Setting Products" for 2006 and 2007. For more information, please go to: www.QL2.com.
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For more information, press only:
Gerry Van Zandt
OnPR
503-805-9316 mobile
503-802-4409 work
gerryvz@onpr.com
Gaby Adam
OnPR
206-931-5942 mobile
425-454-6843 work
gabya@onpr.com
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