BLUE MARTINI SOFTWARE CO-ORGANIZES ANNUAL KDD CUP

Blue Martini Software, a provider of enterprise software applications to understand, target and interact with customers, announced its role as co-organizer of the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Cup (KDD Cup), a worldwide competition in knowledge discovery and data mining. The winners of the competition were announced in Boston during the Sixth ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining attended by the industry's top researchers, executives, authors and journalists.

As a first for the Cup, this year's competition used actual clickstream data collected from the e-commerce operations of a Blue Martini-powered Web site. To protect consumer privacy, the clickstream data were anonymized. That is, any information that could identify individual shoppers was removed. The results of the KDD Cup demonstrate the power of Web mining to transform data into insights and predictions that both improve the quality of the shopping experience for the customer and the profitability of the site for the merchant.

Rich Data Collection Enables Effective Web Mining

"We believe that the attribute-rich data provided by Blue Martini's clickstream collector for the KDD Cup demonstrated its superiority over traditional Web logs," stated Ronny Kohavi, Ph.D., director data mining, Blue Martini Software and co-chair KDD Cup 2000. "This attribute-rich data made it possible, for the first time, for participants to analyze the data and return business results in a report useful for a non-technical business user," said Kohavi. For example, KDD participants found that different referring Web sites had markedly different browse-to-buy rates: One popular referral site brought a large number of visitors without bringing a single purchase. Another site had low referral rates but high browse-to-buy rates.

"We constantly hear about the huge volumes of data generated by e-commerce Web sites. However, for researchers and educators trying to develop best practices for mining this data, it can be frustratingly difficult to obtain real, commercial data in a usable form," said Michael Berry, co-author of Mastering Data Mining: The Art and Science of Customer Relationship Management, and principal at Data Miners Inc.

"From its inception, Blue Martini has pioneered the application of data mining to e-business," Berry continued. "Blue Martini was a logical choice to leverage its own research in data mining to deliver the real-world, fine-grained data required for the KDD Cup. Blue Martini does a real service to the industry by providing access to such data from which detailed data trends can be observed," further stated Berry.

Industry-Leading Talent at Blue Martini

Blue Martini Software was founded by Monte Zweben, formerly Deputy Chief of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) branch of NASA's Ames Research Center. Leveraging Zweben's AI expertise, Blue Martini develops software that distills large volumes of data to allow detection of actual customer purchasing patterns. Also leading the data mining charge at Blue Martini is Ronny Kohavi.

Kohavi was formerly manager of Silicon Graphics' acclaimed "MineSet" project, a ground-breaking application of data mining techniques integrated with visualization capabilities used by companies such as Ford Motor Company and Chase Manhattan Corp. Kohavi is also a frequent speaker at industry events including the International Conference on Machine Learning and the Symposium on Machine learning and Data Mining.

From Clickstream Capture to Business Insight

Data mining starts with a repository of clickstream data which is analyzed to produce previously unknown insights. However, the wealth of clickstream data that tracks visitors as they navigate a Website has only rarely made insights actionable, allowing site operators to better tune sites to meet users' exact needs. Blue Martini's Customer Interaction System is designed to tightly integrate data analysis with site management to allow this coupling. Data mining insights can be highly strategic revenue drivers for companies who redesign their Web sites, product selections, and introduce promotional programs to improve browse-to-buy rates, shopping cart size, and customer loyalty.

"By the selection of yet another timely and relevant business problem, the KDD Cup continues to serve the data mining community. We appreciate Blue Martini's joint sponsorship and contribution of data," said Ismail Parsa, senior director, e-Intelligence, Epsilon; general chair, KDD conference; and, organizer, KDD Cups 97 and 98.

About Blue Martini Software

Blue Martini Software provides enterprise applications to understand, target, and interact with customers. Companies deploy the Blue Martini Customer Interaction System to interact with customers on the Web, via call centers, in stores, over wireless devices, and on trading exchanges. Business people use the Customer Interaction System to manage products, content, transactions, analysis and personalization. Companies that interact directly with customers build their brands more effectively than those using only traditional media, resulting in increased revenues across all channels. Blue Martini customers include Gymboree Corporation, Harley-Davidson, Levi Strauss & Co, Polaroid, and Saks Fifth Avenue. For more information, visit www.bluemartini.com.

Contact Jeanne Achille of The Devon Group, 732-212-1101 x11, or jeanne@devonpr.com, for Blue Martini Software.