Text analytics serves utilities providers

While utilities and big data are often tied together due to the former's use of electronic sensors, a new Intelligent Utility report served as a reminder that the industry is also based on customer service. Advanced text analytics systems can help utilities providers perform sentiment analysis and optimize the user experience.

"A lot of the unstructured data that we see is in free text fields in our operational systems and from surveys that customers fill out directly on our website, or in our community offices," General Electric analyst Mari Vandewettering told the source.

Business intelligence industry expert Alyssa Farrell told Intelligent Utility that companies will have to turn to storage solutions such as Hadoop to keep their customer interactions as unstructured data, rather than trying to enforce a quantified, numerical form on them. These techniques have been applied in other fields, such as retail, and are relevant in any industry with customer feedback.

According to Electric Light and Power, utilities providers are already accustomed used to holding large amounts of data. The "smart grid" consists of sensors transmitting a constant stream of information. This massive influx of data has influenced providers to try new storage methods such a scalable cloud storage.