InformationWeek

usinesses are collecting reams of clickstream data from their online operations, but few are leveraging that information to its fullest. Companies can use a new service available now from Primary Knowledge Inc. to connect a wide range of applications to data warehouses.

Primary Knowledge has provided hosted data warehouse services for more than a year. The vendor collects and processes customer data from its clients' IT systems or from sources such as online ad servers and E-mail marketers. It then loads it into a data warehouse and provides reporting tools. But businesses have had only limited ways to make use of that data, CEO Peter Adams says.

The vendor's new Direct Access service is based on APIs that let Primary Knowledge's customers tap into the hosted data warehouse using a range of applications. Companies can link their own business-intelligence tools to the warehouse, or draw data from the warehouse for use with customer-relationship management and campaign-management apps, call-center systems, and personalization engines.

Internet portal operator Bolt Inc. uses Primary Knowledge to collect clickstream data about visitors to its Bolt.com Web site. It recently began using Direct Access and query tools from Brio Technology Inc. to analyze that data, allowing the New York company to give advertiser clients detailed information about the demographics and interests of Web surfers. "It's not valuable if I can't integrate [the clickstream data] with the rest of our internal data sources," says Bolt chief technology officer Mark Stutzman.

Direct Access costs between $35,000 and $70,000 per year. The Meta Group predicts that by 2003, 20% to 40% of all companies with online businesses will use a service provider for clickstream analytics.