CEDROM SNI

Redeploy knowledge workers from cost center -- to profit center

CEDROM is a French-Canadian based news aggregator that began over a decade ago by digitizing microfiche from leading journals to disseminate by CD-ROM. A team of five library scientists indexed roughly 30 journals daily (a ratio of 1:6). Concerned about scalability, the company sought to augment the process by automating the process, and turned to Nstein Technologies.

Nstein's semantic analysis automates content tagging, dramatically increases capacity

Today CEDROM is indexing more than 1,500 periodicals and 1500 websites and blogs – without any additional headcount. That is more than 3 million pieces of content, with 80,000 new pieces being added daily. In fact, CEDROM, which provides newsfeeds to government agencies, ad agencies and companies in three markets: English-Canadian companies, French-Canadian and French-speaking companies.

• 5 library scientists tagged 30 periodicals a day
• Nstein tags 3000
• 5 library scientists now provide premium custom queries

Productivity gains lead to re-allocation of personnel to revenue-generating activities

The five library scientists still work for the company – but no longer index manually. Instead their roles have evolved to providing custom queries for clients who do not have library scientists on staff. A premium is charged for their services. According to Éric Bergeron, VP of IT for CEDROM, these queries allow only the most relevant information to go out. In essence, the five went from being part of a cost center to becoming a profit center. In the Fall 2009, CEDROM will be incorporating a new Nstein module, Sentiment Analysis, to its newsfeeds. This will allow public affairs companies, market researchers and brand managers to analyze the tone of stories to determine reaction to specific topics: such as "Bank Bailout Plan."