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Company which uses military intelligence tech to help marketers crunch data enters Australia

adatos logoA company which uses recently declassified US military technology and machine learning to crunch data and come up with insights is launching its presence in Australia and New Zealand today.

Adatos was founded last year by former US intelligence analyst Drew Perez, who says its technology uses intelligent machine learning to bring together disparate data sets, crunch the numbers and spit out findings which can help marketers identify trends or answers to business problem more quickly.

It is being led by director David Perez and former Audit Bureau head Paul Dovas as its manager in Australia.

Drew Perez told Mumbrella: “Big data is ubiquitous, but the problem is getting enough data scientists to extract the insights from it. That’s where machine learning comes in.”

Former US intelligence analyst and Adatos founder Drew Perez

Former US intelligence analyst and Adatos founder Drew Perez

“If you have a data scientist who wants to test a hypothesis it might take them three months to write and tweak an algorithm. Using machines they can do 10 or 20 in that time.”

Adatos launched in the third quarter of last year in Singapore, and Drew Perez told Mumbrella while it has applications across a range of different industries it is focused primarily around retail and marketing in Australia.

But he said while it was useful for both large and small enterprises, they had found smaller companies had the agility to make more use of the insights.

But Perez stressed it was not about cutting jobs, rather using technology to make them more efficient.

“What you find quite often in big corporations is there are gatekeepers such as the data science or IT teams that can make it slower for relatively new technology to be adopted,” he added.

New Adatos Australia manager Paul Dovas

New Adatos Australia manager Paul Dovas

The tech is able to take inputs of structured and unstructured data to come up with insights which may help companies deal with things like high churn rate, marry-up point of sale with web traffic data, or optimising marketing campaigns across demographics.

Perez said Adatos asks three questions of companies before they decide if they should take up the system.

“The first thing we ask: is their data clean and do they have access to it? Then, do you have the maturity to use novel technology? Is your company set up to adopt contrarian approaches which may end up in competitive advantages?

“And third, do you have the wisdom to use the knowledge that is gleaned to be acted upon? If these three factors aren’t present it ends up not being a productive relationship.”

Perez said while “every regional market is different” the company is now exploring opportunities in Australia and New Zealand, which is why it had hired former Audit Bureau chief Dovas as its country manager.

Alex Hayes

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