Briefs

By Scott Duke Harris, Mercury News, 10/07/2009

... Cash registers are so clever these days. Target, I've been told, is among a small number of big retailers that have invested millions of dollars to internally develop technology that tries to understand their customers' needs. But most big companies are still pretty clueless.

Now a new startup called Causata, led by Paul Phillips and boasting a proven team of techies and $4.5 million in venture funding from Accel Partners, aims to push this sort of customer-intelligence technology to an unprecedented level. Harnessing advances in distributed computing and machine learning, Causata aims to pioneer the development of a "multichannel customer interaction platform" that can be deployed by big retailers and financial services firms.

The platform would constantly update its profiles of customers, effectively "learning" from any purchase or query and adding that to personal information in its database. It might "know" that you like skiing, wine and jazz, and be cognizant of your location and calendar. Imagine a text message that, say, includes your spouse's name in a reminder about your upcoming anniversary, because you inserted the date on a wedding registry years before. Target, I assume, already knows that in the summer of 2014, we'll be shopping for school uniforms.

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