After partnering with Statistica earlier this year, Dell is making headway on several predictive analytics projects, enabling a broader audience to be data modelers.
“Statistica is much easier to use so there’s a broader group inside the Department of Financial Services that can become analysts without specialized training so that lowers our total cost of ownership and also increases our speed at which we can generate new models and refresh older models,” said John K. Thompson, general manager of advanced analytics at Dell Software “It has also enabled us to do modeling at a much more granular level.”
With predictive analytics, Dell has been able to narrow the margin of safety they require because they are doing things faster, using data, and having better analysts involved in the process, Thompson explained.
“DFS has really done a great job of leveraging the Statistica technology to gain those really business benefits so, that’s one area that we’ve used it,” Thompson said.
Statistica has also been able to provide Dell’s support team with the ability to analyze different products they have sold over time and track their life spans to solve problems with different pieces of equipment.
“We’ll proactively tell people, ‘it looks like you may encounter an issue with this piece of equipment in three to six months,’” Thompson said.
Dell is looking at historical transactional information and usage information to tailor their messages, approach and sales motions to current, past and prospective customers.
“It’s kind of a predictive, prescriptive kind of analytic approach to cross selling, up selling, and renewing,” Thompson said.
Adopting new predicative analytic methods came with its own set of challenges, Thompson explained, as people who use analytical tools were resistant to change.
“The human aspect of these analytics projects cannot be underestimated, that’s for sure,” Thompson said. “I’d say cultural resistance was one of the big issues we had to deal with.”
Dell will look at other areas to use predictive analytics, such as Internet of Things and data centers, among others, according to Thompson.
“Portable predictive analytic models are an innovation we are excited about,” Thompson said. “Intersecting that with IoT architectures and new ways to model real-time and big data information flow, this is really exciting for us.”