NCR and Quadstone Help Banks Better Predict Customer Behavior
ACTION ITEMS
NCR Corporation is to help financial institutions better anticipate the future actions of consumers through a new suite of propensity modeling software and consulting services. NCR is augmenting the power of its data warehousing and professional consultancy services through an agreement with Quadstone Limited, the Edinburgh-based developer of Decisionhouse, a fully-scalable suite of tools for integrated data access, visualization, and predictive modeling. Decisionhouse is an integral part of the NCR propensity modeling offer.
Propensity modeling enables banks to accurately predict customer behavior in a number of key business areas -- for example, who is likely to buy a certain service or product, who might be thinking of moving to a rival bank, or who shows risks of defaulting on a credit card or loan payment. "NCR can help our customers get fast analysis of their entire customer base, delivered across the entire organization, whenever and wherever it is needed," said Rod Bryan, NCRs Vice President for Customer Management Solutions. "By having the right knowledge about what a consumer is likely to do next, a bank can be proactive in its approach to them and so gain the edge on the opposition."
The benefits that can be offered by NCRs partnership with Quadstone are already in evidence at Barclays, one of the worlds top 20 banks. "The ability to manipulate data easily, as provided by the NCR's data warehousing solutions, and being able to use powerful analysis tools, as provided by Quadstone's Decisionhouse, are key components of our drive to market the right products at the right time to the right people and make sure we get the right balance between risk and reward," said David Townsend, Director of Credit Risk Portfolio Management, Barclays Bank.
Propensity modeling now complements other services from NCRs Customer Management Solutions group which are all designed to leverage the information housed in a data warehouse for strategic advantage. "The clues to customer behavior are in the transactions logged in the data warehouse. Decisionhouse enables us to analyze that information, and present it in a way that allows all departments in a bank to act on it while it is fresh and relevant," Bryan added.
"Predictive models need to distill complex and large sets of data into a form that the banks business users can understand and make use of. Speed and flexibility in building these models is critical to the bank maintaining its competitive edge," said Neil Heywood, Managing Director of Quadstone. "Our partnership with NCR achieves that by bringing together world-class consultants, our Decisionhouse customer modelling software, and the data warehouse itself."
NCR Corporation is a leader in scalable data warehousing, self-service and store automation solutions for the retail, financial and communications industries and other select markets. More information on NCR and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ncr.com
Quadstone specializes in the development of high-performance software for the detailed analysis of large-scale customer databases. Established in 1994, Quadstones' turnover for 1997/98 is substantially over 3million and recent quarterly figures show the company exceeding both revenue and profit targets. Quadstone currently employs over 60 staff in their Edinburgh headquarters, and has supporting offices in London and Boston. The company is currently initiating a number of international service-oriented partnerships with complementary companies in the USA, Europe and Japan. These partnerships will be the source of major expansion for Quadstone's products in 1998. More information on Quadstone and their Decisionhouse product can be found at http://www.quadstone.com