Cortell delivers advanced predictive analytics with IBM SPSS offering

Cortell Corporate Performance Management (Cortell) has recently concluded an agreement with IBM to become a licensed reseller and implementer of the IBM SPSS predictive analytics software suite. These products will be incorporated into Cortell’s existing business intelligence and analytics solutions, augmenting this offering and enabling organisations to harness the full potential of their data.

“In today’s fast-paced business world, making smarter decisions, predicting future events and understanding trends is the key to unlocking competitive advantage. IBM’s SPSS solutions apply statistical techniques to current and historical data to help you better understand your business data, pick up the underlying causes of trends, enable more accurate budgeting and forecasting, and more. In short, SPSS allows businesses to drive the best outcomes for their business through more informed decisions,” says Greg Bogiages, Director of Cortell.

SPSS is a standalone series of software and tools that integrate seamlessly into and enhance a range of business intelligence and database tools. Thanks to an open architecture, the SPSS suite is brand agnostic and is not limited to integration with only the IBM range. A graphical user interface and drag and drop features make the tool intuitive to use and data can easily be structured to derive new variables and to validate information.

“This means that with minimal training, anyone can use the SPSS analytics tools to create analytics models that can be reused within their organisations. The complexity has been cleverly hidden to allow organisations to focus on using the software to drive maximum benefit, rather than becoming bogged down in the intricacies of the system,” Bogiages adds.

SPSS also enables organisations to leverage vast amounts of unstructured data, including emails, social media and even instant messages, identifying both positive and negative sentiment within this data. Using text mining within an organisation delivers a more accurate picture of the state of the organisation, enabling in turn reduced customer and staff churn, more accurate in budgeting and forecasting, encouraging a proactive approach to decision-making, and more accurately identifying and managing risk.

IBM SPSS tools are used by more than 95% of the Fortune 100, and the suite is ranked as a leader in predictive analytics by Gartner, consistently outperforming the competition. The software is used by 10 out of 10 of the top global commercial banks, 8 out of 10 of the leading telecommunication serves companies, 21 of the top 25 leading retailers worldwide and 24 of the 25 top market research firms. It is also used in hundreds of hospitals and research agencies and across the US military and government, and is the number one statistical software solution on university campuses.

The IBM SPSS suite has been used with great success in a variety of industries around the world. The Memphis Police Department uses SPSS to analyse data and proactively predict where crimes are likely to take place. This enables offices to be intelligently deployed, resulting in a 30% reduction in serious crime since the implementation of SPSS. First Tennessee Bank uses SPSS analytics to match banking products to the needs of its customers, increasing the direct response and cross sell rate. Puma Athletic Footwear provides real-time access to inventory and shipping data, enabling better customer service and reducing sales calls by 20% in just two months.

“The IBM SPSS suite is applicable across industries, from banking to retail to the public sector, and opens up access to new markets for us, including pharmaceutical and telecoms. It also broadens our offering to the office of finance, an important focus for us. Predictive analytics is the next step in business intelligence and analytics, and incorporating this world-leading solution into our offering completes our offering to our customers,” Bogiages concludes.

The full IBM SPSS software suite along with related consulting and services is available immediately from Cortell Corporate Performance Management.