How did Business Data Miners perform throughout the project?
In terms of the service level and useful dialogue we had with Business Data Miners, it was very professional. The end product did exactly what it was supposed to do and performed very well. That particular score card was only in use for about four years. Then the business was sold to a bank. The bank had its own analytics team. The bank used its own team to build the next evolution of the scorecard. Even with four more years of data, they didn’t really build something that was more predictive.
I think what Business Data Miners built was as predictive as it could be based on where the business was in its current state of development. By the time they built the next evolution, they tripled the size of the business. I think they got a 10 or 15 percent lift in terms of the predictability of the latest scorecard.
What is unique or special about Business Data Miners?
That wasn’t a tendered scenario. I’m missing some comparativeness. Typically, when you have a scorecard company do some work for you, they want clean data. The data they get from companies is typically not that clean. Their team not only worked with us to help, but clean up the data. Most companies would just reject anything that didn’t look like clean data. In this case, they identified a number of different things that seemed to be systemic. We were able to do a very material cleanup of our data rather than just throwing it out. He took the extra step to do that, which makes Business Data Miners stand out.
Documentation is very important in these projects. I know that four years later when the bank and their own people reviewed all that work, they commented that his documentation was outstanding
Is there anything that you think Business Data Miners could improve upon or something you might do differently?
No.
The team built a highly functional model that was used as a long-term tool. Business Data Miners has an intelligent and innovative team that learns and applies new techniques quickly. They do not always pitch their ideas well, but they follow through and know the data and technology.