Testimonials

Leading executives at organizations worldwide have used analytics to make better decisions. Here are testimonials from some of analytics’ satisfied customers.

Robert C. Wright
Vice Chairman & Executive Officer, General Electric
Chairman & CEO, NBC Universal

"Operations research, management science, and analytics techniques have given us a significant competitive advantage during the 'Up Front Market.' All the hard work and creativity that went into this project definitely has paid off. In fact, these new systems have an impact of over $50 million in annual revenues and have greatly boosted the productivity of the NBC sales staff. Thanks to GE's corporate research and development center, our network sales organization has seen firsthand how operations research methodologies can revolutionize how we work. We will continue to deploy these technologies across all functions as we grow and improve our business."

Robert L. Crandall Retired Chairman,
President, & CEO
AMR and American Airlines

"I believe that yield management [an analytics driven process] is the single most important technical development in transportation management since we entered the era of airline deregulation in 1979.... The development of yield management was a key to American Airlines’ survival in the post-deregulation environment.

"Without yield management, we were often faced with two unsatisfactory responses in a price competitive marketplace. We could match deeply discounted fares and risk diluting our entire inventory, or we could not match and certainly lose market share. Yield management gave us a third alternative — match deeply discounted fares on a portion of our inventory and close deeply discounted inventory when it is profitable to save space for later booking higher value customers. By adjusting the number of reservations which are available to these discounts, we can adjust our minimum available fare to account for differences in demand. This creates a pricing structure which responds to demand on a flight-by-flight basis. As a result, we can more effectively match our demand to supply.

"The development of the American Airlines’ yield-management system has been long and sometimes difficult, but this investment has paid off. We estimate that yield management has generated $1.4 billion in incremental revenue in the last three years alone. This is not a one-time benefit. We expect yield management to generate at least $500 million annually for the foreseeable future. As we continue to invest in the enhancement of DINAMO, we expect to capture an even larger revenue premium."

Launny Steffens
Managing Member of Investment Committee, Spring Mountain Capital
President, US Private Client
Vice Chairman,
Merrill Lynch and Company

"The decision to implement Integrated Choice was an unprecedented change in strategy for us. Management science and strategic pricing [operations research/analytics] provided the modeling and analyses that enabled me and my executive management team to better understand the revenue risks. The overall risk ranged from $200 million to $1 billion in revenues. This is the kind of thing that kept me up nights! The risks were also very critical at the individual financial advisor levels.

"Analysis of many scenarios, with different pricing points and how the offering should be structured in terms of open vs. closed architecture, blended vs. asset-specific pricing, and across the universe of securities and services, helped us to mitigate these risks. This helped me and the board of directors to make the final decision to proceed with both Unlimited Advantage and Direct offerings. It was also used to help convince the sales force that Integrated Choice was the right strategy for the long term.

"ML Unlimited Advantage has been an unqualified success. To our clients, it delivers the total financial relationship for one simple fee. For us, it puts renewed power into our asset gathering engine. MLUA had leaped to $83 billion under management by the end of 2000 and accounted for $22 billion of net new money. And it allowed us to seize the initiative in the marketplace. We have moved forward like a bullet train and it is our competitors that are scrambling not to get run over."