Analytical insight ‘has a substantive impact on top and bottom lines’

13 December 2007; Celent, an independent research and advisory firm focused on the financial services and insurance industries, has recognised Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) as the highest-scoring provider of profitability analytics applications, according to a new report. The Celent publication, “Evaluation of Customer Analytics Vendors 2007,” by Alenka Grealish, managing director of the banking group, was completed and released following a detailed study and analysis of major technology-based analytics vendors in hardware, software and services.

In the report Teradata is described as a, “highly regarded data warehousing technology provider which was an early mover in the customer profitability analytics arena … with Teradata Value Analyzer (TVA).” The Celent report also states, “Teradata excels at amassing huge quantities of data and distilling them into profitability metrics.” The report quotes a large North American financial services institution as commenting that, “Teradata has given us the opportunity to do things that seemed impossible.”

The study also reviewed the capabilities of runner-up scorers: analytics vendors SAS, Oracle, Sungard and others. To be eligible for inclusion in the study, vendors were required to have the ability to calculate profitability at the account level and needed to have five or more installations in the United States. The 42-page report addressed the numerous challenges facing today’s leading financial institutions at a time when, “organic growth through de novo branches and cross-selling are proving less fruitful” … and “market share no longer translates into market power or profitability.”

Analyst Alenka Grealish concludes in the executive summary that, “the ability to develop customer profitability analytics and execute strategies and tactics based on the results will differentiate financial institutions over the next decade.”

Teradata’s expertise in financial analytics began with the development of Teradata Value Analyser as a joint program with Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). Teradata solutions for profitability analysis have since expanded and are used by U.S. online retailers, large financial services institutions and telecommunications companies.  TVA has also been adopted outside North America, with the most recent addition being Caixa Galicia Bank in Spain.   

"Initially, we were planning to do our own development for profitability analysis," said Jose Valiño, Caixa Galicia chief information officer. "However, after a very successful proof-of- concept, the Teradata team demonstrated that TVA will allow Caixa Galicia a shorter and easier implementation as well as future support and growth of the profitability solution with a reduced total cost of ownership."

Valiño added that TVA will allow Caixa Galicia to better address new financial reporting requirements and commercial and customer management initiatives, while also providing detailed information for Basel II accounting rules.

"TVA's capability to store detailed information about every single object and rule calculation, making it possible to analyse intermediate and final results in detail for auditing, was decisive," said José Andrés García Bueno, Teradata general manager for Spain and Portugal. "The implementation of TVA has brought clear business value to the bank."

Celent stated that the impetus for the study was driven by, “the growing importance of profitable growth and the maturing of customer profitability applications.” Celent used an “ABCD Vendor View: the use of advanced technology and the breadth of functionality are relatively high.” The report also points out that the Teradata solution “enables customers to incrementally build out their profitability systems, can handle a large number of complex equations, and is not cumbersome to use.”

Teradata profitability analytics produce a deeply detailed, enterprise-wide view of business value — by activity, customer behavior, product, sales channel or organization – as an improvement over traditional value averages and summary information. This results in an integrated, centralised view of profitability for financial analysts and chief financial officers.