ACADEMIA

SPSS Inc. (Nasdaq:SPSS), a worldwide provider of predictive analytics, today announced that BankFinancial is preparing to implement the recently released SPSS PredictiveMarketing(TM) solution. SPSS PredictiveMarketing, an automated predictive analytics application that helps marketers improve customer targeting and increase response rates, has been selected by BankFinancial to acquire and retain customers, improve marketing efficiency and, ultimately, increase revenues. Each year, approximately 1.5 percent of BankFinancial customers, and then, for unknown reasons, terminate their relationship with the bank. BankFinancial will use the sophisticated analysis capabilities within SPSS PredictiveMarketing to automatically sift through its volumes of customer data to find revealing patterns and identify customers who may be considering ending their relationship. It will then provide its branch managers with a list of those customers so that steps can be taken to retain them. In addition to improving customer retention, BankFinancial will use the software to generate additional revenue and increase customer satisfaction by identifying customers who are likely to use additional bank services. "SPSS PredictiveMarketing will fit seamlessly into our daily activities, and will enable us to plan and monitor our customer activities in new ways," said William Connerty, assistant VP of research for BankFinancial. "The solution automates a lot of the data manipulation and data flow, and the pre-built models and easy-to-use interface will enable us to shorten the time it takes to develop predictive models." SPSS PredictiveMarketing's Web-based interface provides the results in easy-to-understand visual formats that enable marketers to predict which customers will respond, purchase and churn. Designed to accommodate a wide range of user skill levels, SPSS PredictiveMarketing puts advanced analytics directly into the hands of marketers. Pre-built, customizable templates help marketers use customer data to anticipate which customers are likely to respond to a particular offer, what they are likely to purchase, and when they are likely to depart. While the SPSS PredictiveMarketing templates incorporate sophisticated technologies, they are designed to be readily revised for new campaigns and customer analyses. "BankFinancial understands how to leverage technology to gain an advantage in a highly competitive marketplace," said Colin Shearer, VP of customer analytics for SPSS. "By using other SPSS predictive analytics in the past, they have successfully increased their marketing research efficiencies and will further maximize their marketing dollars with the use of SPSS PredictiveMarketing." SPSS PredictiveMarketing is a stand-alone application that can effortlessly integrate into organizations' campaign management, sales force automation or CRM systems. Its open, standards-based architecture enables it to be readily customized to work within a company's existing software infrastructure. In conjunction with data mining tools, such as SPSS Inc.'s Clementine(R) data mining workbench, it gives marketers access to data mining results in formats that they can use, without placing additional demands on data miners or analysts.