Date: Mar 06, 2017 Source: Company Data (
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STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Minitab, Inc. (www.minitab.com), which provides quality improvement software to more than 90% of Fortune 100 companies, today announced that it has acquired Salford Systems, a leading provider of advanced analytics technology for machine learning, data mining and predictive analytics.
For Minitab, the acquisition extends the 45-year-old company's mission of helping people discover valuable insights in their data by delivering exceptional, easy to use software and unparalleled support and service. The integration of Salford into Minitab's business will benefit existing users of both company's products and bring powerful analytic capabilities to new markets.
The purchase will immediately expand distribution of the company's SPM Salford Predictive Modeler®, a modeling platform developed and enhanced in direct collaboration with original creators of modern machine learning and data mining. The purchase also provides resources to enable Salford to more rapidly deliver innovations with potential applications in every major industry and business function, including financial services, pharmaceuticals, retail, advertising, technology, telecommunications, transportation, hospitality, government and manufacturing.
"Salford products and services enable us to offer extremely powerful data mining solutions that are easy to implement with existing enterprise solutions, easy to use, and continually demonstrate return to organizations of any size," says Charles Snellgrove, president of Minitab. "Through our existing global network, organizations around the world will now have easy access to this best-in-class solution to their predictive modeling problems."
The ease of use and broad range of application of Salford's products are two main reasons the company was so attractive to Minitab. Inspired by the way leading data scientists approach their work, the Salford Predictive Modeler features built-in automation that benefits both expert and less experienced modelers. While the analyst retains full control, the software anticipates the next best steps, allowing modelers to spend more time thinking about the problems they are trying to solve, to recognize potential issues that could limit their progress or the applicability of their models, and to obtain results far faster.
The effectiveness of Salford Systems' technology can be seen most recently in the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Analytics Challenge. Using real-world data from organizations like the Make-a-Wish Foundation and the Cleveland Clinic, this annual competition focuses on a wide range of business challenges, such as targeted marketing campaigns, predicting customer lifetime value, and addressing acquisition challenges of lapsed customers. The company that has won more DMA analytical awards than any other--DataLab USA--used Salford Predictive Modeler to do it.
"Salford's software lets us build better models in a fraction of the time," says Aaron Davis, chief of analytical services at DataLab USA. "That enables our team to concentrate on other areas of the business problem, which ultimately leads to more successful solutions."
The SPM Salford Predictive Modeler® software, which includes the essential modeling methods of CART® Decision Trees, Random Forests®, TreeNet® Gradient Boosting, and MARS® nonlinear regression, is highly accurate, ultra-fast and can be used with structured or unstructured data sets. Although Salford's software is already a critical component of predictive modeling analytics programs in many of the world's biggest companies, Minitab's acquisition is expected to accelerate the reach to help even more organizations benefit from using it.
"Salford Predictive Modeler is a key tool in every modeling project managed by my team," says Bill Kahn, head of consumer behavior modeling at Bank of America. "It provides superior predictive power, safe defaults, powerful options, reliability, and computational speed. The command and graphical user interfaces, documentation, and support are all excellent. The combination of Minitab and Salford will allow for deeper investments in the tool, leading to quicker releases of new capabilities."
About Minitab and Salford Systems
Minitab is the leading provider of software and services for quality improvement and statistics education. More than 90% of Fortune 100 companies use Minitab Statistical Software, the company's flagship product, and more students worldwide have used Minitab to learn statistics than any other package. Minitab, Inc. is a privately owned company headquartered in State College, Pennsylvania, with subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia, with representatives serving more than 40 countries around the world.
Salford Systems specializes in state-of-the-art machine learning technology designed to assist data scientists in all aspects of predictive model development. Salford's tools are known for their ease of use, capability of working with large volumes of data, high-speed model development, robustness and reliability and consistent delivery of ultra-accurate models. Salford's modeling automation tools guide novice data scientists through the complex process of model development and help expert data scientists develop world-class predictive models. Salford software has been used in over 3,500 organizations worldwide (financial services, insurance, transportation, retail, healthcare, science, and high tech) and has been deployed in online targeted marketing, credit risk scoring, financial fraud detection, insurance risk management, logistics, bio-medical research, manufacturing quality control, and dozens of other fields. www.salford-systems.com.
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FOR MORE INFORMATION contact Eston Martz in Minitab media relations: PublicRelations@minitab.com
