There is nothing better than attending an industry conference to feel the pulse of the market. It is one of the few times that you can meet hundreds of your potential customers and talk to them about their needs, pains, and hopes. This is the true value of an industry conference for me: having the opportunity to understand the value that you can bring to a customer.
The Othot team recently attended NACAC 2016 (National Association for College Admissions Counseling). It was more special than the scores of conferences that I have attended during my career because I saw potential customers’ eyes pop when they saw the leading edge of advanced analytics on display in the Othot platform. And that platform was solving some of their most difficult problems. Our team learned firsthand that we are delivering value propositions that were previously not available. Yes, our unique cloud-based platform empowers schools with the ability to leverage their internal data and Othot-provided external data to understand the likelihood that a high school student will enroll at their institution. But what was truly powerful was our ability to demonstrate Othot’s “What If?” capabilities aka “prescriptive analytics.” In other words, what can you do — what’s within your power— to increase the likelihood of a high schooler enrolling in your school.
What I have just described is fully scalable Advanced Analytics, democratized in a cloud-based environment. This embedded analytics solution has a huge impact on an uber-critical process – the conversion of prospects into enrolled students through optimized resources. No longer are college and university professionals subject to the constraints of existing solutions that cause them to ship data somewhere else and wait for the answer for days or weeks. Instead, Othot’s passion for technology and a superior user experience now allows our customers to control their own data and timelines, and allows them to turn the knobs to generate insights in real time.
I love solving customer’s needs, problems and pain. I love technology, data and science. Isn’t it great when they all converge? Welcome to analytics 4.0.