Released on: May 23, 2008, 12:32 am

Press Release Author: Lokad.com

Industry: Software

Press Release Summary: For two decades, data miner and statistician have been two
highly paid jobs, because they were leading to substantial savings in most large
companies. Yet, Web 2.0 technologies applied to business analytics are radically
changing this situation.

Press Release Body: Contact: Joannes Vermorel
LOKAD SAS, Paris, France
press@lokad.com

2008-05-14, for immediate release.

Anticipating demand is a business cornerstone for most companies. In retail and
manufacturing, supply chain optimization, which significantly relies on statistical
forecasts, has been a major factor of cost reduction in the last decade. Yet,
accurate forecasts are typically requiring top-notch data miners who happen to be
both rare and expensive. According the KD Nuggets poll of 2006, North American data
miners were getting $110,000 on average.

Yet, emerging technologies may dramatically change this situation.

"When we started in 2006", said Joannès Vermorel, founder of Lokad.com, "the Total
Cost of Ownership (TCO) of any advanced business forecasting solution was above
$200.000 per year. Clearly, it's not something that a SME can afford. Lokad was
founded with the goal of delivering an even better forecasting technology for only a
tiny percentage of usual costs."

Indeed, the TCO bottleneck of statistical forecasting was the need to have an expert
on hand to actually build the statistical models and perform the forecasts. But
companies such as Lokad.com now deliver "forecasts as a service". The historical
data is uploaded Lokad.com (the data being obfuscated first for security) and the
forecasts are downloaded back. With the latest release of Lokad Safety Stock
Calculator, the whole process does require more than a single click.

But the real technology shift consists not of simply outsourcing data miners into
another company; it consists in leveraging the global web community in order to
improve even further the forecast accuracy. For example, Lokad.com has a Web 2.0
approach to forecasting where every single forecasts leverage not only the sole
historical dataset of the company requesting the forecast, but leverage also the
datasets from all the companies being part of the Lokad community.

"By leveraging small correlations", said Joannes Vermorel, "we are able to improve
the forecast accuracy beyond what we call the offline barrier. When it comes to
statistical forecasts for SME, one major issue of traditional approaches is that
usually there is simply not enough data."

Those emerging companies that deliver "forecasts as a service" are quickly
commoditizing technologies that were once reserved to large companies that could
actually hire the few experts that the market had to offer. Considering this, the
next decade is most probably going to bring significant changes in this market.

Lokad.com was founded in 2006 with the objective to deliver state-of-the-art
statistical forecasts at a fraction of the usual costs associated to those
technologies. Lokad provides "forecasting as a service" solutions for SME starting
at $20/month. Lokad is a software company based in Paris, France.
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If you'd like more information about this topic or to schedule an interview with
Joannes Vermorel, please e-mail at press@lokad.com

Web Site: http://www.lokad.com/safety-stock-calculator-software.ashx

Contact Details: Address: 70 rue Lemercier, Paris
France

Phone Number:
Email: lokaddesktop@lokad.com