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Analytics focuses on aggregating data from a wide variety of non-traditional, as well as more conventional, sources that we link to Test Drive. A key element of analytics is determining value and return at the product, customer, business unit, division, and/or company level, which our clients use to help them make more informed decisions. To learn more about Penn Hudson, please contact us.

• Analytics was conceived by Penn Hudson in 1989 and over the years was refined to where we can now incorporate massive datasets from a variety of systems, as well as unstructured qualitative and text information, into a working repository of knowledge
• Our approach is to first construct large databases that draw data and information from available resources (e.g., invoices, inventory and accounts receivable agings, customer categories by type, channel summaries, logistics documents, bills of material, labor hour reports, interview notes)
• After the database is completed, we then work with you to array the myriad of data and information so that together we can mine such to discover perspectives about your company that had been hidden from view, but now in your control. An example flowchart is shown below related to sales:

• We also develop simulation models to provide management with probabilistic outcomes that are then incorporated into projections to test ranges of expectations and probe critical assumptions that can affect earnings, cash flow, and value in both positive and negative ways
• In many simulations we help prepare ranges geared around upside, downside, and most likely scenarios unless the company has sufficient data to estimate the likely underlying probability distribution
• Although statistical outputs are flexible and we can accommodate almost any variable of interest to management, in a number of matters, clients tended to focus more on liquidity, required new funding to support internal strategic plans, and value and return

Questions asked by our clients about analytics include:

• How large are the files you handle? Our company has over 500 thousand invoices
• Do you simplify your findings in a way we can more readily follow?
• Can our salespeople contribute their call reports to the process?
• What can you do to combine reports from different operating areas?
• Can I run various scenarios from the data to experiment with ideas, no matter how speculative?