WELCOME TO SARA

Statistical and Analytical Research Associates (SARA), LLC. provides statistical consulting services. The firm is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina and through the power of today’s technology has the capability to offer statistical consulting services worldwide.

Our role here at SARA, LLC. is to guide our clients in statistical data analysis, and research and development, which helps our clients make better decisions about their business. The guidance for each client is unique as each business is unique in its policies, employees, and customers.

What is a Statistical Consultant?
A statistical consultant should be a statistician with at least a masters of statistics degree, and a number of years of experience working as a statistician. We statisticians understand the mathematical science of statistics and know how to collect, analyze, interpret, and explain data.

Most statisticians use statistical software packages such as SAS software or SPSS software to explore data mining (extracting hidden patterns from the data) and observe statistical graphs to understand the data patterns. Once, a statistician understands the data pattern, we can assign a name to the population of interest. If we know what the population looks like we know the best way to analyze and interpret the data. We then have to explain the data through presentations designed for the audience that we are presenting to.

Typically, a statical consultant works with others who are experts in other subjects such as finance, medicine, insurance, social science, and the environment. We combine our statistical knowlege with experts in these subjects, often to guide managers in decision-making or to develop statistical processess for quality control.

Why Should Your Business Work with a Statistical Consultant?
Business professionals need a statistical consultant in order to make since of business intelligence through the collecting, analyzing, and interpretation of data, which then empowers a business professional to make wise decisions about their business. Instead of making decisions based on assumptions, a statistical consultant will provide your business with scientific evidence to support your business decisions. The statistical consultant must be able to present the technical results in a non-technical fashion so that it is clear how the results will impact your business.

A statistical consultant can develop predictive models by first employing data mining techniques, then interpreting the data to understand the characteristics of the population, this often involves examining historical data and taking a snapshot of the future to know how to predict future years. This approach is necessary in understanding customer retention (keeping customers and not losing them to competitors) and customer lifetime value (measuring the worth of customers over the lifetime of buying products and/or services).

A statistical consultant can develop predictive models to help business’s with market research. Business’s want to know which customers and how many of these customers to best target for a purchase or service for maximum profit. Business’s know how much it cost to market to their customers, but do business’s know the number of customers (appropriate sample size) to target, and which customers belong to the same clusters or groups? A statistical consultant can conduct a design of experiment to determine the appropriate sample size or conduct a cluster analysis on cross-sell (sell a new product or service to an existing customer) and up-sell (upgrade or add-on a product or service to an existing customer) products or services. It would be wise to incorporate the return-on-investment (ROI) or customer lifetime value to see the cost- benefit of marketing to a select group of customers.

A statistical consultant can help your business design a customer satisfaction survey or an employee satisfaction survey in order to understand what your customers and employees are thinking. In today’s challenging economy and competitive business world, retaining your customers is critical to your success. Business’s must give customers reasons to stay, otherwise your competitor with give them a reason to leave. If your employees are dissatisfied will they be loyal? All it takes is to offend one customer and they will tell their friends of their mistreatment.

A statistical consultant can help your business determine ways to monitor your call-center to ensure that policies are adhered to or whether policies should be changed. Are your customers sending in written complaints and making repeat complaint calls? Your business may need to investigate real-time data to determine exactly how many times a customer called in about the same complaint. A statistical consultant can help your business analyze repeat callers and incorporate this information with customer satisfaction surveys.

What is the risk of selling a product to a customer with a mediocre credit score, yet the customer has low loan-to-value, and high total assets? Do you know how to recognize fraudulent behaviour? If a customer has a high credit score and minimum income, what is the risk of offering a loan to that customer? You have a customer who has been sixty-days late, are they at risk of a charge-off? A statistical consultant can help your business identify factors that may cause unsuccessful projects. Common statistical tools for risk analysis is behavior score and fraudulent score modeling. How long has it been since your business updated existing behavior score and fraudulent score models, as with the changes in the economy today, do your customers still look the same?

How Do Your Business Know which Statistical Consultant to Hire?
The American Statistical Association (ASA) is a professional society for statisticians and has existed for one-hundred seventy years. Check with ASA to see if the statistical consultant is a member and belongs to the statistical consulting section. Check to see how long the statistician has been a member of ASA. Verify the statistical consultants educational degrees, some universities host online webpages identifying graduates with advanced degrees for free access. Check to see if the statistical consultant has a professional profile, on an online network such as LinkedIn.com. LinkedIn.com is a great source as it offers a place for recommendations from prior managers, co-workers, and clients. SAS founded in 1976, is one of the largest software companies in the world and is the leader in business analytics software. SPSS founded in 1968, is a leading worldwide provider in predictive analytics software and solutions. Check to see if the statistical consultant has an affiliation with SAS Institute or SPSS Incorporated.

Let us here at SARA, LLC. help your business with your decision-making with a scientific approach!