Statistical Consulting

A business organization looking to improve its profitability through detailed internal evaluation should seriously consider availing the services of a statistical consulting firm. Depending upon the specific industry in question, statistical consulting firms can add tremendous value and help an organization outrun existing standards of performance measured by revenues and profits. For instance, marketing managers may want to hire the expertise of statistical consulting firms in order to obtain comprehensible survey results for the purpose of launching new products. Not only that, statistical consulting firms can aid in the understanding of a company’s customer base and more effectively service the needs of existing customers. They often say in business circles that retaining a customer is much cheaper than obtaining a new one.

In a nutshell, statistical consulting firms provide important statistical and research advice to clients in a wide range of industry domains including, but not limited to marketing, finance, information technology, manufacturing, human resources, telecommunications. Apart from the business applications, statistical consulting firms can be employed by university level researchers and scholars in their quest for new knowledge and understanding and processing large amounts of empirical data.

In choosing the right statistical consulting firm, it is important to remember a few key points which will help in making sure that the costs and benefits of hiring statistical consulting firm is balanced and justified:

1. Sound need assessment: be it a university, research activity or business environment, the need for a statistical consulting firm must be evaluated and clearly specified. There should be a value proposition which ensures that the consultant will not be used as just eye wash, rather as a tool for business improvement. In addition to this, management buy-in is critical, without which the recommendations, even when they are critical, will turn out to be a formality and lead to nothing but business expenses.

2. Skills assessment: there are generic statistical consulting firms and specialized statistical consulting firms which are either focused on a specific industry domain such as financial services, or provide a more macro-view consulting service. In many cases, generic statistical consulting firms will get the job done when it comes to business process improvement, efficiency audits, etc. however, there may be a need in some cases, where specialized statistical consulting firms need to be brought in to conduct a detailed analysis of a specific business process.

3. Soft skills: it’s important that apart from sheer qualifications and statistical skills, the consultant display a strong portfolio of soft skills and be sensitive to the various qualitative aspects of business, such as employee morale, team dynamic and other such metrics which form a critical part of any business improvement initiative. It is important to ensure that apart from IQ, statistical consulting firms and their personnel possess strong EQ as well, to be able to create meaningful interpretations from business data.

Statistical consulting firms are typically considered the subject matter of corporations and profit oriented entities. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Statistical consulting firms are frequently deployed in research scenarios such as economic or socio-economic research, medicine or biotechnology (even not for profit firms), military operations and other government initiatives. Even at the university level, statistical consulting firms are frequently found providing their expertise and sharing knowledge with scholars and experts alike.

In an academic setting, statistical consulting firms are used by research professionals in high end research projects involving many millions of dollars, due to the sheer complexity and size of the project. The objective of such engagement is, in addition to ensuring validity and accuracy, developing and deploying new innovative means of solving critical and non-standard problems. To say then, that statistical consulting firms are another branch of statistical academics would be at the very least, inaccurate. Statistics is only one aspect of statistical consulting firms, with the others being exposure to business and/or academic environments and problems, having a strong aptitude for solving problems and a knack for innovation.

The scope of activities for statistical consulting firms can range from survey and questionnaire design, research and experiment design to making recommendations on a macro level for business and academic purposes. In the middle, they also provide data analysis services as well as guidance for those activities. Finally, one must remember that statistical consulting firms don’t have to cost the earth. The keyword is balance- between costs and perceived benefits.

For more information on Statistical consulting please call us at 877-437-8622 or visit our website www.StatisticsSolutions.com