Five verbs seem to characterize my administrative role lately: plan, strategize, assess, engage, and report especially during these final stages of the distance ed strategic planning process. To avoid known strategic planning pitfalls, I have often sought out strategic partners. Peerless Analytics is one example that seemed best poised to help with marketing, advising, and retention challenges. A dear friend introduced me to Peerless last year; I'd like to introduce Peerless to you in this post. Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Brian Mahoney, the CEO and President of Peerless Analytics and Ken Rethmeier, VP of Sales & Marketing.
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| Brian Mahoney, CEO |
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| Ken Rethmeier, VP Sales |
Who is Peerless Analytics?
Peerless Analytics is the only 2.0 provider of predictive products and services that helps schools increase admission, improve retention and even boosts fund raising. Peerless is able to tell its school customers exactly what to say, how to say it and to whom. We help our clients gain deep insight into their customer’s preferences by tapping their mental DNA through our award winning proprietary science – mind genomics. “Mindset Data” is our business.
How did it start? Why the change to Peerless Analytics from Peerless Education?
Peerless Analytics is the new name for Peerless Education. We changed the name for two reasons; the first is that we decided to focus on data analytics (our strength) and second because we received interest from and had success with markets outside of education and our name no longer fit.
What is predictive analytics? Predictive Analytics can mean many different things depending on the use and individual perspectives. When we talk about predictive analytics we are describing the process of tapping the “Mental DNA” of a student and understanding, with scientific precision, their conscious and unconscious preferences as a way to predict an individual’s behavior.
Is Peerless without peers? What distinguishes you in the market? Big data, predictive analytics and actionable intelligence are all buzzwords in higher education and there are great companies that have products and services in this market. The difference however is that all companies we have seen so far measure what we like to call “The What” about prospective students (age, education, GPA, level of income etc.) and we are able to measure “The Why” (motivations, unconscious preferences and emotional drivers) . We even take this one step further and deliver the exact messaging that will influence an individual to act. Given this we feel that we offer something distinctly different, and more predictive, than anything else available in the analytics market. As we mentioned earlier we say “Mindset Data” is our business.
What does Peerless offer distance education administrators? Peerless can offer distance education administrators, K12 and Consortia leaders the ability to understand the motivations of their students and influence them to enroll and stay in programs. We have also been pleasantly surprised with other applications of our science that our customers have suggested to us. For example, one customer recognized the opportunity to use our science for fund raising. We listened to them and it worked! We have the perspective that while we know our science we can learn a lot from our customers. So far the results have been great.
What are the problems or challenges that Peerless is best poised to help solve?
We believe we are best positioned to help solve three problems in higher education; admission, retention and fund raising.
· The first revolves around admission. We know we can help schools better understand their applicants motivations and achieve more enrollment AND a better fit between the student and the institution. For elite schools this means we can help improve their yield. For enrollment driven schools we can help increase enrolments.
· The second problem we can help solve is student retention. The same principle of understanding motivations will lead to better course and program matching, more effective interventions and more productive conversations around the benefit of completing.
· Finally, as I mentioned earlier, we can help schools with their fund raising efforts. It all revolves around the same principle of understanding motivations but is directed at solving different institutional challenges.
How can people learn more about your services? Anyone interested in learning more can visit our web site at www.peerlessanalytics.com or call us anytime to ask questions or see how our science works. Thank you for your time and questions. We appreciate the opportunity to talk about our company and how we help our customers.
