United Kingdom: Recognition for ECOVIS Wingrave Yeats’ Data Analytics initiative
At the end of July, ECOVIS Wingrave Yeats’ Data Analytics team was shortlisted for Mid-Tier Innovation of the Year at the British Accountancy Awards 2018.
From an idea born in mid-2015, we embarked on an entirely new journey by launching a ‘Data Analytics’ service line within the practice. Through this initiative, we set out to provide a service to our clients outside of the norm, by unlocking the value of operational data to support and drive better business decision-making. The team are led by a culture giving freedom to innovate and identify the best methodology to deliver an excellent outcome. Supported by a team of specialist data scientists and analysts, this concept has proven successful with current and new clients.
he data analytics concept we have developed is generating measurable value for our clients. The analysis we’re producing is supporting and driving better business decision-making at executive board level, and we are involved in the decision-making process.
Results
We are providing data analytics services to a collection of clients in a variety of industries on a continuing basis. This work ranges from exploratory analysis work, through dashboard production, to predictive modelling based on machine learning algorithms.
Case study: fashion retailer
This retailer relied on regular catalogue mailings to customers. A huge proportion of expenditure was represented by these marketing costs, which returned an extremely low response rate from customers. They wished to isolate customer profiles who would be likely to respond, in order to reduce overall spending but increase return.
We employed predictive modelling techniques on their customer purchase and contact history for a select brand and region, which identified subsets of customers with higher than average response rates across the book. With this basis from past performance, we were able to generate, validate and actively test the outcome of the model’s predictions on unseen customer response datasets.
“Our catalogue marketing campaigns are hugely important for our business. With the model that Ecovis delivered, we are now able to select our catalogue audience according to their likelihood of responding. We expect this to return to us an annual net saving of approximately 17% of our annual catalogue mailing costs for minimal loss of demand. The data analytics team at Ecovis understood the scope of the work, were professional and patient, and delivered exactly the end product that we needed. This was a dream project for us, and I look forward to having their ongoing support,” said an Ecovis client.
Ultimately, we were able to deliver a set of customer selection criteria for catalogue mailings; the client estimates that the use of the model will result in a 17% saving in annual expenditure on catalogue mailings, directly impacting the bottom line (see “Recognising and exploiting potential”).
What’s ahead?
In the future, the Ecovis team sees the professional services market changing dramatically. As compliance and processing services are commoditised, firms must innovate to add value to businesses through their services. This venture is very much driven by our strategic goal to be an innovative firm, embracing technology in delivering our services end encouraging our people to be challenging, forward-thinking and creative.
We know that data analytics services are provided by other firms and specialist agencies, servicing the largest companies. We stand out not only as a trailblazer in mid-market accountancy firms, but as a provider of data analysis services to a wide range of industries of both large and SME market clients. By joining up the skill sets of data scientists and experienced business advisors, we ensure our work is targeted at delivering relevant and genuine value, and the correct tools and techniques are selected to deliver it.
Author:
Reuben Barry, Director, Data Analytics, ECOVIS Wingrave Yeats, London, UK
reuben.barry@ecovis.co.uk
Contact us:
ECOVIS Wingrave Yeats
Waverley House, 7-12 Noel StreetW1F 8GQ London
Phone: +44 20 7495 2244
www.ecovis.co.uk