About
PredAlytics is an Organizational Empowerment (OE) firm supplying an array of predictive analytical consulting services to the IT community. Founded by “Doc vK” in the mid 1990′s, PredAlytics is a DBA for vK Systems, Inc. Prior to this “rebranding”, vK Systems, Inc. had over a decade long history of Operations Research-based (OR) decision support products and services to this same community.
Now a bit about “Dr. vK”, because when you get the OE services of PredAlytics, you are really getting “Doc vK”, and his four decades of OR experience as well as over a decade and a half of university classroom teaching experience.
First, about the “Doc vK” penname, it stands for Dr. D. L. von Kleeck. And, yes, I hold a Doctor of Professional Studies from Pace University’s Lubin Schools of Business. My studies there focused on the then new “advanced information technologies” of predictive analytics and data mining. My goal was to learn how these could be used with OR and IT to improve an organizational design and performance. To that end, I worked with the US Military Academy at West Point to research the embedding of predictive analytical models in their cadet selection process. And in a similar personnel venture, I worked with MetLife focusing on their new agent selection systems, showing they could save an estimated $50 million per year using improved predictive selection models.
Early in my career, I was with a major financial services institution where I served as the directors of the Operations Research Division and the Corporate Systems Division. In both roles I was instrumental in the implementation of emerging IT technologies that improved customer service and worker productivity levels. My final role there was Director of the Applications Productivity Group, where, reporting to the CIO I worked to improve the productivity of close to 1,000 IT professionals. These experiences led to my co-authoring a software product named Estimacs. Within two years Estimacs became the most widely distributed software application of it’s kind.
To facilitate the distribution of Estimacs, vK Systems, Inc. was formed. Aditionally, I became General Manager of the Micro IT Products Division for Management and Computer Services (MACS), a small software products vendor outside of Philadelphia, Pa. While at MACS, my strategic goals were to establish a New York City presence and to grow my newly formed division. To that end, I opened a MACS office in the Empire State Building and started conducting AM, half-day, IT seminars. Following the seminars I met with CIOs to discuss how our products could help them “tame the IT services delivery beast”. Lastly, I formed user groups to keep the communication channels open and build Estimacs enhancement and release lists and schedules. This drove sales wild. But this “feeding frenzy” did not go unnoticed. Computer Associates, then the world’s largest software vendor, acquired MACS, dumping all the products except for Estimacs.
Not wanting to relocate, I then turned the focus of vK Systems, Inc. toward supporting Estimacs user base, still promoting how CIOs could “tame the IT services delivery beast”. Finally, on one contract I was brought in as an “expert witness” in a suit between a mid-west utility and the world’s largest IT services provider. At issue was failure to deliver and my client wanted case study data to support their complaint. At this point I saw the opportunity to develop a “fuzzy Estimacs” and embed it in a simulation model. The results of that model showed that the project was grossly under staffed and the was under a 0.1% chance that it could possibly be delivered in the contracted time frame.
I have included the above as an example to show how a shift to predictive analytics and a simple fuzzy inference system could be be used to address an immediate decision support need. Shortly after that the the name and focus of vK Systems, Inc. shifted totally to “Predictive Analytics”.