Case Studies

Analyzing Paid Search Ad and Keyword Effectiveness

A leading retail company for consumer product goods (CPG) wanted to understand the effectiveness of their digital marketing efforts. Elder Research assessed the effectiveness of of paid product ads and determined the relative value of Google paid search keywords. We identified an under-performing ad characteristic that corresponded to a 55% decrease in click-through-rate (CTR). Our keyword pricing models uncovered overspending in 25% of their paid search budget and identified four of the top ten clicked keywords that were overpriced.

Assessing Second Opinion Effects on Return to Work

A government agency wanted to evaluate the efficacy of a potential policy change for handling of long term disability leave payments to injured federal employees. In some cases an injured worker’s physician fails to provide appropriate medical justification for the worker’s continued absence from work on disability leave. In these cases, adjudicators will require a second opinion (SECOP) from another physician regarding the worker’s level of capability to return to work. Elder Research was tasked to evaluate the effectiveness of these second opinions to encourage employees to go back to work.

Automating Data Pipelines and Network Entity Detection

Elder Research developed an automated data pipeline to cleanse data from millions of documents and feed a data visualization tool used to explore and identify risky network relationships. The solution enabled the client to automate significant portions of work saving time and cost, make data-driven decisions, prioritize investigative resources, and gain new business value from the data.

Automating Demand Forecasting For Major Logistics Company

Elder Research implemented an automated framework for time-series forecasting at a major logistics company. Our system, combining R and Apache Spark, produces 35 million forecasts in under one hour, and selects the optimal time-series forecast algorithm in each of three forecasting windows. Forecast results from our framework were 88% accurate at a four-week horizon.

Automating Textual Data Discovery And Analysis

Elder Research designed and deployed tools for high-end text mining to search, index, and automatically classify information related to animal infectious diseases. The solution enabled analysts to validate incidents of animal disease and make recommendations for dealing with them at the earliest stage possible.

AWS Data Pipeline Design Supports Natural Language Processing

A leader in the fast food industry hired Elder Research to assist in the design of a cloud-based Data Pipeline System Design to support Natural Language Processing (NLP) to gain business insights from their customer and organizational data assets. The solution will increase enterprise access to textual data and insights, streamline text data processing so resources can be reallocated to new efforts, minimize the number of assumptions made about text data, and generate the potential for using textual data in innovative applications.

Building an Analytics Center of Excellence

A Fortune 500 CPG retailer had no centralized analytics capability or long-term strategy. The executive team hired Elder Research to assess its current analytics needs, develop a strategic roadmap, and build an analytics center of excellence.

Creating A Predictive Modeling Framework

A global humanitarian organization asked Elder Research to develop a customized training and collaborative modeling framework to empower their team to develop a baseline predictive model to optimize donor segmentation strategies. The client's team developed a baseline multi-class classification model in R and was very satisfied with the quality of the training and insight provided.

Custom Web Crawler Uncovers Web Page Themes

Elder Research built a web crawler deployed to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and used text analytics to help a large international charity identify collections of key themes describing each sub-community within their intranet and organize these sub-communities into larger groups.

Data Engineering for Promotion Analysis

A CPG client needed help integrating disparate data sources including syndicated sales, promotion, and coupon data to enable their marketing team to analyze the effectiveness and return on investment of historical marketing events.

Detecting Fraudulent Workers' Compensation Claims

Department of Labor Office of Inspector General (DOL-OIG) contracted with Elder Research to create a predictive model to detect fraud in Office of Workers’ Compensation Program (OWCP) data. The goals of this project were to highlight abnormalities in the claims data that could be used to form the basis of future audits and to create visualization tools to enable auditors to explore model results. The RADR tool amplifies the productivity of DOLOIG auditors and reduced case investigation time from days to hours, combining client goals and expertise with objective measures of risk

Detecting Healthcare Insurance Fraud, Waste, and Abuse

Elder Research developed an advanced analytics prototype to detect potential fraud, waste, and abuse by Medicare and Medicaid dental insurance service providers. The analytics solution increased fraud detection by a factor of ten and enabled the client to more efficiently target suspect claims for investigation.

Developing a Data Strategy

The Analytics Center of Excellence at a national retail chain was developing a strategic plan for sustainable and pervasive use of data across their business. Their goal was to establish a competitive advantage through using their data, while remaining true to their corporate values. Elder Research developed a data strategy which identified over a dozen opportunities to use more advanced analytical techniques in their business.

Developing a Strategic Roadmap and Analytics Center of Excellence

A leading producer of consumer packaged goods (CPG) wanted to build an advanced analytics capability to maintain a competitive edge. The client had no centralized analytics capability or long-term data strategy. The executive team hired Elder Research to assess current analytics needs, develop a strategic roadmap, and build an analytics center of excellence.

Discovering the Efficacy of a New Drug

After investing heavily to investigate a new potential drug, the compound was not passing the statistical tests required by the FDA. Pharmacia & Upjohn invited Elder Research to examine the data and determine the drug’s viability. The research discovered a real effect, and these decisive results were communicated to decision makers using a novel visualization technique.

Disease Event Detection Using Medical Sensor Data

A medical device manufacturer designed a sensor that is implanted within a major organ to detect disease events. The sensor is being tested on animal subjects with the Intent to move to human trials and secure FDA approval for monitoring patients with previous cases of the disease. Elder Research was engaged to provide machine learning models using the sensor data to identify abnormal activity that are predictive of the disease. The goal was to classify sensor traces as either normal or high risk.

Extracting Economic Indicators with Natural Language Processing

The project goal was to use text mining and machine learning to extract economic sentiment indicators from millions of disparate documents. Elder Research built a weakly supervised text sentiment classifier for economic indicators using the latest Natural Language Processing tools. The models make valuable new sources of data available for the client to inform decision-making such as rapid portfolio rebalancing based on continuous market signaling.

Forecasting Call Center Staffing

Elder Research partnered with the call center leadership of a leading food service chain to optimize staffing levels by understanding and forecasting call center volume and staffing needs. The results provided valuable insights into call volume, handle time, and service level metrics in addition to forecasts of call volume and staff needed.

Improving Claims Approval Speed and Accuracy

Elder Research combined state-of-the-art text mining algorithms with traditional statistical techniques to create a solution for the Social Security Administration to rank disability claims for approval. The results were more accurate and more consistent than any single doctor’s decision and allowed 20% of the claims to be approved immediately.

Improving Credit Card Risk Scoring

Elder Research examined a dozen major data mining techniques to evaluate their performance and gain insight on which credit card accounts were likely to default compared to the client’s world-class baseline model. The resulting model ensemble significantly improved early identification of bad credit risks.

Improving Customer Retention and Profitability

By applying advanced techniques for modeling and visualizing customer records, Elder Research created a combined data and text mining solution to increase mar- keting efficiency and reduce churn. The model improved targeted messages which resulted in higher profitability for nTelos, a regional mobile phone carrier.

Improving Forecasts for Gift Card Sales

A leading food service chain hired Elder Research to improve a manual forecasting process to project monthly sales from retail and mobile gift cards for annual budgeting and to better-understand quarterly budget variance. A forecast process that used to take several hours each month can now be completed in less than a minute, with an interface that is integrated with the existing environment. Hands-on onsite training enabled seamless transfer of model ownership to the subject matter experts and strengthened forecasting capabilities within the client’s team.

Improving Service Provider Performance and Patient Outcomes

DentaQuest engaged Elder Research to improve on existing models used for assessing the performance of Medicaid Dental providers. The goal was to create a single simplified risk score that would provide a holistic 360 degree view for each service provider. We developed a provider risk scoring model that enabled targeted intervention with low quality providers and reduced per patient cost by nearly 20 percent.

Improving Unemployment Insurance Claim Fraud Detection

Elder Research designed and deployed an automated fraud detection solution for the New York Department of Labor Unemployment Insurance Integrity Center of Excellence. The tool was estimated to have identified 1200 claims annually before the current investigative process with annual projected savings of $972,000 in recoverable and nearly $392,000 in non-recoverable overpayments.

Improving Workers' Compensation Provider Fraud Detection

Elder Research designed and deployed an automated fraud detection and visualization solution for a national Workers’ Compensation Insurance Program to improve the efficiency of fraud detection and investigation by prioritizing high-risk cases.. Investigations and forensic analysis that took hours can now be completed in minutes, making the most efficient use of limited and valuable resources.

Machine Learning for Disease Event Detection

Elder Research identified a molecular signature for asthma and developed a predictive algorithm to define asthma, and identify asthma sufferers who are ill and at risk for major respiratory complications, allowing for intervention prior to onset of acute asthma symptoms, thereby potentially preventing hospital stays and even loss of life.

Modeling Price Elasticity

A leading retail company for consumer product goods (CPG) wanted to determine how product demand changes with price in order to determine the optimal price for each product and increase their ability to respond to market changes. The models identified several products that were consistently offered above pricing thresholds.

Optimizing Federal Workers Compensation Claims Approval

Elder Research developed a data-driven risk assessment framework to triage Worker’s Compensation claims, prioritizing high risk cases for review and fast-tracking other cases to avoid manual review and adjudication. Claims that are routed to the fast track are assigned risk-based maximum payment limits for intelligent ongoing claims management.

Using Machine Learning to Build a Parkinson's Test Recommendation Engine

Elder Research developed predictive models for the Michael J. Fox Foundation to score and rank medical tests and biomarkers to find those that offer the greatest value in predicting Parkinson’s disease. Deployed in a clinic, the Elder Research solution will help clinicians diagnose Parkinson’s based on available tests, and recommend the fewest additional (or next best) tests to improve disease prediction.

Predicting Customer Lifetime Value

A leading Consumer Product Goods (CPG) client wanted to be more forward looking in their marketing efforts. The goal was to identify customers most likely to make purchases in the future by predicting their lifetime value (LV) and use this lifetime value to inform their digital spending decisions for paid search advertising. Our predictive models recognized consumers who were up to 10 times more likely to purchase products, allowing for targeted marketing campaigns.

Predicting Financial Account Churn

Elder Research partnered with a diversified bank to predict account closures, prioritize marketing interventions, and understand precursors to customer churn. We built a model that was 20% more effective at predicting customer churn than existing techniques.

Predicting Philanthropic Propensity Through Advanced Analytics

Elder Research developed a predictive model to score and rank patients for outreach by development officers, based on their likelihood to begin a philanthropic relationship with the health foundation. The model identified 20-30% more patients with a high likelihood of becoming a grateful donor.

Predicting Propensity to Pay Medical Bills

A leading provider of acute care in hospitals wanted to improve the pay rate of medical bills under the patients' responsibility. With several available patient engagement options available, they needed quantitative detailed information on which combination of engagement actions, under which timing scenario, would most effectively encourage payment, while adhering to the value of respect for the patient and their distinct circumstances.

Predicting Student Lifetime Value

Our client, a pioneer in online learning, wanted to improve their existing models used to predict lifetime value (LTV) for their incoming and existing student population. Lifetime value is a prediction of the future dollar value that can be attributed to the future relationship with a customer. Elder Research was contracted to create a more accurate student model framework.

Predictive Maintenance for Hydro Power Generators

Sira-Kvina engaged Elder Research to build predictive models to determine hydro generator component failure risk to enable preemptive maintenance operations and system monitoring. The model improved failure prediction by a factor of five compared to the baseline. Sensor metrics were reduced from hundreds to the ten that provided the best predictive performance, making the results easier to interpret.

Prioritizing Building Lease Renewal Risk For Highest Potential Savings

Elder Research created a risk model to help the U.S.Postal Service Office of Inspector General prioritize review of facility leases that were due for renewal. The risk model enabled business analysts renegotiating lease rates to focus on facilities with the most risk or highest financial impact. Projected savings was $99 million over 5 years.

Prioritizing Long-Term Care Claims For a Leading Insurance Provider

Elder Research developed a risk scoring model to optimize the management of long-term care claims. The regression model successfully predicted which claims would experience expanded payout over time, identifying claims most in need of clinical review. The proactive recommendations for patient service resulted in better patient care and more efficient claims management.

Reducing Contract and Claims Fraud, Waste, and Abuse

Elder Research partnered with the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General to develop and deploy a custom solution to identify and prioritize questionable contracts and healthcare claims for investigation. Leads generated were 74% actionable, resulting in over $11 million in recoveries, restitutions, and cost avoidance in the first year.

Reducing Service Provider and Warranty Fraud

Elder Research designed, prototyped, piloted, and deployed an automated service provider and warranty fraud detection system. The solution prioritized investigative workload to maximize resource utilization and minimize loss to fraud and is credited with saving over $67 million in service provider and warranty fraud.

Staffing Simulation and Optimization

Peregrine Systems advanced to the forefront of the IT management industry by partnering with Elder Research data mining and software development experts to develop its DecisionCenter software. IT executives can now accurately predetermine how changes made to staff and infrastructure resources will affect business.

Text Mining Audit Reports to Determine Grant Recipient Risk

Elder Research partnered with Excella Consulting to build an end-to-end grant risk estimation solution in the client’s AWS cloud. It used text mining and document classification to extract CPA Findings from audit reports and assign risk scores to federal grant recipients. More than 260 auditors, investigators, evaluators, and lawyers now use the tool to support audits, evaluations, and major investigations. This project has become one of the five most important initiatives of our client.

Text Mining Survey Data to Improve Conference Satisfaction

Elder Research text mined survey data and provided exploratory and predictive analysis to identify insights and trends that affected conference attendance. This helped guide the client’s conference content programming and global conference planning.

Text Mining Unlocks Valuable Data from Scanned Insurance Documents

Elder Research largely automated the extraction of valuable underwriting information from scanned Attending Physician Statement documents using text mining tools and techniques. Extracted text features were transformed into electronic formats suitable for predictive modeling.

Understanding Customer Sentiment From Survey Results

Elder Research applied state-of-the-art text mining techniques to the problem of sentiment analysis. The solution focused on the entire survey text rather than limiting analysis to lists of positive and negative keywords. This approach more accurately identified important issues and ignored off-topic comments, leading to more focused action and improved customer loyalty.

Using Machine Learning to Build a Digital Image and Metadata Database

Elder Research computationally generated more than 30 million descriptive metadata entries for more than 300,000 images using AI and ML technologies. We used the digitized text in conjunction with image-to-image matching algorithms to link digitized metadata records to their source images, joining this information with computationally generated image-based metadata and facial recognition results to provide the client with a rich and searchable image archive.

Using Marketing Analytics to Enhance Customer Loyalty

Elder Research created an automated evaluation of the impact a printer supplies loyalty program had on customer lifetime value, retention, and market share. The solution increased program enrollment by 35%, resulting in more than $600 million in sales over five years.

Using Product Usage Analytics to Improve User Experience

Elder Research developed a user segmentation model based on SolidWorks’ software usage logs. These segments, reproducible with 92% accuracy, served as the basis for helping SolidWorks employ product log analytics to better understand, communicate with, and serve their users.

Using Sensor Analytics to Predict Natural Gas Well Freezing

Elder Research used sensor data to develop risk models that predicted well freezes with 70% accuracy, enabling targeted well intervention to reduce freeze remediation cost and recover gas production that would have been lost or deferred.

Validating A Predictive Model Of Maritime Casualty Risk

Elder Research validated the processes and methodologies applied by RightShip in the development of RightShip Qi, a new model that enhances maritime safety by predicting the casualty risk of ships. With the new RightShip Qi model, the organization seeks to take ship vetting to an entirely new level by implementing a data-driven solution with machine learning techniques.

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