PowerCurve^® Strategy Management

Drag-and-drop strategy building blocks

The Studio's user interface includes a Content Gallery full of decision-ready data and reusable strategy components. Users can drag and drop population characteristics automatically extracted from the data for use in segmentation. They can also bring standard calculations as well as scorecards and performance metrics directly into their strategies.

Strategy templates infused with Experian knowledge and industry best practices

The Gallery also includes market-tested templates from Experian for specific types of decisions, such as limit increase or identity validation. Users can freely modify and extend the segmentation in these templates and change any split by dragging out a different population characteristic. They can also save their changes as new templates in the Gallery to be reused in future strategies.

Interactive and automated analytics

Assisted Strategy Design is an additional modular capability offering powerful yet accessible analytics to help your business users build higher performing strategies. The analytics provide interactive guidance, making suggestions for the "next best split" as users build out decision trees. They also automatically generate decision trees based on the relative productiveness of all available population characteristics in the data and user-defined tree-growing parameters.

User-controlled, strategy-driven performance monitoring

The Studio puts control of performance monitoring in the hands of your business users. They define the key performance indicators (KPIs) they want to measure. At deployment, instead of having to turn to IT to get monitoring set up on host systems, they simply right-click on the strategy (or any part of it they want to focus in on) and select "Monitor." They can focus reporting on areas they are trying to improve by turning monitoring on/off at the KPI or data item level, and specify a period of time for each of these monitoring targets. They can also rapidly change monitoring as needed if new population characteristics; calculations, steps and KPIs are added to strategies during subsequent refinement cycles.

Strategy-specific performance reporting in the design environment

Performance reports adhere precisely to the strategy's segmentation and KPIs. These results are displayed inside the Studio's graphical design environment, so users can clearly see which parts of their strategies are working well and which need improvement. In addition, PowerCurve's performance monitoring captures details about strategy execution, such as champion-challenger test groups, that have traditionally been lost in operational reporting. This detail enables users, for example, to drill down into a particular segment to examine why it might be associated with a higher than average bad rate or a lower than expected profit.

A common design environment for all Customer Life Cycle decisioning areas

This new Studio has all of the graphic design, validation and simulation tools you expect from Experian, plus these new features:

• Time-saving drag-and-drop strategy "building blocks." Users quickly build out strategies by dragging and dropping reusable elements, such as a risk scorecard, segmentation by marital status or a standard calculation for ability to pay, from a common repository. They also save time while tapping into Experian knowledge by using market-tested templates with ready-made strategy content reflecting industry best practices.

• Dynamic strategy-driven performance monitoring. The Studio puts control of strategy monitoring in the hands of business users. They no longer have to pull data sets and ad hoc reports or turn to IT to get monitoring set up or changed on host systems. Instead, they simply select from a range of dynamic report styles, which self-configure to match the segmentation characteristics and key performance indicators (KPIs) in the strategy. Once the strategy is deployed, performance monitoring results are displayed inside the Studio, making it easy to see which parts of strategies are working well and which need improvement. Performance monitoring also captures details about strategy execution, such as Champion/Challenger test groups, that have traditionally been lost in operational reporting. This detail enables users to drill down into a particular segment to examine why it might be associated with a higher-than-average bad rate or a lower-than-expected profit.

• Analytics for help in building better strategies. PowerCurve's component-based architecture enables companies to flexibly add enhanced capabilities, such as Assisted Strategy Design. Assisted Strategy Design provides interactive analytic guidance and can also generate decision trees automatically based on user-specified parameters. With this assistance, users without analytics expertise are empowered to build higher-performing strategies, and those with analytics expertise can accomplish more in less time. 

Common repositories for shared access to reusable decisioning resources

At the heart of PowerCurve, common repositories for credit risk decisioning resources help companies share and reuse work and manage strategy versioning and deployment into operations. Implemented in a centralized or distributed architecture, platform repositories comprise: 

• Decision solution elements. Anything contained in a decisioning strategy can be stored as a reusable "building block" in a shared solution repository. This includes not only scorecards and standard calculations, such as income estimation, but also summary population characteristics based on data from multiple sources. It might also include segmentation criteria, such as a split (number of credit cards plus limit utilization) developed for a loan eligibility strategy that might also be useful for a pre-collections strategy.

• Strategy templates. Companies can help their users get a jump-start on strategy design by providing them with ready-made content. This content may include complete strategy templates, infused with Experian knowledge, for specific types of credit risk decisions, such as initial credit line assignment. It could also consist of decision sub-trees (parts of strategies) or even a single cut-off point (e.g., number of credit cards plus limit utilization). Users can copy and modify Experian templates to create new templates, as well as develop their own templates.

• Performance reporting. Performance monitoring outputs are stored as reports in this repository, from where they can be easily accessed and viewed within the Studio's graphical environment. Report content is specific to the segmentation and KPIs for each strategy and the dynamic report style selected by the strategy designer. Some report styles are specific to a life cycle decisioning area (e.g., delinquency roll rate reports for credit card collections). Others are more generally applicable (e.g., a referral rate analysis report, which could be applied to originations strategy performance monitoring for both credit card and loan portfolios).

What is PowerCurve?

PowerCurve helps companies make the right decisions, across the Customer Life Cycle, in dynamic business environments. This breakthrough decision management platform provides new levels of flexibility, insight, control and agility so you can:

• Easily incorporate new decisioning capabilities into your existing environment. Add just the software and analytics components you need to solve targeted business challenges.
• Drive higher decisioning performance and return on investment throughout your organization. Share decision-ready data, best practices templates, reusable strategy building blocks and connectivity standards across product lines and Customer Life Cycle functions.
• Accelerate time to market while boosting overall productivity. Put powerful yet intuitive analytics and tools for strategy design, deployment and performance monitoring in the hands of business users. Empower them to assume a larger role in decision management while freeing IT and analysts for other priorities.
• Adapt and maneuver in ever-changing markets. Make use of the integrated test-and-learn framework to immediately assess how well customer decisioning is working. Quickly reconfigure strategies as business conditions change.

A unified platform for strategy design and execution, Decision Analytics connects the analytic and operational environments for all customer decisions. The multitiered, component-based architecture, built with industry standard technologies, greatly increases your decisioning power:

Flexibility

PowerCurve cost-effectively fits your needs, from tightly focused to large-scale. Quickly implement what you require to solve a specific business challenge, such as credit card limit management or risk-based pricing. Extend into other product lines and Customer Life Cycle areas when needed, deriving more value from common technologies and shared, reusable decisioning elements as you go.

Insight

PowerCurve enables you to gain more value from internal and external data. Your users don’t have to mine raw data for insights. They simply drag and drop them from a platform common repository into their strategies. Enhanced strategy design capabilities analyze population characteristics in the data and list them by their predictive power. An integrated data enrichment feature connects to multiple external sources, combining their data to create decision-ready summary characteristics. Strategy templates, infused with Experian knowledge and industry best practices, also reduce the time from data to actionable insights.

Control

PowerCurve puts control over decision strategy design, deployment, performance monitoring and updating in the hands of business users. For example, they no longer have to pull data sets and ad hoc reports or turn to IT to get monitoring set up or changed on host systems. Instead, they simply select from a range of dynamic report styles, which self-configure to match the segmentation characteristics and key performance indicators (KPIs) in the strategy. They also can change monitoring as needed during strategy updates and refinement.

Agility

PowerCurve gives you the means to make your customer decisioning more alert, nimble and competitive in dynamic markets. Performance monitoring reports correspond exactly to each customer segmentation strategy and KPIs. Gaps between expectations and results provide early alerts to changing market conditions and opportunities for greater gain. Easy-to-use analytics suggest ways to refine segmentation and improve performance.

Consulting

Consulting is at the heart of every Decision Analytics delivery by Experian. Consultants work with clients at every stage of the project, first to fully understand the business and strategic direction, and then to help design and implement systems and processes that deliver objectives.

Following implementation, Experian consultants work with clients through a structured and regular review program to continually evolve and enhance strategies, so that organizations continue to gain maximum value as their needs change and the business grows.  Experian creates a partnership with clients to deliver products and services that address their business challenges for today, and in the future. Bringing a fresh approach and independent viewpoint to every business, it delivers practical solutions that deliver measurable results.

White Paper - Executive Summary

Risk and reward: The challenges of effective decision management

It's more important than ever today for organizations to make the right customer decisions — and harder than ever to do.

Companies know that the ability to repeatedly make the right customer decisions, instant by instant, day after day, is essential to profitable growth, sharper risk management and higher-performing portfolios. However, volatile, fast-moving markets, economic and regulatory change and new sources of competition make the right decision a moving target.

Companies pursuing higher performance must find ways to simultaneously adapt to change. They have to work harder to rapidly pull useful insights about customer behavior and market trends from huge quantities of their own data as well as data from other sources in the expanding digital universe. They work harder just to surmount process gaps and obstacles caused by traditional methods of developing and deploying decisioning strategies and tools better suited to more tranquil times. Incompatible software, different data formats and lack of integration between strategy design and execution mean that too much time is being spent just on the mechanics of customer decisions.

With demands growing, resources tight and rapid return on investment (ROI) the name of the game, companies must be able to eliminate this diversion and focus fully on the quality and business impact of their decisions. They need a way to connect and streamline how they design decisioning strategies, bring them into production, and measure and learn from the results. The whole process has to become quicker, thoroughly flexible and dynamic. It must be easier and more collaborative for participants, and less costly and more rewarding for the enterprise.

Decision strategy design and execution together on a unified platform

The key to better performance and agility in dynamic markets is a platform that unites decision strategy design and execution, connecting the analytic and operational environments for all customer decisions. Common data definitions and standardized technologies throughout strategy development, execution and performance monitoring enable decisioning cycles to progress more efficiently (with none of the usual "losses in translation"). Companies also gain momentum when decisioning processes across the Customer Life Cycle share and repurpose data, and when a wide variety of preconfigured, customizable decisioning elements can be dropped into any number of strategies.

Credit-granting organizations benefit from a unified, component-based platform in numerous ways:

• Faster ROI through quicker, less costly implementations of decisioning applications and services

• Higher business performance, driven by decisions made with greater insight into customer risk and reward potential

• Rapid performance improvements from being able to pinpoint where strategies need refinement and to enrich them with new data, calculated variables and analytics

• Increased agility from being able to pick up early signs of how market, economic and competitive change are impacting decisioning effectiveness

• Reduced burden on IT and analysts by putting powerful tools for decision strategy design and deployment, as well as control over performance monitoring, in the hands of business users

• Flexibility for companies to get exactly the decisioning systems they need by combining modular technologies to fit current demands and adding more functionality as required