May 9, 2000
Stone Analytics, an emerging company that applies statistical analysis and modeling techniques to customer relationship management, today announced the formation of its Strategic Advisory Board. Named to the board were Charles E. Bates, Richard T. Carson, Lane Klein, and Halbert White.

"Stone Analytics is all about finding out what your data is trying to tell you about your customers.  We bring advanced numerical and modeling science to bear on providing simple, usable, reliable answers to customer relationship management questions. That is our mission," said Christy Joiner-Congleton, president of Stone Analytics. "This is why our Advisory Board was formed.  All of these individuals are luminaries in their fields. Their breadth of knowledge and experience as advisors will help us to stay at the leading edge of the field while delivering the practical CRM results that businesses need."

"Stone Analytics has the right idea," said Lane Klein, Advisory Board member.  "When data is everywhere available, and inexpensive, more sophisticated tools are needed to answer the questions presented.  Without such tools, conclusions are very costly to draw and may not be accurate.  Current industry interest simply highlights the need for this kind of thinking in the Customer Relationship Management area.  I am excited to join the efforts at Stone Analytics to address these problems and expect many advances in the area to arise from this work."

About the Advisory Board Members
Charles E. Bates, Ph.D. is President of Bates & White, LLC, a Washington-based consulting firm of business data experts founded in 1999 by Dr. Bates and Halbert White, Ph.D. Dr. Bates has extensive experience in the application of computer modeling and statistics to a wide variety of economic and financial issues.  His areas of expertise include sophisticated economic and statistical analysis, data decision tools, and econometric and micro-simulation modeling. Prior to founding Bates&White, LLC, Dr. Bates served as a Vice President of A.T. Kearney, where he was the senior advisor on statistical modeling for offerings to large clients of A.T. Kearney’s marketing consulting practice. In this capacity, he identified key methodological improvements to significantly increase predictability and automation of marketing effectiveness models. Previously, he was the Partner in Charge of the Economic Analysis group at KPMG.

Richard T. Carson, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego, and senior fellow at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Dr. Carson’s econometric research has focused on discrete choice and limited dependent variable models, experimental and sampling designs, imputing missing values, and robust statistical techniques.

Lane Klein specializes in marketing statistically based systems to the computer and communications industries. Her primary focus is applying quantitative tools to understanding markets, buyers and competition with the goal of maximizing a product's success in the market. Prior to her activities as an independent consultant, Ms. Klein was Vice President of Ziff-Davis Market Intelligence where she headed the custom consulting group. Previously, Ms. Klein was Senior Vice President of The Beacon Companies where she headed strategic planning and the MIS group. Earlier, she was a partner in the management consulting firm, Temple Barker & Sloane. Ms. Klein earned her MBA at the Harvard Business School.

Halbert White, Ph.D. is one of the world’s preeminent experts in econometric and neural network modeling. He is currently Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego and co-founder and senior partner of Bates & White, LLC.  He has consulted to some of the world’s largest and most successful companies, providing expertise in data mining, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, and advanced statistical methods. Dr. White is profiled in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World, and is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

About Stone Analytics
Stone Analytics, Inc. is a privately held provider of analytical services, statistical model building, and customized decision-support applications. The firm specializes in the areas of customer relationship management and customer valuation, and is a sponsor of the Open Source CRM initiative (http://www.OpenSourceCRM.org).  Based in San Diego, California, the firm is located on the web at http://www.stoneanalytics.com.
 

Contact:

Stone Analytics, Inc.
Robert Hahn
rah@stoneanalytics.com
(858) 503-7540 x211