UW-Milwaukee Professor of Finance, Giorgo Sertsios, is confident he can help. In the past, his data analytics expertise has helped a mortgage company assess the credit risk of its borrowers, a software company analyze the impact of its use on customer sales, and a commercial airline to optimize its passenger revenue. In this interview, Giorgo helps connect the dots between his research and industry experience, and suggests ways he can help your organization get more out of its complex data.

My background is in data analytics. Today, companies have great data. But there is often a problem in analyzing it. How do you extract valuable information from the data for decision making?

I have expertise in business, economics, and statistics. This combined with my research experience managing large and complex databases makes me uniquely positioned to help companies in this area.

The financial sector is an obvious one given my background in financial economics. I’m also very interested in the healthcare sector. The US is quite unique and is more complex than other healthcare sectors that I have seen overseas. It has many moving parts. I am keen to help US healthcare companies understand both the financial side of things and how they can use the data to improve health outcomes as well.

One example is to help a company evaluate customer payment time. Suppose you have a billing company, and you want to assess which customers are less likely to pay on time. There are many characteristics that you can look at – income, education, assets. But which one matters the most? I can use data analytics tools to figure out which variables are good predictors of payment behavior. With this, I can construct an index of repayment probability that firms can use to be more proactive in reaching out to clients.

In a second example, let’s say you want to understand the effect of a sales promotion. This might sound simple, but it’s actually very tricky. Promotions are often launched because sales are going down. So, the appropriate benchmark to use for your actual sales is not entirely clear. On top of this, there are other things that might be going on at the same time, like seasonality or your competitor’s response. Using cause and effect data analysis techniques, I can more precisely estimate the influence of a promotion on sales. This will give companies better information to decide whether a promotion is valuable, or maybe not worth it.

A third example can be related to real estate. Suppose you want to evaluate a property. You can use traditional methods like multiples to get a ballpark estimate of the market value. But what if you could combine all the data and estimate the margin of contribution from specific property features – one additional bedroom, one additional bathroom, more square footage, location in a particular neighborhood? All of this can be estimated with data analysis tools and models and can give companies a more precise idea of valuation, so they can better decide if a potential investment is good or not.

I can help companies translate their forecasts into free cash flows and find appropriate discount rates. These elements are what ultimately determine their valuation. This can be done for companies with or without current sales. Many companies do not have sales for a long time. Yet, it is still possible to determine their intrinsic value by forecasting their sales, costs, and other financial metrics. Crucially, I can help companies and investors understand how much value-added dimensions, such as management expertise or partnerships, would contribute to the valuation of their business.

A project usually takes a couple of months. I start by meeting with the company leaders who own the project to understand their needs and identify a scope of work. If I can deliver, I then talk with someone who is well acquainted with the data, so I can get a more specific idea of the needs and get access to the information required to perform an analysis. The final output is a report that is useful for the company’s decision-making.

No one gets my name right, not even in my home country, Chile. I have a Greek name, due to my Greek grandparents. But there are barely any Greeks in Chile, which makes it very difficult for people to pronounce my name. In the U.S., I fare a little better, but not by much. Once, I bet with a clerk at Costco that they will not find anyone with my last name in the system. She took the bet…I won. I am also a big soccer fan. I seldom miss my home team’s games: Colo Colo.