Today, we organized a guest lecture by the Belgian company biside (part of the Bisnode group). They developed the “Rank” software, an excellent tool for predictive modeling. Thierry Van de Merckt (CEO of biside and PhD graduate from Ross Quinlan’s machine-learning group), and Jean-François Chevalier (lead developer and consultant) emphasized the key differences between generic tools like e.g. SAS Enterprise Miner and their own RANK software. Their tool does not have the reach of a generic software suite, but rather focuses on offering more in-depth support to the (marketing) analyst to speed up the entire process while allowing for improved insights. This includes (among many other features) their smart linearization process of variables (by smart binning), built-in cross-validation process, and LARS method with lasso modification for variable selection. Moreover, since everything is done in-memory, the analysis is lightning fast!