I first talked about KXEN,the automated modeling software in this post http://www.decisionstats.com/2008/12/automating-regression-models-kxen/
So I asked Roger Haddad ,its founder and CEO if he could give an email interview and Roger being the great guy he is , both remembered me from user analyst days as well worked in the holidays to give this interview. Before founding KXEN, Mr. Roger Haddad was president of Azlan France, the first network distributor in France. Under his management, sales revenues increased 850 percent in four years.In 1977, Mr. Haddad founded Metrologie International, a leading software and hardware provider, which went public on the Paris Stock Exchange in 1985. When Mr. Haddad left in 1991, Metrologie had 4,500 employees, $900M in revenue and subsidiaries in 13 European countries.Mr. Haddad holds a master’s degree in electrical metrology from George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Ecole Supérieure d’Electricité, Paris, France.
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Ajay : What would your advice be to young professionals entering the job world today ?
Roger : If you are talking about Statisticians, I would tell them to concentrate on the data and the process rather than on the statistical orthodoxy
Ajay : What interested you most in being the head of KXEN. What is the best feature you like in KXEN – both as a company and as a product.
Roger :To Make it happen !! Data mining is at its infancy, because SAS and others made it difficult to work with !! they made for an elite of people !!
KXEN role is to open this bottleneck and give power to the users – Analysts will help to train business users and get them confident with their findings.
As a product, I am always suprised by the quality of KXEN results in a fraction of the time compared to first generation workbench and automatically !! 🙂
Ajay : What areas has KXEN been most suitable for ? Biggest sucess story so far.
Roger : Classification, regression with thousands of variables and tricky data sets !! We have hundreds of success stories
Ajay :Could you also comment on how the slowdown and recession would affect the analytics world in terms of newer solutions , Software as a service , more acceptance of trying out the unfamiliar etc ?
Roger : I believe the recession and the slowdown will push analytics further and particularly KXEN approach , since we allow corporations to do much more with less or with the same Team. We are seeing many Analytics Group being reduced and people calling on us to deliver what need to be delivered!!
Ajay : What areas would you rather not recommend KXEN? What other softwares would you recommend in those cases ?
Roger : I would not recommend KXEN in genetics – SVM would be more apropriate
Ajay : Asia has a nascent but high potential market. What are you Asian plans and any clients /case studies here ?
Roger: We have a presence in every countries but in India – Japan is by far our best country and we have there a fantastic Distributor -WE also have Customers in China , in Asean too – We are looking for a good Distributor in India , but this seems quite difficult.(Note from Ajay – I decided to apply straight away)
Ajay : What is the biggest challenge you have faced while introducing KXEN to a wider audience.
Roger: THe resistance to Change and the fear of classical statisticians that they will loose their job !! in fact this never happened and on the contrary they become hero in their Corporation after adopting KXEN
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Haddad is responsible for overseeing the KXEN’s sales team, the distribution channel management, as well as the direction of the company and the strategic growth of the organization. With more than 30 years experience as an industry expert, Mr. Haddad is a forward-looking entrepreneur with an expertise in successfully running companies with multiple channels of distribution. Mr. Haddad has a long and successful track record in developing new companies into profitable enterprises.
