Scala Hires Major Mr. Smartypants To Run Advanced Analytics

September 18, 2012 by Dave Haynes

So the conventional wisdom in competing in a highly, highly competitive vertical like retail is to hire a big shooter business development guy or well-connected, packaged-out exec to get some big, senior meetings and slap a pile of backs.

Scala may well also be doing that, but an announcement today reflects a markedly different approach to getting at retail. They’ve hired a major Mr. Smartypants – an expert in neural-networked-based analytics.

Which is something … involving … ummm … data. Yeah, DATA!!!

Anyway, software vendor Scala has announced Dr. Stefan Menger (NOT pictured at right) has joined the firm as a vice president. He was previously the VP Business Analytics for ColdLight Solutions, “which pioneered the usage of neural-network-based analytics in Marketing.”

Menger will run the Advanced Analytics practice at Scala. “There is a tremendous opportunity to help retailers and fast food restaurants leverage their existing “big data” to improve sales via digital signage,” says Tom Nix, Scala’s CEO. “Stefan brings a wealth of experience to the process of analyzing various data sources such as customer loyalty card data, weather or gas prices to predict purchase patterns then display the best message to promote the sale.”

Dr. Menger has more than 20 years of expertise in Data Analytics in a broad range of business fields including Healthcare, Pharma, Energy, and IT. He received his Ph.D. in Geophysics in 1991 from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. During the course of his international career, Menger has worked for organizations ranging from startups to global Fortune-500 companies.

Menger has also had stints with Siemens and Halliburton.

You absolutely need the sales and biz dev capabilities in a software company, but Menger’s expertise would represent a very different set of pots to create a reason for meetings and something very different to talk about once in the room. The challenge, of course, will be presenting what’s probably crazily-sophisticated stuff in a way mere mortals can grasp.