Dr. Ahanotu is a graduate of Stanford University with over fifteen years of experience doing analytic modeling, executing pricing strategies through price optimization, and implementing, developing, and selling enterprise software. He adds to this industry experience another five overlapping years of research in knowledge management and organizational learning. Duru Ahanotu, Ph.D. founded Ahan Analytics, LLC (Ahan is pronounced "Ah-hon") to deliver sustainable, data-driven approaches for improving business performance. He recognizes the unique challenges companies face in leveraging their data to increase revenues, become more efficient, and drive profitability.
Before launching Ahan Analytics, LLC,
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Dr. Ahanotu was last a Sales Consultant in the Advertiser and Publisher Solutions (APS) group within Microsoft Advertising. In this capacity, he provided product knowledge, functional expertise, and technical support to APS account executives who sold APS’s suite of media monetization products. He led product demonstrations and increased the productivity of the sales team by training and certifying employees on the use and demonstration of the software. Dr. Ahanotu took on this role after Microsoft acquired his former employer Rapt, Inc. Rapt provided software solutions for maximizing revenue and yield for online media publishers.
With Rapt, Dr. Ahanotu last served as an Engagement Manager for a software implementation for a $100 million on-line publisher with a rapidly growing business. With his project team, Dr. Ahanotu created and coordinated novel approaches to inventory forecasting, structuring of product hierarchies, and ETL across software systems for order management, advertising delivery, and Rapt’s software. He also generated a step-by-step methodology for interpreting and using the results of price optimization.
As a Solutions Architect, Dr. Ahanotu served as the lead Solutions Consultant on client engagements and provided technical assistance and guidance to Solutions Consultants on other projects. Dr. Ahanotu designed and implemented price optimization solutions, demonstrating expertise in mathematical modeling, pricing, data analysis, SQL, and relational data models. He led discussions with customers and internal teams to improve implementation processes and product design.
Dr. Ahanotu held oversight responsibility for the analytic modeling for two projects using Price Director, Rapt’s price optimization software. Each project supported pricing decisions in Fortune 50 businesses: one business was a leading online media publisher, and the other was a rapidly growing technology company in a low margin business. Dr. Ahanotu helped the latter client integrate Price Director into pricing workflow. As part of this first-ever client implementation of Price Director, he worked closely with Product Management, Analytic Development, and Software Engineering to ensure that early-stage product functionality met client needs.
Dr. Ahanotu contributed several new methodologies for implementing Price Director analytics and conceptual frameworks for training clients on these analytics. He is a contributor on a related Rapt patent: “Method and System for Producing Optimized Prices for Products for Sale.” Dr. Ahanotu presented a white paper on the pricing of New Product Introductions at the 2006 INFORMS Annual Meeting. The Professional Pricing Society published this paper in The Journal of Professional Pricing (Vol. 16, No. 1, First Quarter 2007) as “Pricing New Products: Turning Portfolio Uncertainty Into Profits.”
Prior to Rapt, Dr. Ahanotu was a consultant with Integral, Inc, a small strategic management consulting firm. During his three-year tenure, he consulted on product development and technology strategy focused on high tech and pharmaceutical companies. Prior to Integral, he developed mathematical programming algorithms for managing and optimizing “Y2K” projects as an independent contractor. Prior to this work, he implemented expert systems for diagnosing and troubleshooting automotive and semiconductor manufacturing equipment as a Business Solutions Project Manager and Consultant for Expert Edge, Inc.
Dr. Ahanotu earned a Master’s and Ph.D. in Engineering-Economic Systems (1999), a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, and Honors in Values, Technology, Science, and Society (1991) - all at Stanford University.
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