John DeLay

Data scientist with experience in healthcare & financial services. I help small businesses make smarter decisions with their data.

About You

You run a real business. You make decisions every day — on pricing, staffing, inventory, marketing, expansion — and most of those decisions are based on instinct and experience.

That’s not a flaw. That got you here.

But somewhere in the back of your mind, you know there’s signal buried in your data that you’re not using. A question you’ve been meaning to answer. A hunch you wish you could confirm.

You might be the right fit if…

You're competing in an industry that's consolidating — and you know the businesses that survive will be the ones that operate smarter, not just harder.
You have data sitting in spreadsheets, your POS system, or your CRM that nobody is really looking at — and you suspect it's telling you something important.
You have interesting questions about your customers, your margins, or your market — but you don't want to hire a full-time analyst for questions that come up once a quarter.
You've looked at enterprise analytics tools and thought: this is overkill, and I'd spend six months just learning the software.
You've been burned by a vendor who sold you a dashboard that looked great in the demo and collected dust in real life.
You want someone who can actually explain what they're doing — not hand you a black box and a bill.

What you probably don’t need

You don’t need a full-time data scientist on payroll. A senior hire runs $100,000–$140,000/year in salary alone — before benefits, before onboarding, before the months it takes to get them productive on your specific business.

You don’t need a bloated SaaS platform that charges you monthly for features you’ll never use, requires IT support to maintain, and locks your data in their ecosystem.

You need someone who can come in, understand your business quickly, answer the question in front of you, and build something you’ll actually use.

That’s the engagement model I offer.

The businesses I work best with

I’ve worked in healthcare consulting, financial services, and academic research — environments where the stakes are high, the data is messy, and the people asking questions aren’t data scientists themselves.

Small and mid-sized businesses are the same way. You have real operational data, real decisions to make, and limited time to deal with complexity. I know how to work in that environment.

I’m particularly useful when:

  • You’re making a major operational or strategic decision and want the data to back it up (or push back on it)
  • You need a repeatable reporting process that doesn’t depend on one employee knowing how to run a macro
  • You’re entering a new market or launching a product and want to understand the landscape before you commit
  • Something in your numbers looks off and you want to know why

About John

I’m John DeLay, founder of Changepoint Analytics — a data science consultancy based in Birmingham, AL. I’ve built production models at a health tech company, validated risk models at a major regional bank, and contributed to published public health research. I translate complex findings into plain language. No jargon, no black boxes.

Education: MS in Biostatistics (UAB), BS in Mathematics (Birmingham-Southern College).

A note on fit

I take on a small number of clients at a time. That’s not a sales tactic — it’s how I work. If we talk and don’t think I’m the right fit for your problem, that’s still valuable information.

If you recognize yourself anywhere on this page, it’s worth a conversation.

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