Analytics Education = Out with the Old, In with the New

Having spent the last 5 years talking about analytics here in the Philippines, it seems we are finally at a place where a significant percentage of leaders and decision-makers are now aware that they need a good analytics strategy for their business to succeed.

Now that we are finally at point where people in power get, we have another challenge. Just because they get it doesn’t mean they know how to enable it.

In fact most of our current solutions to educate and train when it comes to analytics seems to be a bit old fashioned. Analytics evolves much faster then traditional education models can keep up with.

In fact, most people learn analytics on the job. Some attend public trainings. A few receive practical experience while in school. Very few learn in vocational or apprentice like programs.

Almost all the training is done in person, with an expert teaching in a classroom setting.

Most of the training is done by talking theory and doing some exercises on mock data.

Due to data privacy issues, few companies allow employees to get up skill training while using their own data and towards solving real business problems.

To compound the challenge, there are a precious few analytics experts to go around to meet the surging demand for analytics education and training.

When I do the math… 500,000 Filipinos need analytics training in the next 5 years to ensure we can deal with the wave of digital transformation the world in undergoing.

So now what?

It’s easy to say online training is the solution. And it is part. But just filming a training and reshowing it loses a lot of the impact. When learners aren’t engaged they struggle to absorb most of the content.

So live online classes that have an interactive ability are key.

Harnessing the power of YouTube and looking at things like TED talks give us some ideas.

Formal corporate trainings can be supplemented and eventually superseded by meet-up groups and more informal learning sessions.

Formal education has to transition more from the class room and to on the job.

Right now, students spend 90% of their time in classroom and less then 10% on the job working with real data solving real problems. Many schools struggle with educating on analytics topics because they don’t have qualified professors.

Lets flip that around. Let the subject matter experts working in the field do more of the education in the workplace.

That’s just three ideas; Interactive Analytics Talks, Optimizing Meet Up Groups and much more dynamic On the Job training.

What else can we do to shot for the moon?

Analytics Training – DMAIPH offers a wide range of analytics centric training solutions for professionals and students via public, in-house, on-site, and academic settings. We tailor each training event to meet the unique needs of the audience. If you need empowerment and skills enhancement to optimize the use of analytics in your organization, we are here to help. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to set up a free consultation to learn which of our DMAIPH analytics training solutions is best for you.