Author: DMAIPH

Analytics Expert and President & Founder of DMAI.

All I Need To Know About Someone Is What Was The Last Book They Read

I’m not sure where I picked that concept up from, it’s probably a variation of a famous quote whose author escapes me. But for me there is a lot of truth to the statement. When you find out the last book someone read you can tell a lot about them. When you get them talking about it you can gain incredible insight into who they are and what motivates them.

In my case I picked up a book at the airport for my flight and to help me get into trainer mode. The book I picked up was Decisive, a business management and leadership book by the Heath brothers. It was on the top of a lot of 2013 lists and I had heard of it before. Once I started reading it, I quickly saw some key points I could roll into my next analytics training class.

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Here are some of the key points:

> Most decision are made in an instant and are often just a choice between two options.
> Although helpful, Pro and Con lists are limited in their effectiveness.
> Most business decisions, when looked at a few years later, were failures.

In the book the Decisive, the authors list four tips to help make better decisions:

1. Widen Your Options by eliminating factors that put artificial limits on our choices.

2. Reality-Test Your Assumptions by taking them out of our head and into the real world.

3. Attain Distance Before Deciding, which means don’t rush and gain other perspective.

4. Prepare to be wrong, the willingness to take risks is a challenge for all of us.

Its a great read, pick it up.

HR & Recruitment Analytics – The recruitment and retention of top talent is the biggest challenge facing just about every organization. DMAIPH is a leading expert in empowering HR & Recruitment teams with analytics techniques to optimize their talent acquisition and management processes. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to learn how to get more analytics in your HR & Recruitment process so you can rise to the top in the ever quickening demand for top talent.

Workshop On Decision-Making For Better Work-Life Balance

I was recently asked to put together a workshop on work-life balance for BPO employees.

Here is the meat of it:

Via a real-world focus, this workshop will provide a wide range of information designed to empower BPO and Call Center staff towards a healthier work-life balance.

> Work-Life Self Assessment – Participants take a short self assessment to help them determine where they currently are in terms of work-life balance. Individual results are compared to industry data.
> Information on Health and Wellness – Using hands on exercises, we will share information and demonstrate some examples of how to monitor one’s own health and wellness and discuss the importance of being healthy and well in order to optimize work-life balance.
> Current Trends in the BPO Industry – We will discuss several key trends in the BPO Industry that have direct impact on work-life balance decision-making.
> Making Good Decisions – Participants will be instructed on various techniques to improve both their own work-life balance decision-making as well as drive for more work-life balance in within the organization.

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Ten Tips to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out

There are over 300 million members on LinkedIn including about 3 million in the Philippines. You can use LinkedIn to do a lot of things to enhance your career including:

> Manage your professional identity.
> Build and engage with your professional network.
> Access knowledge, insights and opportunities.
> Share your company’s brand and culture.

Most People still have not taken advantage of all the things LinkedIn has to offer. Here are Ten things you should be doing to optimize your profile:

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1. Define yourself.
2. Have a great picture.
3. Add a summary.
4. Use of keywords.
5. Ask for recommendations.
6. See who has viewed your profile.
7. Join groups.
8. Mention volunteer work.
9. Connect to people where you want to work.
10. Stay active, post, follow and share.

Want some ideas on how to buff out your profile, check my All-Star profile. Hehe!

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/dan-meyer/4/771/675

http://business.inquirer.net/168827/firms-form-analytics-industry-union

I saw this article and I think about how good it is to be spot on with something. Having seen this opportunity a few years ago and setting up my business now is starting to seem like an awesome decision! 🙂

Here is another one.

http://businessmirror.com.ph/index.php/en/news/opinion/30949-the-philippines-as-an-analytics-hub

IBM really has done some amazing work pushing analytics into the forefront of the BPO Industry in the Philippines.

Cool stuff!

What To Do When Employees Don’t Succeed?

http://www.recruiter.com/i/4-positive-alternatives-to-firing-staff/?utm_content=buffer888a9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Came across this interesting article on LinkedIn, about what to do instead of firing an employee. It caught my attention as the BPO Industry in the Philippines continues to grapple with attrition rates that are way to high.

In short, the problem is that with a perceived deep talent pool to tap, BPOs have put little effort into retention policies instead being quick on the trigger thinking they can easily find a better employee. This mindset is not only self-destructive but also badly out of line with available data. As it gets harder and harder to recruit quality employees, many times the answer is pour more money into recruiting or more money into incentives, but almost no one is putting more money into training and coaching.

When you can step out of the industry for a minute and look at the patterns its pretty mind-boggling that such a booming and vibrant industry is so short-sighted.

So, with that back drop in mind, I found this article a good one to help me and my management team put some pauses in place and do a little more due diligence before coming to the decision to give up on someone.

The 4 bullet points listed are all very good ones to chew on:
1. Employ Self-Assessments to go hand in hand with KPI data points
2. Setting clear and achievable goals to mark success
3. Targeted coaching and training
4. And redeployment to positions with a better chance for success

I’ve added these discussion topics to my next management meeting agenda and will build in additional check points within our assessment process. All in all a good read indeed!

HR & Recruitment Analytics – The recruitment and retention of top talent is the biggest challenge facing just about every organization. DMAIPH is a leading expert in empowering HR & Recruitment teams with analytics techniques to optimize their talent acquisition and management processes. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to learn how to get more analytics in your HR & Recruitment process so you can rise to the top in the ever quickening demand for top talent.

Reflection Time > The Journey Of A Lifetime

As I sit here in the lounge awaiting my fight back to the US… for the 10th time in the past two plus year, I am enjoying the time to reflect on this journey.

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In the past two years I have gone form working for one of the most stable companies in the world to seeing one start-up crash and burn in a very expensive thud and a second go from riches to rags to riches again. The lessons I have learned about how to set up a business are countless. The sleepless nights trying to figure out what to do tomorrow to inch towards success are countless. But I would not have traded this for anything. Its been the chance to really live my life to the fullest.

From training analysts to work in outsourcing to consulting with outsourcing companies to being an outsourcing company ourselves, DMAI’s journey and mine are closely entwined. I started with 1 employee who shared my passion and vision as we trained close to 200 people in the use of analytics. And that soon grew to a half dozen analysts on staff and from there to 16 and from there to 30+ and by the end of April we should be over 40. Add to that the hundreds of students I have spoken to about analyst careers and I have directly be involved in empowering and inspiring close to 1000 people in the past two years. That’s living the dream.

As with just about any start up story, our successes have come with great cost. Not everyone who started with us is here to enjoy the current success. Lots of money was spent. Lots of opportunities were missed. Lots of dreams did not catch fire as we had hoped. But now, as I reflect on our success and my own personal growth on this journey… I can honestly say… it was all worth it in the end.

What Are The 5 Key Personality Traits Of Your Online Self?

I’m sitting here listening a presentation with my good friend and key business partner about his keys to a successful online presence.

Makes me think about what are my 5 key personality traits.

• intelligent
• passionate
• inspiring
• empowering
• analytical

What are your 5 traits?

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No Matter How Much Training We Do, Will It Ever Be Enough?

http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2014/03/13/poverty-is-stubborn-foe-in-philippines/

I came across this recent blog post from the Wall Street Journal and it matches a lot of my own observations about the economic realities of the Philippines. Having spent most of the past 2+ years here in the Philippines I have seen my own perceptions of the country’s amazing economic growth evolve from one of unbridled enthusiasm to one of more moderate expectations.

Just to go back a few years, I was at Wells Fargo and heavily involved in both remittances to the Philippines and outsourcing to the Philippines. I saw a lot of data about all time high remittance inflows at the same time we saw a huge shift as the Philippines passed India to become the call center capital of the world. Coupled with my visits to the Philippines, it seemed to be a perfect time to come here and set up a business.

So I came here, set up the business, started doing training and have been able to help quite a few Filipinos find there way towards analytics focused jobs. I’ve also been able to employ many as well. However, as time has gone by, I have also seen that my efforts (as well as so many well-meaning others) come up short in really making a difference. If you add up all the OFWs and all the BPO Employees that are driving more spending and more growth, its still not enough to move the Philippines out of the grasp of massive and disabling poverty.

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As the article points out, training is a key missing effort that despite many best efforts is still falling short. The talent gap between the job requirements and the available workers keeps growing faster then all the training and shifts in education can keep pace with.

When I read articles like this, I find myself wishing I could do more and I will keep doing as much as I can, but to be honest I have started to feel that people like me are just too few and far between to really make a difference. Don’t get me wrong, I still love what I do and am passionate to keep doing it… but I am a little less spirited and a little more cautious now then I was at the start of this journey.

I guess that’s my new found wisdom talking…

Five Trends I Shared With A Class Of Future Analysts

Just wanted to share my perspective on what I see as being five trends that future analysts here in the Philippines can jump on to help them get ahead of the competition as they look for their first job.

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1. Finding Unstructured Data on the Internet
Most Data is Unstructured, meaning it’s not easily accessible and stored in an internal database. This goes against the conventional approach to analytics where you write a query to pull data from a big data warehouse and dump it into an analytics tool. For most analysts, trying to find unstructured data and then capture it and use it in decision-making is not easy.

2. Self Service Business Intelligence Tools
Business intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue, market opportunity or product performance. Self-service ones are easy to learn, sit on a desktop and have more power to do great analytics then a team of 10 IT Engineers did 5 years ago. My favorite BI tool is Tableau. Check it our at http://www.tableausoftware.com

3. Competitor Intelligence
Per Wikipedia, competitive intelligence is the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization.Every successful business conducts competitor intelligence and uses this process in various ways. Some examples for a fast food chain might include:
> Pricing
> Product and Service Offerings
> Targeted Demographic Marketing
> Marketing Promotions
> Location Renovations and Expansions

4. Data Visualization
The main goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. A good pie chart is worth 10,000 rows of data stored in a database. I often say what separates a good analyst form a great analysts, is the ability to easily communicate their findings in a way that makes it easy to exercise good decision-making.

5. Business Dashboards
Wikipedia’s definition of a business dashboard: “An easy to read, often single page, real-time user interface, showing a graphical presentation of the current status (snapshot) and historical trends of an organization’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to enable instantaneous and informed decisions to be made at a glance.” That’s a mouthful, but if you are able to deliver all of these items in a single view, you are worth your weight in gold to an analytics savvy organization.

To learn more about analytics, DMAI and careers as an analyst in the Philippines, follow this blog and you will keep yourself on the cutting edge of all things analytics!

Convergys eyes 6,000 new hires this year… But From Where?

A recent ABS-CBN headline touts how one of the biggest BPOs in the Philippines is planning to increase their staff by about 15%. And they are not alone, in the past few months I have seen a lot of the bigger players (including IBM and Google) make public announcements about staffing up here in the Philippines. But a lot of people are asking where will they come from?

Based on research being produced and/or complied by IBPAP, we are seeing a widening of the talent gap between the number of seats available and the number of quality candidates to fulfill them. The Philippines is about to graduate hundreds of thousands of college students, yet so few of them will be ready to step right into a call center job. The government has made huge strides in partnering with the industry leader and higher education to create courses that will help fuel the demand, but its not nearly enough.

And to make things even more interesting, we are seeing a lot of mergers between bigger players (Convergys just acquired Stream) as they try to consolidate to offer more services to bigger clients abroad. So the big fish are eating well. However, the same cannot be said for a lot of the smaller BPOs.. most set up by Filipinos with the idea of capitalizing on the call center boom. But they are for the most part struggling as they either can’t find accounts or enough staff to fill the client requirements. The competition has never been more fierce when it comes to finding good people.

So where does that leave the industry? Is the pool big enough to supply the big fish like Convergys with 6K more employees? 2014, will be an important year in the evolution of the BPO industry in the Philippines.

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As for DMAI? We continue to grow quickly as we have a mostly work from home team that is almost completely made up of former call center agents who have walked away from higher pay for better work life balance. Is this the wave of the future? I think so!