Category: Analytics Consulting

Turning The Corner

About a year ago I received an out of the blue call from a friend who said he needed help setting up a new team to do some outsourcing work here in the Philippines.

It seemed like a pretty simple set up, just six work from agents to do some lot tagging (adding keywords) for an online auction.

Twelve months later we have a team of 65 working on a variety of services, with about 10 of that number being office based contact center staff.

Based on past experiences with setting up teams here, I’d say overall it has been a very smooth set-up with a relatively low number of difficult challenges to face.

By the far the biggest reason for our success to date has been the caliber of the team I have been able to bring together. We have built a business from scratch and done it with a very methodical and cost effective approach.

As we have grown the business, we have celebrated several milestones. In the past few days, we celebrated three significant ones that mark a defining moment in our evolution from start-up to normal operations.

First we had a leadership meeting where we were able to give out a mix of swag items to the attendees. The cool thing is that some were from the client and some from our company. Having something in your hand that ties you to both companies is pretty awesome.

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Second, we got new workstations set up for the office based staff to give us a much more established look and feel. I know this will go a long way in giving the team a sense of permanence that we needed.

And finally, we received health care membership cards for our 15 most senior team members. It’s a pilot program to test our before rolling out to the whole team, but it’s another key step towards building our identity.

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There will be lots more swag coming soon. And new equipment and creature comforts for the office based team.

And finally more benefits for all DMAI team members in the months to come.

We have definitely turned the corner from Start-up Street and are now on Normal Operations Avenue! 

Patience Is A Virtue

Per the dictionary… patience (noun) = the ability to wait calmly; the capacity to accept delay without getting angry | virtue (noun) = a quality or trait that most people consider to be morally good or desirable in a person.

The past two weeks have been a consistent reminder that those who can exercise patience generally are those who succeed and those who can not exercise patience are much less likely to succeed.

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The past two weeks have also reminded me that having patient people surround you is much more preferable to having impatient people around you.

Life moves fast and we all get caught up in the rush, but when you find those who can still find it in themselves to exercise patience… keep them close.

Book Review > See-Saw-Sell by Jonathan Petalver

My good friend Jonathan “the Sales Champ” Petalver has just authored a book for both seasoned sales professionals and first time sales people. The book’s tagline… Killer-Instinct Mindset to Sell More and Win More, says it all. In short the book is about 50 pages of easy to understand and even easier to implement sales strategies that make sense to anyone familiar with sales or not.

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One of the very first things the author does is establish the belief that sales is as much a science as an art. For most sales professionals, being good is just not something you learn but something you are born with and nurture. By showing both the art and the science behind sales, Petalver blows past that myth and shows how anyone can learn sales is they devote as much time to studying data and analysis as they do to talking.

Throughout the rest of the book, readers are empowered with a number of very memorable sales strategies that stick in your head. My favorite is the concept of “ness”… everyone has a “ness” about them that is unique to themselves. Learning how to channel this “ness” into a sales tool is something truly eye opening. My “Dan-ness” harnesses my love for analytics and my passion for teaching and can make me a very powerful and persuasive sales person for the right audience.

Another of my favorite things about this book is Jonathan’s promotion of analytics… using the data in and around a sales process to make more data-driven decisions. So few sales pros really get how data can be a powerful tool… but the ones who do are much more successful. Having seen firsthand how Wells Fargo’s top sales people are constantly looking at sales data and market analysis to find opportunities taught me the value of really paying more attention to the science side of sales.

Overall, the See-Saw-Sell is a great read, full of easy to digest strategies that will add a lot of value to not just sales pro and newbies to sales, but just about anyone who is in a customer facing position who wants to do more than just close a deal, but to build a deep and long-lasting relationship with their clients.

If any of you followers or readers of this blog need some sales guidance, Jonathan Petalver is the Sales Champ you need in your corner.

Analytics Returns $13.01 for Every Dollar Spent

Business Analytics Returns $13.01 for Every Dollar Spent, Up from $10.66 Three Years Ago, Nucleus Research

Finds > http://www.sys-con.com/node/3189704

This is not surprising to someone who has spent the better part of a decade learning about everything possible related to analytics.

Over the past couple of years I have successfully consulted and partnered with a number of small call centers based in the Philippines. Most of my assistance has come in the form of analytics training and consulting, with a focus on making more data-driven decisions and optimizing reporting processes.

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Please Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/dmaiph to see what our team members and customers say about DMAI.

You can also follow my blog at http://www.dmaph.wordpress.com to learn more about our mission and purpose… to empower better decision-making through analytics.

For a free consultation, please connect with us via the above channels or send an email to analytics@dmaiph.com

Choose Not To Get Involved? Then You Really Have No Right To Complain

A good friend and key business partner, Penny Bongato, recently authored the cover story for the AmCham Journal’s September 2014 issue.

I wanted to share some highlights form one of the foremost thought leaders of industry-academe collaboration here in the Philippines.

“Industry. The Academe. When have they ever been in harmony? Some academics say “Leave the teaching to us. We will produce the graduates you need.” Industry however claims that the academe is not producing the quality graduates they need.

Meanwhile, the academe complains that Industry has not been very forthright in articulating what it is exactly that they require of the graduate I believe our expectation is that Academe is supposed to produce employable graduates.

With the challenges businesses face today (i.e., changing technology, fierce competition, and especially globalization) there is not much room or time to train the new employee, similar to the kind of new employee training we had decades ago. If industry continues to harbor this expectation, the often cited phenomenon called the Jobs versus Skills mismatch will keep getting wider.

We have complained about this for decades. In this scenario, what would Industry’s role be? In the four years that I have been with the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), I have personally witnessed instances of true collaboration between the ITBPM industry, where I belong, and the academe.”

This area of industry-academe collaboration is one of my passions, long ago seeing a greater need to prepare Filipino students for BPO careers. One of the first people I made a point of befriending when I moved to the Philippines to set up my business was Penny. Since we first met over three years ago we have been able to work on several projects together, including me being sent by BPAP to speak in front of students about careers in the BPO industry. Besides speaking to students, I have made a point to recruit students and fresh grads as trainees, OJT and even as employees because I recognize the need to help move this collaboration along.

As Benedict Hernandez, IBPAP’s Chairman of the Executive Committee, CCAP President and the Head of Accenture BPO said, “If you [as a member of the IT BPM industry] choose not get involved, you really have no right to complain.”

I also believe this to be so true! So as both a regular guest lecturer in academe and an owner of a BPO company, I call on my brothers and sister in both arenas to stop complaining and start acting. In the end, the ultimate beneficiary of this is our students… aka our future!

Thanks so much Penny, for sharing these incredible insights and challenging us all to up our game in a time of great national need.

Teamwork Is Not Easy… And Here Is Why

I came across a couple of visual yesterday on LinkedIn that made me think a lot about how complex it can be to have a group of people really working as a team.

The first image is a pretty straightforward visual of how a people going in the same direction can help each other out in the common interest to complete a task.

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Being able to count on your team mates to carry you though a rough patch, to help you avoid dangerous mistakes, to conquer a problem bigger then one person… so many concepts of teamwork can be drawn from a simple image.

But if the benefits of working a team and not a collection of individuals is so important, why do so many team fail?

This second image provides an illustration of all the character traits a person needs to be truly successful. Look how many of them have to do with how you interact with people on your team.

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For a team to really work efficiently, its members have to be able to share both risk and reward, they have to be both comfortable and confident in who they are and they have to be willing to trust and take leaps of faith.

When you have a team full of people who like being on a team, you will be successful. On the other hand, when you have a team full of people who don’t really like being on a team, you will be a lot less successful.

Data Analytics and Its Application in the Academic Institution

Something I will be presenting at a conference coming up in October…

Over the past few years we have seen a dynamic shift in the way data analytics as a discipline is being matriculated by colleges and universities in the Philippines. Great leaps forward in the field of data analytics is under way through a combination of government, private industry and academic partnerships.

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Participants will be provided a comprehensive overview of the current and future state of data analytics in both the education system and the Philippines as a whole. Highlights will be shared using Tableau, one of the leading business intelligence software applications available. Focus will be given to how schools, companies and training programs are empowering graduates to hit the ground running as analysts.

The facilitator for this session is Daniel Meyer, President & Founder of DMAI, an analytics training, consulting and outsourcing company based in Ortigas. Mr. Meyer spent 15 years as a senior analytics consultant with Wells Fargo Bank in the U.S. and has a Master’s Degree in Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. For the past three years Mr. Meyer has conducted various data analytics trainings for hundreds of businesses, university students and young professionals here in the Philippines.

Check out the website to learn more: http://www.parssu.org/

Getting On The Short List

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/08/the-shortlist.html

I came across another great blog post for Seth Godin that really hit home for me.

After two and half years of hard work and persistence, I have been blessed with being on the short list when it comes to analytics in the Philippines.

As Seth says, “The secret of getting on the shortlist is doing your best work fearlessly for a long time before you get on the list, and (especially) doing it even if you’re not on the list.”

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“After all, once you’re on the shortlist, not only do your fees double, but the amount of work increases to the point where you can’t possibly do it all.”

The number of invites to speak, to train, to consult and to set up a business has been growing at a phenomenal rate.

My amazing team and I struggle to keep up with the growth, which is a good problem to have because being on the short list means more opportunity and more work.

So many analysts to train, processes to improve, business dashboards to build and analytics team to groom.

Empowerment Needs Structure

An Empowering environment is the goal of most companies, but few are able to fully realize it.

Empowerment happens when team members at all levels of the organization feel they have a say in things. Empowered employees feel they have authority to make decisions for the best interest of the customer and for each other.

Empowerment falls short when there is not enough structure in place to ensure that decisions are being made with direction and purpose.

I feel that we have built a pretty good environment that encourages empowerment, but we don’t always have enough structure in place to ensure the empowered decisions are what best for the team and for our customers.

We devoted a half day of training today to discussing ways to add structure to the business to enable more empowerment.

Let’s see how it works.

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DMAI – The Intelligent Philippines Outsourcing Solution

Over the past couple of years I have successfully consulted and partnered with a number of small call centers based in the Philippines. Most of my assistance has come in the form of analytics training and consulting, with a focus on making more data-driven decisions and optimizing reporting processes.

I’ve drawn a lot on my experience working with outsourcing projects while with Wells Fargo as well as the glorious failure or my own outsourcing company BPO Elite. And now to add to those, the amazing success we have having with DMAI in managing the rapid growth of a 50+ person outsourcing team of consisting of both home and office based staff.

Armed with these experiences and guided by a gifted management team, DMAI is now on the active look for more small business clients. We specialize in providing talent with above average analytical skills, who have been trained to make data-driven decision and are passionate about their work. The caliber of DMAI team members is not what you typically find in a call center employee.

We want to partner with just 2-3 more small or medium sized business who are looking to add staff overseas to complement their domestic operations. If you know someone looking to get started or is unhappy with their current outsourcing arrangement, maybe we are the partner they need.

The Philippines presents a very unique opportunity for American business to hire staff who speak and American style of English, are well versed in American culture and offer just about the best level of customer service in the world.

Please Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/dmaiph to see what our team members and customers say about DMAI.
You can also follow my blog at http://www.dmaph.wordpress.com to learn more about our mission and purpose… to empower better decision-making through analytics.

For a free consultation, please connect with us via the above channels or send an email to analytics@dmaiph.com