Putting Together a BCP Plan? Use Your Analytics!

It was true 3 years ago, and sadly its true today… just took this photo today (March 1, 2017). All the evidence and all the rhetoric, but in the end the planning failed.

…As Metro Manila and the island of Luzon are preparing for its second typhoon in a matter of days, I thought it prudent to talk about business continuity planning (BCP).

One of the most overlooked areas of business operations is business continuity planning. When it comes to the outsourcing of functions and responsibilities to a team in the Philippines, there is a high need for a solid BCP.

However, my experience is that very few companies and their outsourcing partners have put in place a well thought out plan to handle a variety of business outages and disasters.

During my time with Wells Fargo I was involved in overseeing business continuity planning for a number of business lines and became pretty well versed in the subject matter.

Some of the key points are having a clear chain of command during a crisis. Escalation procedures and call trees are ways to make sure everyone knows what is expected of them. Putting together a written BCP plan that can be shared with the team is also very important since most disasters impacting the Philippines come with potential power and technology interruptions.

Another key piece of disaster planning is to have pre, during and post incident plans to follow. If you know a typhoon is coming there is a lot that can be done before hand to help limit business impact. And having a clear post incident plan is key to getting business back up and running asap.

Updating the client and keeping them in the know, is also something that can be much more challenging then planed and should be given appropriate thought. Practicing the plan and doing mock disaster drills is another way to achieve optimal communication and response results.

DMAIPH has helped dozens of companies in both the U.S. and the Philippines with adding more data analysis in their business strategy. We have joined up with our key business partner PMCM Events Management to showcase our solutions at #TechToniPH in July 2017. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to find out what we can do to help you align your business strategy with analytics.

Making You Business More Prominent On The Web

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140713020324-277926763-the-biggest-dilemma-for-entrepreneurial-minds?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0

I came across this blog post on LinkedIn that shares some insights on how an entrepreneur can get their product/service to stand out in the crowded landscape of bright ideas, innovative solutions and be the next big thing.

Here’s what the blogger think needs to happen to make business ideas prominent on the web:

1. People need to understand that their ideas aren’t going to get stolen. People who notice your ideas are either going to a). Simply tell you what they think, b). Want to go into business with you, or c). Become an early adopter of your product. Win/win. The truth is very few people would take the risk necessary to implement your ideas. The few who do become investors, business partners, and employees.

I am a big proponent of this. In fact is other people want to get out there and set up analytics focused companies in the Philippines that do any combination of training, consulting and outsourcing, that’s a good thing. The pie is far bigger then I can eat alone. And competition makes us all better.

2. People need an online platform to publish and collaborate on business ideas. Kind of like open source sites, but for business ideas and plans. This platform would help entrepreneurs reach people with similar business goals and ideas, and connect and collaborate with them.

I use WordPress for this or a number of reasons. It’s easy to use and its free. It allows me to blog about a range of topics like outsourcing, analytics, the Philippines, decision-making and setting up a small business all in one place. WordPress can also be set up to deliver your content to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (among others) automatically. So My 2000 blog followers, 5000 LinkedIn connections and 1500 Facebook friends all get my content beamed right to them.

3. Lastly, people need to be able to reach professionals through this platform.

I make a point of cutting and pasting my blog post links into groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. I add just about anyone on LinkedIn who views my profile (aside from the less 1% who are obvious scammers). I send a reply to everyone I connect with (sometimes I do have to have interns send the initial message) and I follow-up personally on every business lead, student question or well-wisher.

If you are looking to launch a new business, thinking about outsourcing some analytics functions or wondering how to set up a business in the Philippines, DMAI can help!

To People Like Me Luck Is Anything But Being Lucky

I’ve seen a couple of blog posts and online articles lately from entrepreneurs talking about how they don’t like it when people say that they are so lucky to be successful. Given the hard work and sacrifices that go into being successful, their stories are never ones of just being lucky.

Being at the right place at the right time is another one that downplays the preparation and open-mindedness needed to capitalize on opportunities. You can only be lucky, if you have set yourself up to identify, evaluate and execute a strategy when the timing is right.

Over the past two years as I have built my company from the ground up, I am told at least a few times a week by people that I am so lucky to have the life I do. And my immediate response is always, it has little to do with luck and is due to my hard work and my persistence in chasing my dreams.

Being an American, being white, and being male… they do not guarantee success. I’ll admit they can be advantages at times, but only when I’m able to able to use those advantages. I’m from a middle-class, blue collar family. Forsaking the traditional Meyer man route of serving in the military, I was the first one in my family to go to college. I received scholarships based on merit and worked all through college and grad school. Not much luck involved there.

My time with Wells Fargo honed my analytics skills and prepared me for being a executive, but I was rarely lucky when I got promoted, earned a bonus or was given special projects. Again it was a solid work ethic, good role models and mentors and a can do attitude that made me successful.

Now that I have built a modest success of a company and able to really enjoy my lifestyle of being an international business man and analytics expert, I too find it frustrating when someone says , “You are so lucky”. I use these moments to educate and hopefully empower that person by telling my story and praying it gives them the spark they need to stop waiting to get lucky and start making their own luck!

Is Better Possible? This Question Drives Great Minds, Great Ideas and Great Companies!

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/07/is-better-possible.html

Wanted to share another of my blogger hero Seth Godin’s recent blog posts as it relates to a couple of things I talk about a lot in my training and with my staff. Don’t settle for good, demand great!

“Is better possible? The answer to this is so obvious to me that it took me a while to realize that many people are far more comfortable with ‘no’.

The easiest and safest thing to do is accept what you’ve been ‘given’, to assume that you are unchangeable, and the cards you’ve been dealt are all that are available. When you assume this, all the responsibility for outcomes disappears, and you can relax.”

You see this all the time, people just don’t want to cause a scene. When faced with a policy that makes no sense they just abide instead of question. When asked if anyone has any questions, and they do, but they chose not to ask it out of fear of being embarrassed they keep in to themselves.

“Mostly, though, I’m surprised because there’s just so much evidence to the contrary. Fear, once again fear, is the driving force here. If you accept the results you’ve gotten before, if you hold on to them tightly, then you never have to face the fear of the void, of losing what you’ve got, of trading in your success for your failure.

And if you want to do this to yourself, well, I guess this is your choice.

But don’t do it to others. Don’t do it to your kids, or your students, or your co-workers. Don’t do it to the people in underprivileged neighborhoods or entire countries. Better might be difficult, better might involve overcoming unfair barriers, but better is definitely possible. And the belief that it’s possible is a gift.”

And this is at the core of why my training is so impact full and so many of my employees feel high levels of job satisfaction… because empowering people to believe better is possible goes hand in hand with empowering them to use data to make decisions. To be a great analyst you need to always ask yourself is there better data available, can I find a better way to analyze it and can I find a better way to communicate the findings.

The Dark Side of BPOs… It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

Let me start by saying I am a big proponent of the BPO Industry in the Philippines.

I’ve worked in the industry for over 10 years and have spent countless hours involved in sharing information about the growth and success we have enjoyed.

I speak at schools on a regular basis explaining to student the huge opportunities a call center career can have.
Overall, I think the positives far outweigh the negatives in the industries impact on the economy of my adopted home country.

However, some days I just shake my head. One of my former employees was just telling me about her recent experience with her new employer and the challenges she is facing really leaves me feeling blue about the BPO Industry in the Philippines.

Still under a new hire training period she, she is not technically entitled to any paid time off even when she is sick or there is an emergency. So when she recently had an illness and had a doctor’s note prescribing time off, she expected that her employer would allow her at least unpaid off until she recovered from a pretty nasty infection. Because it’s the right thing to do.

However, her request was denied and on top of not being allowed even unpaid time off she was instructed to work an 11 hour shift because of business needs. Wow.

Being the top of her training batch and having zero absences to date have zero impact. The fact that she is one of the most dedicated and hardest working employees I have ever worked with has zero impact. She had to go to work sick and put in 11 hours.

The short sighted lack of compassion demonstrated by the low level manager of the business unit of the huge multinational corporation that makes billions makes me sad.
But it also reminds me that this is why I set up my own company, because being part of something so big and so focused on profit is not something I want to be part of anymore.

So to all my friends and connections who are BPO executives, managers and leaders… lets not allow this to happen in our businesses. We have to change this mentality for the simple fact is that there are not enough qualified workers for our industry. The answer to being short staffed and metric driven cannot be just the bottom line when it makes us push our best workers to the point of making unhealthy life choices. We lose out of so many talented contributors to this industry because we treat them like a piece of machinery and just look to replace then when they breakdown.

Communicating Strategy From the Bottom

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/06/strategy-isnt-what-you-say-its-what-you-do/

Came across the log post about strategy implementation and I think it’s a good one for consultants working with senior management teams. It goes along the lines of walking the talk.

“Strategic choice-making cascades down the entire organization, from top to bottom. This means that every person in the company has a key role to play in making strategy. Performing that role well means thinking hard about four things:

1) What is the strategic intent of the leaders of the level above mine?
2) What are the key choices that I make in my jurisdiction?
3) With what strategic logic can I align those choices with those above me?
4) How can I communicate the logic of my strategy choices to those who report to me?

If you as a manager can do the first three of these four, then you will own your choices and own your strategy. If you do the fourth, you will set up your subordinates to repeat these four things and thereby own their choices and their strategy, and pass on the task to the next layer of the company. If each successive layer assumes this level of ownership, the organization can make its bosses’ statement a real strategy rather than an empty slogan.”

I can personally say that these points are all very important to infuse into the culture of your company. Both from my Wells Fargo experience where these are deeply ingrained in the corporate culture to the smaller scale of my own company, clearly communicated strategy is the key.
When not only your direct reports, but your two downs are spreading the gospel, you will be successful.

If you need help getting your team to walk the talk, I’m happy to help.

Business Strategy with Analytics – Aligning a business strategy to drive an organization forward requires a robust analytics solution. Businesses who have good analytics tend to be much more profitable and efficient then ones that do not. DMAIPH has helped dozens of companies in both the U.S. and the Philippines with adding more data analysis in their business strategy. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to find out what we can do to help you align your business strategy with analytics.

I Was Just Talking About This, Now I Know What To Call It > Sisu

http://www.businessinsider.com/quality-that-successful-leaders-have-2014-6

I was just talking with a friend about one of the qualities I have that I think separates me and other successful businessmen from those who aren’t successful. I came across this article just a few hours later. Active coping or what’s called Sisu.

“Active coping is being ready and able to adapt creatively and effectively to challenges and change,” she says in a statement. “Active copers continually strive to achieve personal aims and overcome difficulties, rather than passively retreat from or be overwhelmed by frustration.”

But this isn’t so much a skill as an outlook. Rather than viewing change as a threat, Patch says that active copers view it as opportunity. This requires two traits: stability and openness, all in one.

Put another way, active copers have what positive psychologists call “sisu”: an orientation to the world where difficulty is seen as opportunity, where you lean into a problem, try to understand it, and push yourself and the situation to shape the best possible outcome.

Pretty cool stuff. I’ve got more than game, I’ve got sisu! 🙂

Using Social Media To Cascade Content Upwards and Sideways, Not Just Downward

I came across this on LinkedIn and thought it worth sharing:
http://good2bsocial.com/2013/05/13/middle-management-social-business/

In 2012, IBM conducted a study, “The Business of Social Business: What Works and How It’s Done,” that showed that while companies are increasing their social technology investments, middle management leaders are struggling to embrace these capabilities as part of their day-to-day work. The problem, as the IBM study revealed is that “the key to accelerating widespread adoption lies in an organization’s ability to build social business expertise among employees, while encouraging behavioral changes that may influence a wider cultural shift. However, only one-quarter of companies believe they are fully prepared to address the cultural changes that are associated with this transformation.”

Therefore, companies needs to spend a significant amount of time and effort in encouraging their middle managers to change their existing behavior and provide their teams with a platform for engagement such as social networks and collaborative spaces. Middle managers need to embrace their new roles and upper management must set up a system to reward them for this. Without this basic fundamental change in culture, middle managers will resist change and a company’s social business initiative will be doomed before it starts. Middle managers in turn need to teach their teams the value of collaborating with one another and sharing knowledge and expertise. This may seem simple but from my experience it is not. Middle managers can encourage this collaboration by transforming existing business processes into new more effective processes that are enhanced by social technologies.

My take on this is that middle managers often feel more comfortable in being doers then thinkers. They thrive on routines and predictable processes and without guidance they struggle with ambiguity and vague direction. When it comes to social media they still see it as top down way of information dissemination and only use collaborative spaces with their direct reports to facilitate process changes and trainings. Rarely do you see middle managers use collaborative spaces as peers.

For my part, I will continue to encourage my senior managers to walk the talk so to speak and really optimize their social media presence in ways that inspire and empower their direct reports to do the same. We use the term cascade information a lot, but we don’t always cascade is upwards or sideways. We can do more of that.

4 Lessons From The Phoenix: Finding Success As You Rise Up From Failure

Here are four keys behind my recent run of success:

1. Find Disciples
2. Create Lots and Lots of Content
3. Go Both Horizontal and Vertical
4. Stick with the Plan

One of the greatest pieces of advice I ever got from a mentor was to go out and find three people who could become my disciples. People who understand and believe in the power of using data to driven decision-making.

Throughout the first two-year of my business I was never able to keep more than one at a time on my team as the business evolved rapidly. However, over the past six months I have firmly established two of them in the business as key partners in decision-making. And I still have one of my original influencers close at hand. I know have three disciples who believe in what we do and are able to talk my talk and walk my walk. Mission accomplished.

Another key piece of advice I picked up about a year and a half ago that I have stuck with is create lots of content. I’ve heard this before and see the power of some of my heroes like Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin when it comes to creating a constant stream of interesting content. However, it took a while for me to find my grove, but since then I have been churning out a fairly steady stream of social media content. I blog, am an active Liker on FB and share a lot via LinkedIn. That’s the second key to my success.

Another part of my success has been adding more and more services to my existing clients. This is a strategy I learned very well with Wells Fargo. Its far more profitable to go vertical with existing clients then try to go horizontal with lots of new clients.

And the final key that has help me rise from the ashes of one failed business to build a successful one if stick to the plan. Yes, its important to adapt and evolve, but those should be in unison with the core reason you went into business in the first place… to empower people to make better decisions. I started with a knowledge process outsourcing business model to being more analytics jobs to the Philippines and have done exactly that.

DMAI – The Intelligent Small Business 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 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 40+ 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 a few 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.

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

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