The 3 Pillars of Small Business Analytics

When I consult with small business owners, there are 3 areas where my guidance generally has the most impact. I call these areas the 3 Pillars of Small Business Analytics.

The first pillar is a Competitive Landscape. I have found that very few small business owners really have a handle on the competition.

A competitive landscape analysis will reveal threats and opportunities that generally are not obvious to a business owner who focuses most of his/her energy on running the business itself.

Some of the data points you can capture and analyze include pricing, location, business size, quality, scope of business, diversity of product offering and of course revenue. You would be surprised to find how easy it is to gather all this info.

Knowing where your products and services stack up against your competition is a key to prosperity. To achieve this understanding you need to use analytics.

The second pillar is a Demographic Profile. I have also found that very few small business owners really understand the demographics around their business.

A demographic profile analysis will illustrate how closely your customer base mirrors the actual population around your business. In many cases small businesses are not positioning their services correctly based on the opportunity in their market.

Data to include would be traditional demographic markers like age, race, sex, family status, financial status, economic state, etc. There is a ridiculous amount of data on the internet that can be mined free and easy.

Making sure your business is properly positioned to take advantage of your arket will ensure more long term success. The data is out there; you just need to know how to bring it into your analytics process.

The third pillar is Customer Insights. With the boom in social media, most small businesses have not figured out how to capture and analyze all the information being published and shared about their business.

Customer Insight analysis allows a business owner to stay on top of problems and identify how customers feel about their business quickly.

We all know how quickly things can go viral and having a good tool to capture customer sentiment in social media is generally the most overlooked aspect of running a small business.

Positive and negative reviews, trending items, number of likes, follows and shares, are all items that can be rolled into customer insights. You can combine this with surveys, focus groups and loyalty programs among other things to get a full picture of your business.

If you are a small business owner, decision-maker or analyst then focusing on these analytics pillars will make all the difference in the world.

And the best part, is they are all free and easy to bring into your business.

Small Business Analytics – The field of small business analytics is just starting to blossom as companies are looking for more data-driven decision-making to prosper in the age of Big Data. DMAIPH is at the fore front of providing analytics training, consulting and outsourcing options to small businesses. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to set up a free consultation on how to get more analytics in your small business.

Being A Great Analyst > Key Attribute #4 > Be Enchanting

If you are a good analyst or a decision-maker that uses analytics, being enchanting makes your job much, much easier.

One key to using data and analysis effectively is understanding how to enchant people by being likable, trustworthy and using data and analysis to further a great cause.

A few years back, I came across a book by Guy Kawasaki called Enchantment. It is my all-time favorite business book.

Guy Kawasaki is a marketing expert and used to be Apple’s Chief Evangelist (aka Chief Marketing Officer). At Apple their goal is to convert customers to being loyal to Apple products for life.

In Enchantment, Guy talks about how Apple and other successful companies are able to create enchantment in their customer base that fuels passionate and long lasting relationships.

As an analyst there are many lessons that you can draw from Enchantment to being an incredibly impactful member of your organization.

One of the pillars of Enchantment is being Trustworthy. As an analyst, you have to be trustworthy for people to want to follow the direction your data and analysis point.

Your data has to be clean, valid, and accurate.

Your analysis has to be easy to understand, easy to replicate and easy to boil down into a few bullet points.

When you accomplish these things you are creating trust. Getting decision-makers to listen to what the data is telling them comes when the analysts have their trust.

That’s just one part of Enchantment. I use many examples of how to apply Guy’s concept to data and analysis in my training classes and in my company.

If you are looking for a way to add value to your company, which in turn can make the business more successful then this book is a must read.

Analytics Culture – The key to using analytics in a business is like a secret sauce. It is a unique combination of analytics talent, technology and technique that are brought together to enrich and empower an organization. A successful analytics culture is not easy to create, but DMAIPH can show you how. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly so we can build a strategic plan to turn your company into analytics driven success story.

Being A Great Analyst > Key Attribute #3 > Be Decisive

If you are a good analyst or a decision-maker that uses analytics, being decisive is much, much easier.

One key to using data and analysis effectively is understanding how people make decisions and what impacts the ability to make unbiased decisions.

A few years back I came across a book by Dan and Chip Heath called Decisive. It was a fantastic read.

The Heath Brothers are marketing and management experts who do a lot of research into what works and what doesn’t in the business world.

Decisive looks at what influences effective decision-makers overcome.

As an analyst, there are many valuable lessons that can be applied to both selecting data and presenting the analysis of the data.

One example of being Decisive that I use a lot related to trying to avoid a narrow frame. Too often we limit our choices.

When it comes to what data to use to answer business questions, we have to always ask ourselves is this the right data? Is there other data I can use to validate my findings? What data can be blended with this data to tell a more compelling story?

Being aware of your own biases will help you ensure you get the right data, that it’s what is really need to answer business questions at hand.

Being of aware of the biases of the consumer of your analysis (generally your boss and their peers) can help you position your data in ways that can mitigate those biases and let them see what you see.

There are dozens of examples from Decisive that I use in training people to be analysts and in using analytics effectively.

It is a book, well worth your time.

Analytics for the Small Business

Analytics is about looking for patterns in data to help answer questions. Most businesses use analytics to help ensure more data-driven decision-making.

No matter the size, scale or scope, every business generates a wealth of business data. Every business has an opportunity to uses that data to drive more intelligent decisions.

The primary people responsible for conducting analytics on the massive amounts of data we have today are analysts. Analysts are skilled in using various technologies and methodologies to identify, inventory and integrate large amounts of data quickly.

The term analytics can often be used interchangeably with statistics and data science. What separates analytics from disciplines like statistics and data science is generally the speed of the analysis and the focus on solving business problems.

The most common form of analytics is business analytics that are generally used by owners, senior leaders and decision-makers to investigate problems, validate assumptions and to guide strategic planning. As a generalist, business analysts can help in a number of areas of the business.

Business analysts are therefore the most common type of analyst, especially in a small business. If you do a job search on the title analyst, as many as half the posting will likely be business analysts. However, analytics can be used in an almost limitless number of business functions in specific areas like HR, recruitment, marketing, finance, and so on. Each one can have its very own analyst.

Analysts have been around a long time, but recent technological advances have both allowed us to produce and capture more data as well as give us the ability to analyze immense data sets quickly. Thus we are amidst a huge boom in the applications of analytics and the need for analytics talent across the globe. Analytics is something just about every business leader is trying to figure out how to use more effectively in their business. To add to our challenge, the demand for good analysts is booming just as fast as the explosion in big data.

As a result, there is a huge shortage of people who are skilled in working with data to answer questions and solve problems. This is why you have seen the number of analyst job postings increasing at an amazing rate. In the first few chapters of the book we will discuss the quickening demand for analytics talent and why it is so hard to find good analysts, especially at the small business level.

If you are a business leader, manager, owner, and/or executive are not actively trying to surround yourself with analysts and if you are not infusing an analytics centric culture in your business, you will most likely soon see your business fail.

A small business needs analysts to make sense of big data, manage the storage of the data, and know when to use which of the 3 types of analytics (descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive). To be effective, analysts need to have business intelligence tools to create data visualizations and build business dashboards.

If you need an analyst or want to be trained in analytics, connect with me and I can show you how to get started.

The Analytics of Project Measurement

Peter Drucker perfectly summed up why big corporations rely so heavily on analytics when he said “What gets measured, gets managed.”

A successful analyst is able to remove the noise when analyzing data and isolate what matters to his or her organization.

With most companies collecting large amounts of data, you need to be both talented and disciplined to pinpoint key insights that can yield value.

In the corporate world, business analytics is widely use to track, analyze and report Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

KPIs are rolled up to senior leadership to drive business strategy, identify and mitigate risk and to optimize operational productivity.

This approach is very similar to the way projects in the Measurement and Evaluation are tracked, analyzed and reported.

I would define measurement simply as the act of measuring to ascertain the impact, size, level of success, etc. of a specific data set.

There are many components to measuring projects making sure the project is on schedule, stays in scope, is not over budget, the quality of work is up to par, the end goal of the project remains relevant, and finally if the project is ultimately deemed a success.

A foundation in analytics will contribute to a more optimal and efficient process of measurement. Like businesses do with KPIs, you should start will identifying that are the key measurements your project will be judged on.

Once you know those data points, then figure out how to collect them, analyze them, and report them.

At each step you can look for new data, validate existing data and blend data from other sources to add value to your measurement efforts.

Once you get to the reporting phase you can look for cutting edge techniques in data visualization and interactive reporting like dashboards to help educate and empower your audience.

That is how it is done in the corporate world where business analysts boil down massive amounts of big, often unstructured data into a few bullet points that allow decision-makers to take action.

When it comes to the Measurement of Project Evaluation, understanding various analytics solutions can make all the difference.

Analytics Education – Facilitating a mastery of the fundamentals of analytics is what DMAIPH does best. All across the world, companies are scrambling to hire analytics talent to optimize the big data they have in their businesses. We can empower students and their instructors with the knowledge they need to prepare for careers in analytics. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly so we can set a guest lecturer date, On-the-Job Training experience or other analytics education solution specifically tailored to your needs.

How Does a Foreigner Become a Successful Speaker in the Philippines?

“As a foreigner, how do you market and sell yourself as a speaker in the Philippines.”

A good friend of mine asked me that a little while ago.

After letting it rattle around in my head a bit, I came up with this reply.

As cliché as it sounds you have to be yourself. Although high powered, dynamic speakers can come to the Philippines to speak and make money, the ones who keep coming back are the ones who are authentic.

I also understand the heart of the Filipino. I am just one of a network of maybe several dozen Philippines based, non-Filipino speakers who routinely are asked to speak at conferences and seminars. The fact that we have expertise in our fields of specialty is important, but I think what’s more important is that we all have chosen to live in the Philippines. That makes a significant difference.

To a person not familiar with the Philippines, who is just visiting to be a speaker, it will be much harder to really understand the heart of the Filipino. And therefore you would have to work much harder to be an impactful speaker. There will always be a lot of value in sharing knowledge and being a subject matter expert, but if you can’t put that in context of what it means to live and work in the Philippines, you will likely not succeed long term.

That said, I can point out a few things that I think would help a visitor who really wants to learn what it takes to know be successful in the Philippines.

Get outside the comfort zones. Most foreigners stay in relatively rich, safe and easy to get around areas in Metro Manila. To really get to know the Philippines you need to go to the palengke (market place), ride a Jeepney (local transit) and eat some street food (I love BBQ pork on a stick). Now, I recommend you go with a local your first time, but if you can talk about these experiences, you audience will be able to relate to you and have much more respect for you.

Traffic congestion is horrible in Metro Manila. Its an easy target for a shared experience. Saying you were worried you might be late because “Traffic sa Edsa” (traffic was bad on EDSA, the major north-south traffic artery in Manila) will also help. Actually just learning and using a few Tagalog phrases will make a huge difference.

Another suggestion I would make is don’t use up most of your time talking. Breaking into small groups discussions and having interactive learning activities will take the burden off of the audience having to always listen to having a fast-talking and intelligent, foreigner. It can be very intimidating for the audience when that happens. They end up getting, what Filipinos humorously refer to as “nosebleed”. Too much English, too fast and with too much information being the cause. So building in breaks from you speaking is another key to success.

The final suggestion I’d offer my friend, would be to be social. Mix with the audience before the event starts. Be ready to say Maghanda Umaga (Good Morning) when they come in. After the first session and you are on AM break while everyone is having snacks, be ready to mingle some more. And at the end, build in time to take a group photo and group pics. The Philippines is proud to be the most Social Media driven country in the world. Selfies reign. Embrace that fact and you will win a lot of support.

As for marketing, social media and mobile are of paramount importance. You have to push a lot of mobile friendly content through social media to really draw attention to you and your training. And the more that you do to show your interest in empowering Filipinos the more success you will have.

Hope that helps!

My Analytics Story – My passion is solving problems by bringing together the best talent, cutting edge technology and tried and true methodologies. DMAIPH is all about empowering people towards better Decision-Making through the use Analytics and business Intelligence. This is what I do best. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly for a free consultation about getting more analytics into your career and your business.

Big Data Analytics:Big Data—It’s Not Just Size > 2/21/17

I will be speaking on February 21, 2017 at Discovery Suites, Ortigas Center, Pasig City on Big Data Analytics and Business Intelligence.

With that in mind, I wanted to go into a little more detail about each section, starting with…

Enabling Your Business to Make Smarter Decisions Section 1 : Big Data—It’s Not Just Size

Participants will learn to Describe the Importance of Effectively Analyzing Big Data in Business Today . Being able to explain analytics to non-technical people is very important for any analytics solution to work.

We will also come up with a Data Map to Analyze the Big Data in your business. A data map allows you to see how data comes into the business, where it is stored and how it is accessed. Knowing you data environment is key to having clean and valid data in your analysis.

Another goal will be Establish Clear Objectives When Analyzing Big Data. Knowing exactly what your end user needs, how they want your reports and what will happen to the fruits of your analysis will allow you to be much more value to the business.

I will show attendees how to Recognize and Apply Various Data Collection Methods . Way to often we get stuck by not having documented are process clearly. Having an easily traceable and repeatable process will make your analytics life much easier.

In addition, we will talk about how to Identify and Resolve Problems Associated with Data Collection . Not all data is good data. In fact cleaning data can eat up a lot of time, but it’s a better alternative to reporting based on bad data.

We will discuss the difference between Data Warehouses and Data Lakes. Knowing how data is used in your organization, who has access to it and what they do with it goes a long way in making sure your entire organization becomes more data-driven.

Finally, we will determine when to use Data Blending in your analysis. How to take all of the Big Data you have both inside and around your business and bring them together to give you a 360 degree view of things is also very important to success.

Thats section one… i’ll over the next 3 sections over the next few days.

If you are interested in attending this training, I can connect you with my good friends at Ariva Events Management who will be facilitating the program.

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 on which of our DMAIPH analytics training solutions is best for you.

Most Analysts Spend 50% of Their Time Finding Data

Most analysts spend most of their time finding data.

%	Finding	Analyzing	Reporting
10	12%	6%	33%
20	14%	10%	39%
30	20%	31%	24%
40	6%	14%	2%
50	31%	16%	2%
60	14%	18%	0
70	0%	0%	0
80	0%	2%	0
90	0%	0	0
100	0%	0	0

In fact, most analysts I know spend 50% of their time finding data.

Among other thing this can mean they are setting up data mining or data gathering process to look for the data or it can mean they reviewing their data for relevancy.

My experience is that when you spending this much time on the finding the right data phase it reflects a poorly structured data environment or a unfamiliarity with the data needed.

Dirty data is also a big time waste.

Experience is the best solution for challenges with finding data. The fact the finding phase % is so high speaks to both the explosion in the 3 V’s of Big Data (Velocity, Volume and Variety) as well as the number of analytics newbies.

To me this should be no more than 20% of your time.

I expected finding data would be the biggest chunk, but was surprised that over 50% of my analyst connections using at least 40% of their time finding data.

If you have one day to answer a key business question, this means you are using your entire morning just finding the data.

When you get back from lunch you haven’t even started the actual analysis yet and the clock is ticking.

Data is based on a survey I sent to 3,000 of my LinkedIn connections who are either analysts or work closely with data and analysis.

Analytics Survey – DMAIPH conducts quarterly analytics surveys to collect data on current trends in analytics. We specialize in surveys that assess analytics culture and measuring how aligned an organization is to using data and analytics in its decision-making. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to find out more about how DMAIPH can conduct surveys to help you assess the analytics culture in your business.

The 10 Analytics Essentials of Entrepreneurship

A good friend of mine, Boom San Agustin, recently blogged about the essentials of entrepreneurship. Boom listed the 10 things most essential to be successful in setting up and running your own business.

This inspired me to put an analytics spin on each of the 10 points, showing how you can use data to augment each point.

Have passion for what you do. One way to measure how much of your time you are devoting to your passion is to set a schedule and track how much time is devoted to everything you do each day. If you are happy with the % spent on passion projects then you are doing the right thing. But if too much of your time is spent on things you don’t like doing, then you need to make some changes.
Pursue excellence first, money second. Here you need to do a lot of research and ask a lot of questions. You need a clear idea of what excellence in your chosen business looks like. How can you measure excellence with your products, your service, your team’s performance and engagement? Putting some key metics in place will allow you to make more informed decisions.
Be open and honest with others and yourself. Get feedback. See what % of your client, customer, partner, team member, interactions are honest and endure honesty in others. Come up with a way to measure the trustworthiness of what you do.
Have a “can-do” attitude. Keep a project list of all the things you need to accomplish. Update it every day. Be able to show yourself and others your progress towards getting things done. This will ensure that people see the work behind the words.
Be the leader your team needs. Devote significant amounts of your time to your team. Keep them informed by blogging. Build tools for communication like newsletters. Be visible in person and in social media. Track the frequency of your engagements and correlate them to employee satisfaction surveys.
Learn to communicate well. Get in front of an audience whenever possible. Engage the audience. Ask for feedback. Identify challenges and opportunities and then follow up. If your team doesn’t know what is going on in your head, then it is a problem. Gathering data on your communication strengths and weaknesses is key.
Be a teacher and a learner. Facilitate as much on-site training as possible. Get involved in it. Train people yourself on areas you are good at. And then sit and listen to other experts in areas you are not. Track the time put into training and come up with a cost justification. Its easy to cut training when times are tough because its hard to assign a value to it. Make this a priority now so you always know the valued of training in your business.
Have your ear to the ground. Stay engaged in person and on social media. Keep updated on trends affecting your business and your employees. Use a social media tool like Hootsuite to manage your social media messaging to get feedback all in one place. Lots of data points can be created and tracked to measure how close you are to the pulse of your business.
Be dynamic and open to change. Set a check-in schedule. Encourage one on ones and team meetings that are not just one sided but empower sharing. If you are open minded and listen, you will be able to make changes to your business that keep things on the cutting edge. Use a timeline to show where you have been, where you are and project out where you are going.
Know when to quit. We all fail. Businesses will all fail at some point. Winners know when its time to fail and walk away to do something else. Losers stay the course until they go down with the ship. Figure out what is the most important metric in your business. Sales, profit, engagement, risk potential… whatever it is. Figure out what is the lowest acceptable number, once you get close to it, be prepare and exit plan. If you pass it, face facts and pull the plug. Always have that data point at your fingertips.

If you are able to build in analytics like these, you will be able to manage your business well. You will set a tone among the leadership that uses data, not just the gut, to make decisions. One of your first hires should be a data guy who can build a business dashboard and deliver impactful reports. Someone who can help you identify risks and rewards and keep your focus on the metrics that matter most.

Analytics Leadership – DMAIPH specializes in arming the Data-Driven Leader with the tools and techniques they need to build and empower an analytics centric organization. Analytics leadership requires a mastery of not just analytics skill, but also of nurturing an analytics culture. We have guided thousands of Filipino professionals to become better analytics leaders. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to discuss a uniquely tailored strategy to ensure you are the top of your game when it comes to Analytics Leadership.

Big Data Analytics and Business Intelligence

Enabling Your Business to Make Smarter Decisions

Are you tired of being under constant pressure to make the right number-based decisions for your organization?

Are you too often overwhelmed by an out-of-control flood of numerical information, much of it conflicting and confusing?

Big data is booming ast as organizations devote new technology resources to tapping the terabytes (if not petabytes) of data flowing into their organizations.

Today big Data is flooding into the business both through internal processes and externally via social media.

What does this all mean for business intelligence (BI) users and systems?

With all the attention on advanced analytics for big data, what’s the play for BI?

Integrating advanced analytics for big data with BI systems is an important step toward gaining full return on investment.

Advanced analytics and BI can be highly complementary.

Advanced analytics can provide the deeper, exploratory perspective on the data.

BI systems provide a more structured user experience through there richness in dashboard visualization, reporting, performance management metrics, and more can be vital to making advanced analytics actionable.

Recently on December 6, 2016 I was at Astoria Plaza, Ortigas Center, Pasig City for a dynamic and empowering one-day training on Big Data Analytics and Business Intelligence.

Course Description:

Make smarter business decisions using these powerful data analysis techniques

Information is supposed to make us smarter, but more often than not, it simply overwhelms us.

This program is for you if you feel like you’re drowning in data and unsure which data to use to drive your company initiatives.

The truth is that the amount of data available to help run your business is greater than ever before. To effectively use this information, managers must consider the practical side of big data…what matters to you is how do you grow and build a team to make smarter decisions.

Much of the information out there just discusses the promise of the data deluge. The challenge is not the volume of data but rather the judgment needed to use it.

This seminar goes beyond the qualitative side of data analysis to explore proven quantitative techniques and technologies for identifying, inventorying and integrating data, so that more informed and reliable business decisions can be made.

Learning Objectives  

Apply Best Techniques and Cutting Edge Technologies to Organize, Interpret, and Summarize Quantitative Data
Create a Process to Analyze Data and Identify Patterns Not Apparent at First Glance
Reduce “Analysis Paralysis” and Go from Hard Data to Well-Reasoned Conclusions in Less Time

What Was Learned

Specific skills to effectively frame the problem you’re addressing to uncover key opportunities and drive growth
Critical marketing steps of orientation necessary before engaging tools and technology
How to simply and quickly amplify decision making by separating the signal from the noise
A framework for asking the right questions, allowing the ability to link analytics to business strategy

What Was Covered

Using data and statistics effectively in business today
Improper data manipulations and their consequences
Exploring quantitative data collection methods
Improving analysis success by effectively utilizing software
Understanding regression, trend lines, and scenarios in Excel
Utilizing the power of business intelligence software
Finding and analyzing data patterns, trends, and fluctuations
Interpreting and translating data into decisions

Who Attended

Over 80 business professionals who needed to learn more about the basic tools to quantitatively and accurately analyze the mountains of data that come across their desk each minute of every day.

Section One

Big Data—It’s Not Just Size

Describe the Importance of Effectively Analyzing Big Data in Business Today
Come up with a Data Map to Analyze the Big Data in your business.
Establish Clear Objectives When Analyzing Big Data
Recognize and Apply Various Data Collection Methods
Identify and Resolve Problems Associated with Data Collection
Discuss the difference between Data Warehouses and Data Lakes
Determine when to use Data Blending in your analysis

Section Two

Analysis—Using Business Intelligence Tools

Assess Your Current Analytics Culture
Describe the Issues and Trends in Today’s Analytics Field
Optimize your use of MS Excel for Big Data analytics
Discuss the concept of Data Visualization
Utilize BI Tools like Tableau Public
Build a Business Dashboard Prototype

Section Three

Interpretation—Assessing Results

Articulate the Importance of Accurately Interpreting Data
Determine and Analyze Risk, Uncertainty, and Probability
Spot Patterns, Trends, and Fluctuations Through Correlation, Regression, and Descriptive Statistics
Understand when to employ Descriptive, Predictive or Prescriptive Analytics
Build Data Models

Section Four

The Art of Presenting Big Data

Apply a Process to Present Big Data Clearly
Select the Appropriate Presentation Format to Communicate Your Findings Effectively to Your Audience
Master the Power of Enchantment
Use Findings from Big Data to Drive Decisions Within Your Organization

Too often people dive into the data only to be lost in haze of data.

This discussion will be pragmatic and immediately applicable to analysts, professional using analytics and managers of analysts across all industries.

Analytics Training – DMAIPH in partnership with Ariva Events Management, 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 on which of our DMAIPH analytics training solutions is best for you.

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