Category: Analytics Training

Analytics Centric Cultures – Learn More June 5-7, 2018 in Ortigas

Inspired in part by Bernard Marr’s 2010 book, The Intelligent Company, my goal these past several years has been to build and/or be part of data-driven business cultures. The description of the book on Amazon sums it up well, “Today’s most successful companies are Intelligent Companies that use the best available data to inform their decision-making.”

In his book, Bernard advocates for using Evidence-Based Management that is using the best available data to inform decision-makers. In parallel to this, I have been empowering companies and professionals to empower decision-makers to use more data as well. I call it data-driven decision-making, but at their cores, there are very similar approaches to managing success.

The cornerstone of the book is the five steps to more intelligent decision-making, which are:

  • Step 1. More intelligent strategies — by identifying strategic priorities and agreeing your real information needs
  • Step 2. More intelligent data — by creating relevant and meaningful performance indicators and qualitative management information linked back to your strategic information needs
  • Step 3. More intelligent insights — by using good evidence to test and prove ideas and by analyzing the data to gain robust and reliable insights
  • Step 4. More intelligent communication — by creating informative and engaging management information packs and dashboards that provide the essential information, packaged in an easy-to-read way
  • Step 5. More intelligent decision-making — by fostering an evidence-based culture of turning information into actionable knowledge and real decisions.

As information and data volumes grow at explosive rates, the challenges of managing this information is turning into a losing battle for most companies. In the end they find themselves drowning in data while thirsting for insights. Combine this with an increasingly severe shortage of talent with analytics, data visualization and good communication skills, things look bleak for companies not adhering to lessons like those suggested in the Intelligent Company.

In addition, Data-Driven Cultures Do These Things:

  1. They embrace Big Data. They aren’t afraid of it. They relish the addition of new data sources and actively look for more.
  2. Managers use Evidence-Based Management techniques. Just about every choice comes based on data analysis.
  3. Challenges are addressed with Data. When something happens that was unexpected, the challenge is met with a data centric approach.
  4. The right data is being used. A lot of work goes into validating data and keeping it clean and fresh. The concept of having a data lake that supports multiple parts of the business is in place.
  5. They have the right analytics talent. Analysts are empowered to go out and discover not just current challenges, but look for potential ones as well.
  6. They know how to communicate. The sharing of information is done to benefit everyone. You won’t see lots of data trapped in silos. Data has no one true owner.
  7. They take action based on their data and analysis. You don’t see a lot of useless reports that kills a small forest or clog up an inbox with massive files. They keep it smart and simple.

Data-Driven cultures are a lot harder to find than they should be. In this day and age, every company should have a strategy on how to use data to drive more intelligent decisions, but they don’t. Success eludes many companies because they don’t have the 7 qualities listed above in place. If you were to ask what they look like it would be something akin to this:

· Top management is afraid of data. Senior leaders don’t even know how to use MS Excel. There is no analytics champion in the organization to spearhead data projects.

· Decisions are made based on what worked in the past, relying on experience and gut feel. There is little evidence used to go in any certain direction.

· When things don’t work out, data and analysts take the blame. You will hear a lot of “why didn’t you tell me” and “I didn’t see it coming” excuses.

· What data is being used is old, dirty, incomplete, full of errors and doesn’t tell the whole story. Reports are basically useless and just produced to look at what people generally already know. They look for what’s there, oblivious to what’s not.

· They do not share data. They hoard it. They don’t trust anyone else with access to it. The data is stored in unconnected storage places. There is no common understanding how to use data.

· They fail a lot. Success generally happens by hard work as much as luck. It’s impossible to know for sure what caused what to happen.

It’s not easy to take a company that has little or no data-driven decision-making and turn it into an Intelligent Company, but it can be done. I have done it. I have guided transitions from the stone-age to the information age. Let me show you how.

I will cover all these concepts in more in upcoming my training class on June 5-7, 2018 at Discovery Suites in Ortigas. For a list of training events, please visit www.sonicanalytics.com

Dan Meyer heads Sonic Analytics, an analytics training, consulting and outsourcing company with offices in Manila and the San Francisco Bay Area. With over 20 years in Big Data, Dan is one of the most sought after public speakers in Asia and has recently begun offering public training seminars in the United States.

We need to look at the data (analytics), plan a course of action (strategy) and share our data-driven viewpoints (presentation). So he has started an internship program under Sonic Analytics to empower the youth the use Analytic, plan Strategy and Present their views… ASP!

Sonic Analytics(www.sonicanalytics.com) brings big data analytics solutions like business intelligence, business dashboards and data storytelling to small and medium sized business looking to enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities.

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Finding the Right Data

“Data! Data! Data! I can’t make bricks without clay!”

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Conan Doyle’s famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, couldn’t form any theories or draw any conclusions until he had sufficient data. Data is the basic building block of everything we do in analytics: the reports we build, the analysis we perform, the decisions we influence, and the optimizations we derive.

Finding the Right Data at the Right Time

Back at Wells Fargo, the single greatest attribute that made me successful was my ability to size up how long it would take to deliver something. Knowing what data I would need, where I would find it and how long it would take to analyze it to come up with something useful made me somewhat of a wizard in the minds of the team.

Finding the right data at the right time requires one to first know ends and outs of their data. You have to know how the data is captured, where it is stored and how it makes its way to you. Knowing the data architecture in your business is the key.

So you have to get to know the people who know where your data comes from and how it gets there. Learn from them. Partner with them. Buy them doughnuts.

A few years ago I came across an analogy being used to describe data in a business. That of a data lake. A data lake is the living, breathing, evolving pool of all the data in a business. If you have a good data architecture, and you can navigate it fairly easily, then you have a data lake. Ideally, your business has data structured in such a way you can live off it. Data to a business is like water to living things… it sustains life

So once you have the lake mapped out, then you have to learn how to fish it. Knowing where the fish are biting is another key. Once you know what data you need, you have to know how to get to it quickly.

I can’t stress this enough. No matter how good you are at analysis, or what tool you are using to do the analysis, if you don’t have an understanding of what happens to the data before it gets to you then you are probably not drinking from a clean lake.

Business Intelligence tools help us here. As does coding languages to extract data from a database. These are your fishing tools. You have to practice using them to be good at getting the right data at the right time.

Another way to optimize your data search is to save your work. Of as I call it leave yourself breadcrumbs. Save the query. Cut and paste the code into a document and save it. Write down the steps. Whatever you need to do to replicate what you just did so you can do it again in the future without starting over from scratch.

So to recap, if you know data structure, you understand how data is stored and you leave yourself clues to do things faster next time.

Now the other part of the equation is knowing if the data you are using is the right data. Finding data quickly doesn’t do you any good if you bring back the wrong data.

So, how do you know if the data you are using is the right data to be using?

I can’t count the number of times I asked myself that question. In general, just about every new analysis or project or research or whatever it is you are using data for, you have to ask that question at some point.

Even data you have used a hundred times and comes from a highly trusted source needs to be scrutinized.

Now if you work with data every day in a familiar format, from the same source and with no changes to the data gathering and storage process you don’t have to spend much time validating it. Usually you will see problems when something just doesn’t look right when you are doing the analysis.

On the other hand, things get a whole lot trickier when you are using data from a source you don’t use often, or something has changed in the way the data is populated or if it’s the first time you are using the data.

When this happens, I have a few suggestions on how to validate the data.

· First off, pull the data, do your analysis and draw some conclusions. If it passed the eye test and it feels ok to you, then your job is just to validate it.

· One simple way to do this is pull the data again the exact same way to make sure you get the exact same data. Or change one parameter like the dates used in the query. See if that significantly alters the way the data looks and feels.

· Another option is to have someone else do the same thing independently. See if they get the same results you do. You can also find someone who knows the data to look over your work to see if it makes sense to them.

In the end, whatever you do, make sure you have the right data.

I will cover all these concepts in more in upcoming my training classes. For a list of training events, please visit www.sonicanalytics.com

I’ll be conducting the following business analytics trainings over the next few months:

· June 5 in Ortigas (Metro Manila, Philippines)

· July 17, in Pleasant Hlll, CA (San Francisco Bay Area, US)

· August 22, in Bonifacio Global City (Metro Manila, Philippines)

Dan Meyer heads Sonic Analytics, an analytics training, consulting and outsourcing company with offices in Manila and the San Francisco Bay Area. With over 20 years in Big Data, Dan is one of the most sought after public speakers in Asia and has recently begun offering public training seminars in the United States.

We need to look at the data (analytics), plan a course of action (strategy) and share our data-driven viewpoints (presentation). So he has started an internship program under Sonic Analytics to empower the youth the use Analytic, plan Strategy and Present their views… ASP!

Sonic Analytics(www.sonicanalytics.com) brings big data analytics solutions like business intelligence, business dashboards and data storytelling to small and medium sized business looking to enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities.

What is Business Analytics? In Most Cases It’s Simply Excel & 3 Bullet Points

Business Analytics refers to the skills, technologies, practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight, discover opportunities and/or drive business planning. *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytics

The most common form of analytics is business analytics that are generally used by senior leaders and decision-makers to investigate problems, validate assumptions and to guide strategic planning.

Business analysts are therefore the most common type of analyst. 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.

I was a business analyst for a large part of my career at Wells Fargo, but even before I had analyst in my title I was heavily involved in business analysis. Why?

Because I know how to use Excel.

It’s amazing how many people are scared of Excel. To many highly educated and successful business leaders across Corporate America, making a pivot table in Excel is like magic.

If you were able to take an honest survey of managers and supervisors across the country (world actually), you would probably be quite surprised by the high percentage who would prefer to find someone else to analyze their data.

That’s one of the biggest reasons business analysts are so prevalent.

Another is time.

I had a boss at one point that grilled into me the philosophy that no matter how much data you have, and how complex the analysis, it’s all worthless if you can’t boil it down to 2–3 bullet points.

That’s all he had time for.

3 Bullet Points!

So being a successful business analyst really require 2 skills; Excel and condensing data into 3 bullet points.

If you can do that, you’ll go far.

I did.

A business needs analysts to make sense of big data, manage the storage of the data, and know when to use which of the 4 types of analytics (descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive). To be effective, analysts need to have business intelligence tools to create data visualizations and build business dashboards.

I will cover all these concepts in more in upcoming my training classes. For a list of training events, please visit www.sonicanalytics.com

I’ll be conducting the following business analytics trainings over the next few months:

· June 5 in Ortigas (Metro Manila, Philippines)

· July 17, in Pleasant Hlll, CA (San Francisco Bay Area, US)

· August 22, in Bonifacio Global City (Metro Manila, Philippines)

· September 4, Rancho Cucamonga (North of Los Angeles, US)

Dan Meyer heads Sonic Analytics, an analytics training, consulting and outsourcing company with offices in Manila and the San Francisco Bay Area. With over 20 years in Big Data, Dan is one of the most sought after public speakers in Asia and has recently begun offering public training seminars in the United States.

We need to look at the data (analytics), plan a course of action (strategy) and share our data-driven viewpoints (presentation). So he has started an internship program under Sonic Analytics to empower the youth the use Analytic, plan Strategy and Present their views… ASP!

Sonic Analytics(www.sonicanalytics.com) brings big data analytics solutions like business intelligence, business dashboards and data storytelling to small and medium sized business looking to enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities.

Getting Started With Analytics

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.

A general definition of an analyst is a person who analyzes or who is skilled in analysis. Analysts examine things carefully and in detail so as to identify causes, key factors, possible results, etc. generally using a process of identifying, inventorying and integrating data. *http://www.dictionary.com/analyst

I often hear that most analysts today feel like they are drowning in a sea of data. They need to know how to take control of their data and analysis to quickly answer business questions and make critical decisions. They want to confidently present results and solutions to their managers, colleagues and clients.

You most likely clicked to this page because you fit the description above. If that is the case, then you made a good decision. 😉

All kidding aside, I have designed a method to help you look at analytics in a way that will make data and analysis easier to understand and conduct. My trainings and published content will also instruct you on how to share data in a more dynamic and influential way.

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 fact the quickening demand for analytics talent has made it very hard for most businesses to find good analysts.

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.

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

The primary people responsible for conducting analytics on the massive amounts of data we have today are analysts. Do you have analysts on your team?

Analysts are skilled in using various technologies and methodologies to identify, inventory and integrate large amounts of data quickly. Are you an analyst yourself?

If you answered yes to either question, but you feel you need more training for yourself or your team, you are not alone.

A business needs analysts to make sense of big data, manage the storage of the data, and know when to use which of the 4 types of analytics (descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive). To be effective, analysts need to have business intelligence tools to create data visualizations and build business dashboards.

I will cover all these concepts in more in upcoming my training classes. The classes are designed specifcally for people new to analytics and for business leaders looking to upgrade the level of analytics in their business.

For a list of training events, please visit www.sonicanalytics.com

Upcoming Training Dates

· June 5 in Ortigas (Metro Manila, Philippines)

· July 17, in Pleasant Hlll, CA (San Francisco Bay Area, US)

· August 14, Rancho Cucamonga (North of Los Angeles, US)

· August 22, in Bonifacio Global City (Metro Manila, Philippines)

My goal with this series is to help you look at analytics in a way that will make data and analysis easier to understand and conduct.

Dan Meyer heads Sonic Analytics, an analytics training, consulting and outsourcing company with offices in Manila and the San Francisco Bay Area. With over 20 years in Big Data, Dan is one of the most sought after public speakers in Asia and has recently begun offering public training seminars in the United States.

We need to look at the data (analytics), plan a course of action (strategy) and share our data-driven viewpoints (presentation). So he has started an internship program under Sonic Analytics to empower the youth the use Analytic, plan Strategy and Present their views… ASP!

Sonic Analytics(www.sonicanalytics.com) brings big data analytics solutions like business intelligence, business dashboards and data storytelling to small and medium sized business looking to enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities.

DATA Analytics 3.0: Big Data, Data Value Chain and Data Visualization with Tableau – February 20-22, 2018

DMAIPH is proud to present this 3-day Data Analytics training that covers different aspects of data identification, collection, storage, transformation, and analysis and involve hands-on use of common data management and analysis tools such as Excel, SQL and in depth learning of the tool “Tableau”, this is also designed for those with little to no prior experience with these tools.

Analytics Experts Dan Meyer (DMAIPH) and Dominic Ligot (Cirrolytix) have joined forces to offer a unique training focusing on both the Analysis and the Management of Big Data.

Attendees will learn how to identify the right data, how data can be efficiently stored, then transformed into a friendly form for analysis, and finally how data analysis can yield insights.

 

LEARNING SESSION OBJECTIVES:

  1. Apply cutting edge technologies to organize, interpret, and summarize Big Data in your business.
  2. Create a process to analyze data and identify patterns not apparent at first glance
  3. Understand the components of The Data Value Chain: Ingestion, Storage, 
Transformation, Analysis – and how they are all important to deriving value from data.
  4. Learn database manipulation and processing basics using the Structured Query Language 
(SQL)
  5. Connect a data analysis tool such as MS Excel or Tableau to a database to be able to 
perform analysis on processed and stored data

 

IN THIS SESSION, YOUR ORGANIZATION WILL BE ABLE TO USE:

  • 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

 

IN THIS SESSION, YOUR PARTICIPANTS WILL BE ABLE TO:

  • Learn the best practices for organizing, summarizing, and interpreting quantitative data
  • Create a repeatable process for analyzing your data
  • Shorten the time between analysis and action to avoid “analysis paralysis”
  • Know how to get from hard data to well-reasoned conclusions

 

WHO SHOULD ATTEND:

  • Business Analysts, Data Analysts and other Analytics Professionals
  • Business professionals who are involved in day-to-day analysis of data.
  • Data analysts who are already performing analysis using spreadsheets but struggle with manual data processing.
  • Managers of analysts or staff who spend a significant amount of their time collecting analyzing and reporting data.
  • IT and Development Staff that work closely with business leaders and decision-makers.

 

Continue reading “DATA Analytics 3.0: Big Data, Data Value Chain and Data Visualization with Tableau – February 20-22, 2018” →

The Analytics Education Drive in the Philippines

Article by AAP Business Analyst, Ludilyn Pridas

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The Asian Institute of Management (AIM) recently conducted a free Master Class last January 15-17, 2018 about the application and use cases of Data Science to different fields. It was also a venue for them to provide more information and some insight about the relevance and competitiveness of their newly proposed course, the MS in Data Science (MSDS) Program. The Master Classes aimed to provide some perspective on role of Data Science in the business world today.

During the second day, AIM focused on the applications relevant to the Finance and Banking sectors. The session which was primarily conducted by the Institute’s MSDS Program Director Erika Legara, PhD. She talked about the place of data science in business and emphasized on the importance of the data scientist’s ability to communicate his/her findings to the business decision makers effectively.  Let me highlight some of the things I found particularly relevant.  A good data science team is crucial to leveraging on company curated data as most often than not, good amounts of historical data are left untouched or under-utilized. This is because people in the business are rarely equipped to handle data, more so transform and use it through modelling.  Aside from this, it was also emphasized that analytical knowledge alone will not be enough to achieve success for the business. A data scientist should also have domain knowledge on the relevant business alongside his/her data analytics skill set and techniques. The combination of both is needed to effectively revolutionize one’s business. To sum it all, AIMs seminar was a great opportunity to get an introduction on data science and its relevance, as we know that the Philippines is now adapting to keep up with the trend.

In 2013, the Commision on Higher Education (CHED) released a memo outlining the guidelines and policies for the launching of specialized courses in business analytics targeted towards students who are taking up Business Administration and Information Technology. The goal of this endeavor is to prepare students for the big global analytics wave which will likely open up a lot of career opportunities. In fact upon the release of the memo, various schools expressed their interest to add this new program to their curriculum such as the University of the Philippines – Diliman, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, Asia Pacific College and University of Santo Tomas, among others. The visualization below shows the list of schools that have expressed interest in launching their own Data Science and Analytics programs. (Click the visualization below to open and interact with it in a separate tab).

Teaching Analytics

 

Similar to AIM and the abovementioned schools, the Analytics Association of the Philippines (AAP) also aims to shed light on the relevance of analytics to businesses and the overall economy. As an enabling organization, we aim to come up with a unified ecosystem in the Philippines where industry, the academe, and practitioners meet and find synergies. By helping mobilize trainings and programs for Filipinos that focus on how to upskill in analytics with strong regard for business domain knowledge, we hope to facilitate the creation of a new breed of data scientists that can really revolutionize organizations.  Quoting the popular magazine-format newspaper, The Economist, the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil but data. In line with this and the objective of the AAP, we serve to help individuals optimize their practice and remain well-informed about the developments of the field to make their work more valuable to them and their respective organizations. We hope to complement the efforts of AIM and other educational institutions as we take on the same objective of upskilling Filipinos. The AAP undertakes this mission through massive and inter-regional projects throughout the Philippines, hopefully reaching the seams, and making it available to all who are eager to learn.

How Do We Make Globalization Work For Every Filipino? We Need To Massively Upskill!

In the Philippines we see many pros and cons of Globalization first hand.

The BPO Industry and the OFW culture has given millions of Filipinos access to jobs that provide higher salaries and economic opportunities that they might now have been able to find locally.

However, these two economic trends have also caused a brain drain, where any of the best and the brightest of the Filipino workforce is not engaged in helping better the Philippines directly.

It’s a double edged sword, but I for one think up until now the pros have been worth the cons and we have seen a growing middle class in the Philippines that didn’t exist 20 years ago.

However, the Philippines still remains on the whole a fairly poverty stricken country. Wealth distribution is a major problem. Many economic indicators show the Philippines economy being one of the shining stars of Asia, but on the streets of Manila the average Filipino is not really seeing the benefits of this growth. Still, its indisputable that for millions of Filipinos Globalization has been a benefit in raising their economic quality of life.

In addition, most of the jobs that OFWs and BPO workers take on are jobs that hard, manual process intensive, and do not require tech skills which cannot easily be replaced by A.I.  There is little doubt that most of new jobs being created today require tech skills that most of the current work force does not have. The ability of the education system in the Philippines to prepare the next generation workforce with tech skills is also not where it could be.

Answers to these challenges will come with investing a lot more in upskill training and curriculum redesign to provide Filipinos with 21st Century Skills. And that is why I founded DMAIPH and am part of the AAP.

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Analytics Leadership – DMAIPH is a founding member of the Analytics Association of the Philippines (AAP.PH) and 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. #AAPMoonshot #DataRockPinas

Analytics Jobs of the Future (1st in a Series)

Jobs of the Future for analytics will be mid-high level jobs and rapidly replace low-skilled analytics jobs that are now fairly common here in the Philippines. 

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Original content created by Jacqueline Belmonte, Assistant to the Executive Director of the Analytics Association of the Philippines. 

Analytics jobs have been increasingly changing as of late as technology changes, but how does Analytics perform in the larger landscape? This research is conducted to provide a view on Analytics as a growing job field in the Philippines. The research also aims to discuss Analytics as a recognized field today, used by 53% of companies to optimize their data into valuable insights for decision-making, targeting higher number by 2022.

In fact, APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), predicts that analytics jobs will more than double in the Philippines in the net 5 years.

APEC_500K

The Era of Data has shifted the jobs of today and of the future as new technologies revolutionize the way how businesses deliver their products and services.

The customer experience has been the most important factor in retaining customers and is evident on how creative companies have been to stand among competition. Digging into customer’s activity will uncover customer behavior patterns that could be used in marketing.

In-demand mid-high skill & lucrative jobs are already starting to be significant in the market place here. Replacing the low skill jobs over time will be a challenge though, as the Philippines does not have enough talent to meet the industry demand hence, a looming analytics talent shortage.

A significant chunk of employed population with low skill and repetitive tasks will also be affected due to innovations like Artificial Intelligence if they will not upskill themselves to learning more complex skills like Data Science and Analytics.

The disruption of technology to the traditional business process can be mitigated with immediate communication of what’s about to happen and how to cope with it as an individual and an organization. Efforts will need to come from the industry, academe and government, working together

And that is where DMAIPH and the AAP come in.

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DMAIPH is a founding member of the Analytics Association of the Philippines (AAP.PH) and 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.

Upcoming Events

Big Data Bacolod: https://web.facebook.com/events/718011925036202/

Big Data Analytics 3.0: https://web.facebook.com/events/1750508601681363/

Analytics for HR Managers: https://web.facebook.com/events/227273664479530/

Hunting For Those Missing Elements – Massive Analytics Upskilling

One of the best things about bringing new people on board is that you tend to get pretty insightful feedback.

Let me show you why I really value a fresh pair of eyes as I try and lead my team of analysts in our advocacy to conduct massive upskill training in the Philippines.

Thanks to Ludz Pridas, a new business analyst on the AAP Analytics Team, for creating most of the content below.

On one hand it’s refreshing to know that all of these observations are things we are actively working on. On the other, it can be little frustrating that we haven’t worked them all out yet to a point where the whole team see the big picture.

So that is my first missing element I need to focus on, upping the level of internal communication. Not easy with a team that works virtually a lot. We use Trello, that helps. We have monthly strategy meetings, but probably need to have them a little more frequently.

Another “missing element for us to do a massive training is the opportunity for advancement, a llack of advances towards other training”… the ecosystems is very fragmented. As the number of training options and academic programs focused on analytics grows, so does the difficulty for someone looking to upskill.

Unification of the ecosystem is a top priority of the AAP as we set up partnership agreements with various other organizations. Advocating for standards built around the APEC Data Science & Analytics Core Competencies Map helps. But we need to do a lot of networking and storytelling to build a successful framework for someone to easily determine which upskill option is the right one for them.

We also have to both make things simpler and add more complexity. It is even harder to pull this off then it sounds. Most people looking for analytics training are pretty new to many of the concepts used by cutting edge analytics teams. And a lot of people needing the training simply aren’t numbers people. So we need to keep things fairly layman.

At the same time we need to use the framework to help people easily level up and progress. That cant all be done in person. So online tools will be essential, and there are a lot in the works. Also additional resources for self-guided learning need to be developed and shared.

And the final point that Ludz pointed out to me is “the lack of trainers to teach analytics, to guide the audience beyond our standard 2 days of fundamentals. It’s just not enough to learn all the stuff about analytics quickly.”

Yes, that is why we are gonna do a run of the Train the Trainer in Bacolod in Feb and are working to set up a fun of Train the HR Trainer early in 2018, and another run of Train the Trainer in Davao in April. A large part of my time this coming year will be spent growing the numbers of experts.

By my calculations, to train 500,000 Filipinos by the end of 2022, we will need about 10,000 experts to conduct various types of training.

As I said at the top, these are things we know. We just need to get better at talking about them to a point where everyone involved gets it. That’s who advocacies from one man shouting in the wilderness, to a society of learners working together to optimize the use of data across the county.

Interested in helping the AAP achieved our analytics moonshot? I hope so because it gonna take all of us.

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Analytics Leadership – DMAIPH is a founding member of the Analytics Association of the Philippines (AAP.PH) and 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.

 

 

 

The AAP Analytics Internship Matching Program

Innovating the Data Science & Analytics Internship Experience in the Philippines.

The Analytics Association of the Philippines will offer a Data Science and Analytics Internship matching program for Filipino students and employers. The AAP will serve as a conduit and catalyst bridging theory and application to ensure value to the company as well.

Our program has been developed to address 3 current challenges facing students and employers when it comes to data science and analytics themed internships:

  • students are often given menial tasks that do not apply knowledge / learned theory
  • mechanisms do not address disconnect between areas of interest and areas of need
  • companies are not able to effectively identify parts of the value chain that can be assigned to interns while causing no substantial risk to the business’ operations

By enrolling in the AAP DSA Internship Matching Program, students will be matched with employers that provide opportunities to learn and practice DSA skills that are in high demand in the workforce. Students can also be fast tracked for employment post-graduation by their match in a more continuous process.

By enrolling in the AAP DSA Internship Matching Program, employers will be matched with students that are committed to learning DSA skills that can add value to the employer’s business as well as provide a more seamless path to career placement.

Employers will also be encouraged to take a more active role in providing, business cases, data sets and resource speakers for the programs the students they are matched with come from. By being more involved with their students before and after the internship, the bridge between academia and industry will be optimized.

To this end we have developed the following process that will kick off on January 15,2018:

  • Students apply for OJT matching with AAP
  • Employers apply for OJT matching with AAP
  • AAP Matches students and employers based on profiles
  • AAP conducts orientation for students and employers
  • AAP provides online resources to both students and employers

The AAP will assess partner schools and their respective tracks and courses that could work on analytics (end-to-end of value chain) The AAP will also define areas of expertise of each program based on the APEC DSA Competencies and the AAP DSA Framework. Students will be interviewed and vetted.

Additionally, the AAP will provide a matrix of industry partners and corresponding needs (with parts of the value chain, doesn’t have to be siloed, can cover multiple parts)

As for the employer, they will:

  • Define problems/needs (could be something students can work on parallel to an existing team effort)
  • Define final output (paper/study, running program, a presentation, proposal, working product, solution)

As for the schools, they will:

  • Provide 1-2 professors to assist in mentorship
  • Conduct processing of internship experience to give feedback to AAP

Overall our goal is to offer a unique value proposition by facilitating internships with a view of work as an end-to-end process that involves deep-diving into a specific problem or project of the company. The companies enrolled in our program get real value out of internships besides serving as a marketing tool.

With our network of industry partners, prestigious academic institutions and analytics thoughts leaders, the AAP is well positioned to facilitate significant change in the way analysts and data scientists are born.

Our Analytics Internship Matching Program will go a long way in providing tomorrow’s workforce with in demand skills that employers covet, which in turn will allow the Philippines to be a world leader in analytics talent.

Most of the credit for the content of this post goes to Mel Awit, the AAP Analytics Manager. 

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DMAIPH is a founding member of the Analytics Association of the Philippines (AAP.PH) and 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.