Category: General Analytics

Breaking Bad Data Habits

It’s a common mistake to get creative with your data in excel to such an extent that its next to impossible to use that data effectively.

The concept of keep it simple stupid is hard to follow as once a person has some data they tend to spend far more time formatting and decorating it then they do analyzing it. Its just human nature.

However when we don’t keep data in clean and easy to access formats, we pretty much make that data useless to anyone else who really wants to play with it.

The best and really only way to keep data useful is to have it in a simple column with 1 header row format. From that we can use numerous tools to both format and analyze the data like pivot tables and Tableau.

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How DMAIPH Uses Analytics > Doctor’s in Houston

I love public data mining projects like this…

Here is what we need:
A list of primary care, internal medicine, general medicine, and geriatric physicians in the Houston area who have written prescriptions for the atypical antipsychotic class of medications.

Specifically:

  • These physician specialties (primary care, internal medicine, general medicine, and geriatric physicians)
  • In these cities in the Houston MSA (Houston, Texas City, Pearland, Friendswood, Clear Lake, Missouri City, Sugarland, Katy, Cypress, Spring, The Woodlands, Tomball, Conroe, Cleveland, Kingwood, Porter, Humble, Baytown, Pasadena, Beaumont)
  • Can we get this mapped into an Excel spreadsheet with the following columns of data:
    • Separate columns for last name, first name
    • Specialty
    • Address
    • Overall volume of Medicare claims for all of the antipsychotic medications (quetiapine fumarate, Seroquel, Seroquel XR, risperidone, Risperdal, Abilify, olanzapin, and Zyprexa).

If you find research projects like this interesting, then DMAIPH is the place for you! 🙂

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Analytics Outsourcing – DMAIPH has successful set up Filipino analytics teams for over a dozen U.S. based businesses. Offering both virtual and office based teams that specialize in problem solving using data, new technology and analytics techniques is our strength. Finding and empowering analytics talent is increasingly challenging, but we have it down to a science. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to learn more about how to set up an analytics-centric team in the Philippines.

Integrated business intelligence tracking with Cyfe

Stumbled across this Analytics Dashboard Builder Today. Looks pretty cool.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239702

Cyfe is a business-intelligence tracking platform that lets users create custom dashboards with widgets. After you’ve got Cyfe set up, you can monitor your social media, marketing, sales, analytics, support, infrastructure and more. It pulls data from your business records and from popular services such as Google and Salesforce to provide you with relevant data in easy-to-read and easy-to-download formats.

This service allows even the smallest startups to gain insight and use data in a way that was once reserved for enterprises with investments in staff and servers built to crunch numbers. Simply put, it enables leaders that leverage numerous online tools for daily tasks to customize perspectives vital to accomplishing specific goals, rather than tediously extracting data from multiple sources and trying to make sense of it all.

Unlimited dashboard configurations and widgets are available at only $19 per month. Powerful real-time and visual business intelligence is no longer the exclusive privilege of large enterprises.

I’m gonna play around with it and hopefully it will be something I can get my team up and running with and then I can include it in my trainings! 20141203193138-5-tech-tool-help-compete-with-big-guys

Haven’t Come Across This Way Of Presenting Analytics Before

Just saw this post for a two day business analytics seminar in Makati being put on by one of the more well known training companies.

One of the things about analytics is it means a lot of different things to different people, but this approach seems pretty limited and kinda boring. Anyone see anything on here that excites them?

Seriously interested in feedback on this.

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Course Description

This 2- day course covers the different skills and competencies that Business Analyst should have based on BABOK v2 (IIBA Business Analysis Book of Knowledge). This course will provide an overview of the different Business Analysis Knowledge Areas and their respective task, tools and techniques .

Course Objectives

Upon completion of this program, participants will be able to:
•Understand the different roles of a Business Analyst
•Understand the different basic skills of a BA
•Explain the range of tasks that a business analyst might perform;
•Explain the importance of requirements definition.
•Understand the different techniques and tools in application analysis
•Understand the different knowledge areas based on BABOK
•Understand the relationships of the different knowledge areas of business analysis based on BABOK
•Learn the steps in requirements management processes
•Differentiate between the Planning, Analyze and Design phases.

Business Intelligence Buzzwords = Nosebleed

http://www.analyticbridge.com/profiles/blogs/kill-the-buzzwords-the-real-meaning-behind-popular-bi-terms

In the Philippines, “Nosebleed” is the common response for having to deal with a challenging problem, whether it be speaking a lot of English or trying to understand a complicated business problem.

When I read the attached article, it made me think of the number of times I get the Nosebleed response when I talk about analytics terminology.

In any talk I give on analytics, I make sure to always start with a definition and then build up a glossary of terms and definitions to make sure everyone is on the same page. I also like to show the audience that things aren’t usually as difficult as they seem, they just need to get past the nosebleed inducing buzzwords.

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Big Data is kinda scary because it sounds complicated and expensive.

Data Visualization is very broad and difficult to visualize if you aren’t familiar with the concept.

Data Scientist sounds like someone who doesn’t even exist in the Philippines yet.

But when you take a minute to step back and see that big data just means the data universe in your business that you are already using every day, that data visualization is charts and maps and graphs, and that a data scientist is really just the data guy you already have, then its not so nosebleed inducing.

Once you have the baseline to start from then you can go back and show the complexity of each buzzword without losing the audience.

If you or your business is suffering from nosebleed because the buzzwords in your analytics solutions sound too expensive and too complicated, then give me a shout out. I can help simplify it for you.

Don’t Confuse Leadership with Management

One of the points I try constantly to re-enforce to my DMAI leadership team is that we need to be leaders and not managers.

Managers oversee employees using an old-fashioned, top-down approach to implementing business strategy and achieving production goals.

Leaders inspire and empower team members using educational moments, sharing information and encouraging the team to be accountable to each other.

Given that 90% of DMAI’s team members have experience in the extremely hierarchical BPO industry, it’s often the case where we find ourselves victims to thinking management and not leadership.

To be different, we need to think different. To attract and retain top talent we have to value innovation and out of the box thinking. We can’t let ourselves limit our choices and use gut feel over data-driven decision making.

We need to focus less on titles and more on job functions, we should think of the company leadership not as OM and TS and TL, but as people with names… Irene, Kams, Aren.

I know it is hard to break the culture handcuffs that limit us… but when I am called Boss and not Dan (if you have to, Sir Dan then… but not Boss)… we lose some of what makes DMAI special.   

So my challenge to DMAI, lets stop using management terms that limit us and start encouraging each other to use leadership terms that empower us.

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