Category: My Analytics Story

Q1: To start can you provide us with a basic overview of what is analytics?

Analytics is simply about looking for patterns in data to help answer questions. Most people use analytics within a business to help ensure more data-driven decision making. Businesses that use analytics are generally much more efficient and much more profitable then ones that don’t.

Analytics is generally employed by analysts who are skilled in using certain technologies and methodologies to identify, inventory and integrate large amounts of data quickly. What separates analytics from 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 general business analytics that are 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. However, analytics can be used in an almost limitless number of business functions in specific areas like HR, recruitment, marketing, finance, and so on.

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. As a result, there is a huge shortage of people who are skilled in working with data to answer questions and solve problems. This why you have seen the number of analyst job postings increasing at an amazing rate.

If you 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.

The Fundamental of Business Analytics – Business Analytics is the application of talent, technology and technique on business data for the purpose of extrating inights and discovering opportuniites. DMAIPH specializes in empowering organizations, schools,  and busiensses with a mastery of the fundamentals of business analytics.  Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to find out how you can strengthen your business analytics fundamentals.

20 Questions with Dan Meyer about the Fundamentals of Analytics.

Recently I was asked to put together an FAQ about analytics. Based on my experiences from training people how to better use analytics, these 20 questions are the ones I most commonly get asked.

  1. To start can you provide us with a basic overview of what is analytics?
  2. Can you tell us what makes you an analytics guru?
  3. What are some of the current trends in analytics?
  4. Can you please describe the current state of analytics in the Philippines?
  5. What are some basic strategies an analyst can use to find the right data at the right time?
  6. Can you provide some tips on how to manage data?
  7. What exactly is data science and why the rapid rise of data scientists?
  8. Here something a lot of us are wondering, what exactly is big data and how can we use it?
  9. Can you please describe the concepts of storing data in a data ware house?
  10. Please talk about how, when and why we use should descriptive analytics?
  11. Can you next describe how to best use predictive analytics?
  12. Next please explain when and how we can use prescriptive analytics?
  13. A lot of us want to know what is business intelligence and how does it add value to analytics?
  14. What is data visualization and how does it help drive better decision-making?
  15. What is a business dashboard and how is it used in a business?
  16. Can you tell us more about current trends and hot new tools in social media analytics?
  17. Many of us work in recruitment or HR. What are some best practices and technologies used in HR and recruiting?
  18. Can you please talk about recent developments in higher education on how to train more analysts?
  19. How would you describe your approach to teaching analytics?
  20. So in conclusion can you explain a little more about your own method for using data to drive better decision making?

Each day for the next several days, I will take each question and elaborate and share with you my own personal FAQ on the Fundamentals of Analytics.

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The Fundamentals of Business Analytics – Business Analytics is the application of talent, technology and technique on business data for the purpose of extrating inights and discovering opportuniites. DMAIPH specializes in empowering organizations, schools,  and busiensses with a mastery of the fundamentals of business analytics.  Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to find out how you can strengthen your business analytics fundamentals.

 

How to Build Your Business Strategy

Business strategy is something that comes naturally to me. I’m good at anticipating challenges, at doing research to assess the risk and reward to multiple options and I love to use data to validate or refute initial findings.

Though easy for me, I have found that being successful with business strategy is not as natural for most business owners, senior managers and decision-makers.

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When I set up my first company, it was based on a year of research and lots of networking. When I launched my second business it was based not just on research and networking, but learning from the mistakes made the first time with financial planning and partner relationships. Now on my third business, having taken the best of everything that worked before and finding ways to mitigate the things that went wrong before.

Now, for most business leaders you can’t just hit the rest button every few years, but you should hit the reset button on your initial strategy. Adapt to changes in the market. Glean new insights on cutting edge technology. Stay on top of industry trends.

That’s the first key to business strategy. Understanding that it is a continual process that evolves. Many businesses fail because they don’t change with the times or because leaders just stick with what has always worked. That’s dinosaur thinking.

Any good business strategy has to adopt a continuous process improvement policy, using something Six Sigma or Lean to keep things form getting stale.

A good business strategy also seeks out new technologies that can disrupt both their business and their business marketplace. What was cutting edge and trendy six months ago most likely be as effective six months from now. Good Business intelligence tools that can do cool data visualizations and build business dashboards help us stay ahead of the game. I show a lot of people how to do this using Tableau Public, which is free and easy to learn.

The next key to business strategy is integrating customer insights into everything you do. If you don’t listen to your customers, if you can’t predict what they need, and if you have a strategy that puts profit before customer experience you will probably fail.

It amazes me when I see bad customer service, products that no longer meet customer needs being produced and unimaginative marketing campaigns. In this day and age, with access to our customers at unprecedented levels, there is no excuse for failing to get it right the first time.  We do a lot of surveying and engage using social media to stay connected.

The third key I include in my business strategy planning and consulting is understanding the competitive landscape. Knowing where we stack up in the marketplace, what are our strengths and weaknesses, what is hot and what is not… you need to put as much focus on what is happening outside the business as you need to know what’s happening inside.

Almost everyone I talk with about their competitors share with me one common feeling… I don’t really know what my competitors are doing. In fact a high percentage even struggle to identify who their key competitors are. We are active in industry organizations, online social media groups and attend competitors events to stay up to date.

Business strategy is a lot more than just business intelligence, customer insights, and competitive landscapes, but it is a good start. If you are able to add these to financial models and demographic data, you will have a well-rounded business strategy. And then its just a matter of keeping it fresh, resetting it every so often to make sure you don’t become a dinosaur.

Let me know if I can help. In the past few years I have helped companies of all shapes and sizes refine their business strategy using my keys to success.

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.

My Analytics Story – 2011 – Year Zero – Past as Prologue

This is the first in a series of blog posts to I have planned to share My Analytics Story – Teaching Analytics in the Philippines.

I first got the idea to do analytics training and outsourcing in the Philippines in early 2011.

A little historical perspective first. For most of its history Wells Fargo was not very big into outsourcing, but was very big into analytics. I had been working as a senior analytics consultant with the bank for several years and doing some pretty amazing things with data blending and data visualization for our management team.

Then Wells Fargo acquired Wachoiva and all of a sudden my team was given the challenge to help set up some new positions in the Philippines. Wachovia had a long and successful history with doing back office operations in Manila.

For those not familiar with Wells Fargo and/or Wachovia:

The first team to be set up across the Pacific was a back office, new account fulfillment team. A fairly routine series of tasks, easy to capture and validate data. My role was to provide benchmark data and then management reporting as the transition progressed. While doing this I was paired up with several business partners in Manila. And quickly I discovered that their analytics tools were not very advance and they really didn’t use much predictive analytics.

The light bulb turned on.

I could do this. I could go to the Philippines and get involved with training people to do more analytics, to bring more data-driven decision making to the outsourcing industry!

Given I was married to a Filipina, most of my friends are Filipino-American and I grew up in a city with one of the largest Filipino communities in California, this was a perfect chance to grow my affinity for the Philippines.

And of course I could get back to doing more teaching in the form of training people to use analytics. I had been thinking about getting back to teaching for a while, but the bottom line is Wells just paid better. Plus, I really love working with data. So then next light bulb went off.

I can take what I am good at analytics, and merge it with my passion, teaching and get into the business of training analytics.

As this plan was starting to evolve in my mind, things at work where also coming to a head. I had been trying for a while to find a new job that would get me closer to being involved in both analytics and outsourcing equally with no luck. Lots of interviews within the bank, but nothing came to fruition. Which in hind sight was a total blessing in disguise.

One day I was chatting with a good friend about my growing frustration of not being able to find the right job at Wells and he said, well why don’t you set up your own business then? Light bulb number 3.

But then how? He suggested we talk with a friend of his who was ironically enough looking to set up his own call center in the Philippines. We had several meetings and decided the three of us would set up a new business both in the U.S. to find clients and in the Philippines to train talent to do work for the clients. I came up with the name BPO Elite and the tag line, making data-driven decisions.

And then we got around to talking about who would run the company. And they both immediately said it would have to be me. Up to this point, never in my life had I contemplated such a thing.

Me being the boss.

The final light bulb burned bright. Now it would just a matter of planning the launch of the new business.

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This was around June 2011. We set up BPO Elite legally, built the web site, started doing some marketing.

One thing I needed to validate though was can I actually train people to do the analytics we would be offering as a service. I needed to do a pilot here in the U.S. before moving to the Philippines. I had always thought college students/fresh graduates would be the best ones to hire to work in our business. They are open minded and highly energetic and I could fill their minds with the technologies and methodologies I had used at Wells to be a great analyst.

So thanks I brought on a team of interns over the summer of 2011 with the idea of teaching them analytics and turning them loose on some local small business clients to see if we can drive some results that would be turned into a training model.

It was a huge success. Great pupils. Happy Clients. Lots of Data. More on the how I did it later. For the sake of the narrative, it worked. So it was time to leave Wells Fargo and set in motion the plan to move across the Pacific.

And one more key point I will get to later, one of my parners had a connection at one of the top schools in Manila. So lets not just train fresh grads to do analysts, I should also tie up with the school to teach a class on analytics. More access to talent and a good way to build our brand credibility.

The moral of the story… the reason behind my posts… dream a dream, validate it with data, take calculated risks to seize opportunities and then just persevere.

More to come.

Being A Great Analyst > Key Attribute #1 > Know A Lot

Often you here people in business talk about how it’s more important to be either a master at one thing or a jack of all trades. When it comes to being a great analyst, you see many who are great because they have mastered their subject or a certain analytics tool. On the flip side you see many great analysts who seem to know a lot about a lot and are proficient across multiple subjects and/or can use many analytics tools. So which is better?

From both my experience and my personal perspective, analysts who know a lot about a lot are rarer and more valuable to a business. Based on both an accumulation of knowledge and the ability to work in various environments, analysts who are considered to jack of all trades kinds are in general great analysts.

IMG_6912 However, I have also found that most business actually find more value in master of certain type of analysis work or someone who is great at using a certain tool. Specialization is something that is on the surface very impressive as it shows discipline and competency in a certain subject. They know a lot about their area of expertise and are recognized as such.

Occasionally you can even come across analyst who are both knowledgeable about a lot and even more knowledgeable about a specific subject matter. Now that is a rare breed.

So, no matter what type of analyst you are or want to be, the bottom line is you need to constantly read and connect and expand your knowledge… you need to know a lot if you want to be great!

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.

Analytics > Based on the Principles of Logic

One of my trainees recently asked me for some help with an assignment she had in her philosophy class. Now I am such a Star Trek fan aka Trekie, that of course the first thing that comes to mind in the character Spock.

I imagine that is anyone ever took a formal survey of analysts and analytics professionals, most would list Spock high on their list of “cool characters.” The use of logic to solve problems is a key plot point in several episodes and movies. Anyway, I digress…

The assignment is to look at the paperwork in a business and determine how logic and logical principles are applied. I look at logic as being used primarily in two different facets of paperwork.

1. to set priorities… using deductive reasoning to decide what priority is more important and which one to work on first. This is something that is hard to teach and a common interview question. Trying to determine if a person knows how to establish priorities tells you a lot about how logical they think.

2. to establish procedures… logic is used to set up a process like an assembly line or a pipeline where things are done in a routine that is most logical. Being efficient and optimizing a process require a lot of logic in the design and implantation of the process.

So for paperwork… the paperwork that gets done first is the highest priority like payroll… logic dictates that paying employees is the most important and logic helps you set up a process for paperwork… like if a form needs three signatures, you would use logic to set the order of whose signature you get first, second and third

When you have a problem with a process or too many priorities to accomplish all, you use logic to help you solve the problem.

Analytics, or the discipline of using data to drive decision-making in a business, is closely related. Logic is used to identify the data you need, logic is required to interpret the analysis and logic is needed to determine how bet to communicate your findings.

When you look at any business (or government, organization, structure, etc.), you need to employ logic to make that business run and paperwork is a big, big part of the resulting of using logic. Forms, reports, summaries, etc… they are all receptacles of logic that are used to keep things moving.

So when asked why I do what I do when it comes to the paperwork in my business, I am going to tell you because its logical to do it that way. Or as Spock might say, “Logic dictates how and why we use paperwork.”

General Analytics – Analytics is the application of using data and analysis to discover patterns in data. DMAIPH specializes in empowering and enabling leaders, managers, professionals and students with a mastery of analytics fundamentals. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to find out what we can do to help you acquire the analytics mastery you and your organization need to be successful in today’s data-driven global marketplace.

13 Months in the Philippines – Lesson 13 – May 2013 – Exit Plans

Lipa City, Batangas, Philippines

At the end of April, I set a line in the sand. If we couldn’t line up enough co-marketed trainings and consulting gigs by the middle of the month, I would pull up stakes and head back to the US for a while. As the days went on we had several set backs as a key marketing partner decided to cancel the four training dates we had set up in May and a couple of potential consulting clients decided to wait on our training. In looking at expenses as well as several pressing personal issues it became pretty clear by the middle of the month that it was time for another change.

In looking at the amount of money we would need to keep things going versus the short-term revenue options the analytics suggested taking a pause and trying again once we have more capital. A lot of companies use data and analysis to look at where they’ve been, but not as many use analytics to help predict behavior. I think any solid predictive analytics exercise would suggest that there is a lot of money to still be made doing what we started. The market is there. The need is there. The raw talent is there. It’s just a matter of a better plan with more dedicated partners.

At about the same time, my partners also decided to officially disband BPO Elite. It has kind of just hung our there as an empty shell since October. I occasionally used the name and identity for people who new me as the man behind BPO Elite before I launched DMAI. It was a pretty sobering day to say the least when two years of work came to an end. However, it severed its purpose. It opened up doors, it allowed me to have the time of my life and it helped a lot of trainees achieve their dreams of finding jobs.

So after 13 months, I got on a plane and headed back to the United States a man who will never have to say he didn’t go all in for the sake of chasing his dream.

Little did I know, the labor and hard work of these past 13 months laid a foundation that would soon led to some amazing opportunities to come back and try it all again.

Analytics Tool > Business Intelligence Applications > http://www.gatner.com

Analytics Concept > Predictive Analytics > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_analytics

YouTube Resource > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjznLJcgSFI&feature=share&list=PL8D46F50D27222FD4

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.

13 Months in the Philippines – Lesson 12 – April 2013 – The Wheels Come Off

Picture1Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines

April 2012, was a tough month. The challenge with filling training classes continued. We had three staff members depart for other opportunities. I ended a six-month engagement with my top client. It was time to switch gears again. We needed to pivot towards doing more outsourcing and consulting and less training.

One good things to come out of April, was the Social Media Analytics Workshop we held for a group of trainees for one of our clients. We discovered some pretty good talent and were able to put together a good team of analysts with a large range of analytics skills and social media savvy. There are a plethora of social media analytics tools built-in to just about every significant social media site. We also learned that the Philippines is the most social media driven country in the world. There is a higher percentage of Filipinos are online and actively using social media that with any other country.

I also continued to blog almost daily as I had learned from a good friend, is the key to monetizing your online business. You need fresh content that is relevant and engaging. You have that and you feed it to your audience on a regular basis, you can then start making a profit off it. Blogging about analytics is a key tool for analysts that’s often overlooked. Most analysts stay embedded in their silo. They focus on the data at hand and they master how to identify, inventory and integrate it. They accumulate a wealth of experience and knowledge and many are blogging about it.

However, in this case it was too little too late. Due to a series of personal and professional challenges it was time to think about what to do if revenue didn’t pick up quickly.

Analytics Tool > Analytics Blog > http://www.wordpress.com

Analytics Concept > Social Media Analytics > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_analytics

YouTube Video > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQYOmQRhzhM&feature=share&list=PL8D46F50D27222FD4

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.

13 Months in the Philippines – Lesson 11 – March 2013 – Missed Opportunities

420Pasig City, Metro Manila, Philippines

March was lined up to be a very big month. We had 4 different training on the calendar as we continued to diversify our offering to get access to different types of clients and trainees. I continued to do media events and speaking engagements to push the brand. On paper the month should have led us to a very prosperous outcome and we would be well on our way to a healthy business model.

However, I underestimated a couple of things and overestimated our capabilities. This is exactly where so many small business efforts fail. Trying to do too much to soon. We did four different types of training; recruitment analytics, English for call center jobs, sales and marketing analytics and analytics for business leaders. If everything would have filled up I would have made over 100,000 PHP. But in the end I lost money on all four after costs of staff and venue were factored in. It’s the last time I did trainings without the help of a dedicated marketing partner.

I also overestimated my staff. One of my biggest weaknesses as a leader is that I tend to over trust and over challenge. I tend to treat employees as I wanted to be treated myself, but I forget they do not have the same level of experience and depth of passion I have. It sets them up for failure. And we failed miserably in our marketing, our recruiting, the quality of our product and our execution of strategy. I just got too excited and lost my discipline.

I also continued to do media events, but wasn’t capitalizing on them. Promoting myself is not easy. I can talk all day, but I forget the little things. Trinkets for the host, Shout outs to key business partners, mixing in a little Tagalog, staying on script. All valuable things that I can see now in hindsight I should have done better.

I really had uncovered a niche for training that I want to focus more on in the future. Recruitment Analytics training is something I am good at and something there is a dire need for in the Philippines.

Analytics Tool > Bullhorn > http://www.bullhorn.com

Analytics Concept > Recruitment Analytics > http://www.recruiter.com/recruitment-metrics.html

YouTube Resource > http://youtu.be/blx8IuHsmCA

Analytics in the Philippines – The Philippines is at the center of the action when it comes to solutions to the global need for analytics. Blessed with a solid foundation of young, educated and English speaking workforce, companies around the world are look for Filipino analytics talent to fill analytics positions. DMAIPH was set up to facilitate these solutions and bring the talent and the business together. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly so we can help you take advantage of this unique global opportunity.

Lesson 10 – February 2013 – The Future is Bright

What Analytics Can Do!

Mandaluyong City, Metro Manila, Philippines
In February, for the first time in ten months I made a profit. You hear that the typical new business takes a year or more to make a profit. I had been a very flexible and nimble business leader and let my business evolve as opportunities came up. It seemed like all the hard work, sacrifice and money spent has been worth it. To take a quote from my all time favorite book, The Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of time.” It was all a matter of perspective.

I was encouraged by several things. We had our most successful training event in February making a nice profit on my first public training geared towards young professionals and entrepreneurs. We also turned a profit with my first training focused on recruitment analytics, which was my first attempt to do something besides the basic analytics intro class. We had a couple of lucrative consulting gigs in the works. I was set for several media appearances and there was a lot of buzz building on our social media sites. I had a couple of speaking engagements lined up as schools to help set up more trainings down the road. The people I had hired earlier started to get into the swing of things and for the first time I thought we had enough people to fine tune our story and tell it to the world. Basically I was executing every aspect of the business plan I had set forth back in November.

As an analyst I felt pretty good about the ROI on our trainings, we had young and hungry staff willing to work for cheap to get the experience, my revenue was diversified and we were meeting our training head count expectations. I took on another trainee to work with a client’s marketing efforts and I was doing all this without the overhead of an office. We started getting into infographics. A fairly new trend in analytics and data visualization. I found a free info graphics tool and went crazy! A picture is worth a thousand words and a good infogrpahic is worth a thousand rows of data! Hehe!

Analytics Tool > Info Graphics > http://www.infographicsarchive.com/create-infographics-and-data-visualization/

Analytics Concept > Data Visualization > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_visualization

YouTube Resource > http://www.youtube.com/user/Piktochart

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.