Getting On The Short List

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/08/the-shortlist.html

I came across another great blog post for Seth Godin that really hit home for me.

After two and half years of hard work and persistence, I have been blessed with being on the short list when it comes to analytics in the Philippines.

As Seth says, “The secret of getting on the shortlist is doing your best work fearlessly for a long time before you get on the list, and (especially) doing it even if you’re not on the list.”

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“After all, once you’re on the shortlist, not only do your fees double, but the amount of work increases to the point where you can’t possibly do it all.”

The number of invites to speak, to train, to consult and to set up a business has been growing at a phenomenal rate.

My amazing team and I struggle to keep up with the growth, which is a good problem to have because being on the short list means more opportunity and more work.

So many analysts to train, processes to improve, business dashboards to build and analytics team to groom.

Social Media Analytics?

Yesterday, I had the privilege to speak to about 100 people about how to get more analytics in their social media. Social Media Analytics allow businesses to: 

  • Use Platforms designed to discover, monitor and measure online buzz.
  • Provide understandings what your customers are thinking and saying publicly about your brand
  • Systematically measure consumer sentiment toward your brand
  • Learn more about content authors; engage brand advocates and critics as appropriate.

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Planning and Measuring the success of your social media strategies is a key competitive advantage that is often undervalued and misunderstood. During my talk, I provide a 5 step process to measure the effectiveness of a social media strategy. This simple process includes the following step:

  • Plan
  • Execute
  • Measure
  • Analyze
  • Optimize

Businesses that strive to bring more analytics into their marketing, branding and social media have a 30% great chance to turn a profit and are 10x more likely to be able to tie social media to these profits.

To learn how to get more analytics in your social media, feel free to send us an email at analytics@dmaiph.com 

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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Assessing the Analytics Culture In A Company

Yesterday I conducted a public training on business analytics and one of the exercise we completed was doing a self-assessment of the business each participant currently finds themself in. 

  • Level 1 – No analytics at all.
  • Level 2 – Only a few people use analytics and most key management decisions are not made based on data, but on experience
  • Level 3 – Some people use some analytics to make some decisions, but its generally inconsistent across the organization.
  • Level 4 – Most decision makers have access and generally use analytics. Several key team members have strong analyst backgrounds.
  • Level 5 – Every team member from top down knows analytics, has access to the data they need and are empowered to take action on it.

We need to work hard to develop an analytics culture in our businesses.

No technological solution or influx of top talent simply layered on top of existing processes and culture, can achieve these results. Further, pockets of existing analytical talent quickly grow disillusioned and, because they are not integrated into the business as a whole, fail to deliver much strategic value.

Empowerment Needs Structure

An Empowering environment is the goal of most companies, but few are able to fully realize it.

Empowerment happens when team members at all levels of the organization feel they have a say in things. Empowered employees feel they have authority to make decisions for the best interest of the customer and for each other.

Empowerment falls short when there is not enough structure in place to ensure that decisions are being made with direction and purpose.

I feel that we have built a pretty good environment that encourages empowerment, but we don’t always have enough structure in place to ensure the empowered decisions are what best for the team and for our customers.

We devoted a half day of training today to discussing ways to add structure to the business to enable more empowerment.

Let’s see how it works.

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DMAI – The Intelligent Philippines Outsourcing Solution

Over the past couple of years I have successfully consulted and partnered with a number of small call centers based in the Philippines. Most of my assistance has come in the form of analytics training and consulting, with a focus on making more data-driven decisions and optimizing reporting processes.

I’ve drawn a lot on my experience working with outsourcing projects while with Wells Fargo as well as the glorious failure or my own outsourcing company BPO Elite. And now to add to those, the amazing success we have having with DMAI in managing the rapid growth of a 50+ person outsourcing team of consisting of both home and office based staff.

Armed with these experiences and guided by a gifted management team, DMAI is now on the active look for more small business clients. We specialize in providing talent with above average analytical skills, who have been trained to make data-driven decision and are passionate about their work. The caliber of DMAI team members is not what you typically find in a call center employee.

We want to partner with just 2-3 more small or medium sized business who are looking to add staff overseas to complement their domestic operations. If you know someone looking to get started or is unhappy with their current outsourcing arrangement, maybe we are the partner they need.

The Philippines presents a very unique opportunity for American business to hire staff who speak and American style of English, are well versed in American culture and offer just about the best level of customer service in the world.

Please Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/dmaiph to see what our team members and customers say about DMAI.
You can also follow my blog at http://www.dmaph.wordpress.com to learn more about our mission and purpose… to empower better decision-making through analytics.

For a free consultation, please connect with us via the above channels or send an email to analytics@dmaiph.com

Stepping Up In A Time Of Adversity

Last week when I was in Boston meeting with a client, Metro Manila was hit by a Typhoon. I was really concerned both about how the timing might impact the business conversations and too about my teams safety.

Given the nature of our work, most of it being home based I was hoping our productivity wouldn’t be too impacted. As we got news of power outages and property damage impacting some of the team, I was so impressed with our clients level of genuine concern for the team.

As for my management team I was even more impressed with how they jumped into action and continued to work even with significant internet and power outages. Their devotion to the team and our business was remarkable. Our escalation procedures worked well and we kept communication flowing the whole time.

Most of the team itself stepped up even more as the storm left and the power came back. Their eagerness to make up hours to make sure our client was taken care of was utterly amazing.

In a time of adversity I can say I’ve never been prouder of a team for stepping up and taking care of each other.

Putting Together a BCP Plan? Use Your Analytics!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. We have joined up with our key business partner PMCM Events Management to showcase our solutions at #TechToniPH in July 2017. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to find out what we can do to help you align your business strategy with analytics.

Making You Business More Prominent On The Web

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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