Tag: Analytics Consulting

Achieving Better Results Through Analytics: What’s Your Analytics Strategy?

Just put together a pitch deck for a potential in-house corporate training.

Here’s some of the highlights…

You need an analytics strategy.

Making data-driven decisions is key to success in any business.

Having the right data at the right time makes all the difference.

Data-driven decision-making, as well as improved productivity and better overall outcomes begins with analytics.

Some of the benefits from a good analytics solution include:

  • Provide timely and targeted coaching/training to agents.
  • Ensures that the right materials are assigned.
  • Optimizes process of following agent improvements, leading to skill development and job mastery.
  • Eliminates the need for e-mailing countless excel spreadsheets
  • Schedules coaching/ training at an appropriate time.
  • Optimizes the follow up process to review impact of training and identifies when agent performance requires management attentions.
  • Give’s Management a High Level Overview of important KPIs.

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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.

That’s why 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.

 

Introduce Analytics Into Your Networking Marketing Strategy

When it comes to sales, one of the most important lessons I learned while with Wells Fargo is that you should only sell something to someone if they both want it and need it. There was this one story that sticks out in my mind, its form a sales trainer whose class I attended 20 years ago.

He said, “You can only sell a red car to a person who wants to buy a red car.” The point being that you can’t see blue cars to people who want red cars, because if you do they will end up not being happy with what they bought and therefore not happy with you. In fact in order to sell a product, you need to only offer it to the people who want and need it. Trying to sell the wrong product to the wrong person is a huge time waster and network killer.

Having this mindset, I’ve continually been baffled by the sales tactics I see with so many network marketers I know. I mean I hate coffee, never had a taste for it. But having that key piece of insight hasn’t stopped almost a dozen of my friends from trying to get me to be part of their coffee sales MLM.

If you sell coffee, then the first thing you do is go down your list of friends and eliminate anyone who doesn’t drink coffee. Now I know, there is always a chance they might be a source of new leads, but honestly trying to get someone to sell something they don’t use themselves if really just another waste of time.

SO if you take an analytical approach, you would eliminate the long shots. Not just non-coffee drinkers, but also one who cant afford to buy the coffee. It doesn’t do much good to hard sell someone who cant afford your product.

You would be better off seeking out new network connections by joining groups and forums where your target market is. If you are trying to sell red cars, look where red car owners end up online. Where do the go to talk about their red cars and share photos of their red cars. Or maybe you sell vitamin supplements… then you should be marketing to health care professional, people who exercise regularly or are health conscious. Selling vitamins to someone who doesn’t care about their health is another uphill battle.

So the key starting point for using more analytics in your sales strategy starts with building a demographic profile to define your target market and exclude people who will more likely than not be a waste of your precious time.

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At The Mid-Point Of My First Five Year Plan

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/write-five-year-business-plan-1391.html

Came across this how to write a 5 year business plan article. I think its pretty good. Back when I was just starting BPO Elite, I spent a lot of time crafting a pretty thorough strategic plan that helped me really get a grasp on what I hoped to accomplish.

Whenever I consult with a small business owner or a senior manager at a larger company, it’s pretty easy to imagine the ones who wrote business plans… people who think strategically generally like to put thnings on paper and use that document like a blueprint.

Those who go more off gut feel and intuition… its a lot harder for me to help.

Anyway, I guess I am in the middle of a five year plan right now, so here is how I would articulate the DMAI 5 year plan.

Year One was all about laying the foundation. Not much money is made, but the connections you make will be difference makers. Finding fans and advocates are the big goals of year one.

Year Two was all about trial and error. Figure out what makes money and what doesn’t. Finding a mix of products and services that you enjoy and you can pay the bills with is key.

Year Three has been all about expansion. Adding more of what works, finding key people to delegate things to who also believe in your vision, adding roles that allow employees to see career growth. Its all about adding value.

Year Four will be all about duplicating thing to a scale to optimize the business and really start turning a significant profit. This is where you should expect to start getting paid some nice returns on investment.

Year Five will be all about spending more time doing what you love and less managing the things you don’t. By now you should have surrounded yourself with a core team who can run the business without you so you can actually really take some time off to smell the roses.

A Data-Driven Approach To Networking

Starting today, I am going to go into full networking hyper mode. My goal is to find a new outsourcing client here in the U.S. to add to my roster of DMAI clients who are using our services based in the Philippines.

I will also be looking for a few more consulting gigs here that are simple data analytics or market research projects that I can pass on to my intern teams. I have interns both in the U.S. and the Philippines.

So how to make my networking efforts more impactful. Using primarily LinkedIn, I will share blog posts, contribute to groups, add new connections and re-connect with existing ones to share with them updates on DMAI and what we offer.

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I will track all these efforts using a simple Excel spreadsheet. Using excel will help me set and meet daily quotas for new connections, shared articles and sending email messages to existing connections. Just this simple and easy to set up approach will make my networking 10x more impactful because each day I have a clear idea of what’s ahead of me.

For new connections, I had some interns make a list of over 200 companies in the U.S. who posted jobs on indeed.com . I will search LinkedIn to see who 2nd and 3rd connections at these companies are and who might be involved in business strategy, outsourcing and/or analytics and try and add them. I will not just send the standard add me connection request, but one of several canned intros I have prepare depending on job level, company type and how I think DMAI can help them. I will personalize each one. My goal is to do 20 connection requests a day for 10 days. Form that I hope to get about 5 hot leads to work on.

For sharing, I will repost and/or link to various blog posts I have written or will write over the next two weeks. My goal is to post to 10 groups a day. So in two weeks I will have shared my story over 100 times to a variety of analytics and outsourcing focused groups. From this effort I hope to get 2-3 more leads.

Finally, for re-connecting, I will send 10 emails a day to connections who might either be interested in our services or sharing our story with their connections who might. These will not be hard sell e-mails, but more an update on what I have been doing and how DMAI has grown since the last time we talked. I can export a list of my connections from LinkedIn that includes e-mail address of all my connections. I’ll then sort it by company and focus on connections with companies involved in analytics and/or outsourcing. Again a half dozen or so leads should come out of this.

So over the next two weeks, I plan on spending about 2 hours a day networking with 400 points of contact and hope to get 20 or so leads that will end up bringing me 1-2 clients.

And I will use an analytics approach to track my progress towards my goals and in the end give me a bunch of data to use to see where to refocus future networking efforts.

I will let you know how it goes. And if you ever want help doing something like this, DMAI has helped clients in the past with similar approaches!

Analytics Outsourcing To The Philippines

There has been a lot discussion lately about the relative pros and cons of outsourcing analytics. The biggest perceived con are that an outsourced analyst might not have the necessary business knowledge to pose the right questions or to clearly identify threats and opportunities.

However, the reality is that with the global analytics talent gap expanding at a rapid pace, many business have no choice but to explore outsourcing options for some if not most of their analytics.

Having worked with several businesses who have successfully outsourced analytics projects and even whole teams to the Philippines, I can say that the pros far outweigh the cons. Here are a few of the pros that I can testify to:

1. Speed and Focus. Once optimized, detached team can often get more done and get it done faster as they are able to mono task.

2. Fresh Set of Eyes. Given enough time to get up to speed on things, an “outsider” to the business often can see the forest through the trees.

3. Scalability. The savings based on things like having a team that can be quickly grown or shrunk based on business need and access to labor pools with a lower cost ratio can often make a big difference when it comes to covering all the bases.

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There are countless other reasons why business in the U.S. are increasing looking across the Pacific for analytics talent. The number of academic course and corporate training programs offering business analytics is growing rapidly here in the Philippines.

As key players in the BPO industry here in the Philippines look to meet many of the analytics needs of companies abroad, the pros will continue to outweigh the cons.

And that is exactly why I founded DMAI.

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.

Communicating Strategy From the Bottom

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/06/strategy-isnt-what-you-say-its-what-you-do/

Came across the log post about strategy implementation and I think it’s a good one for consultants working with senior management teams. It goes along the lines of walking the talk.

“Strategic choice-making cascades down the entire organization, from top to bottom. This means that every person in the company has a key role to play in making strategy. Performing that role well means thinking hard about four things:

1) What is the strategic intent of the leaders of the level above mine?
2) What are the key choices that I make in my jurisdiction?
3) With what strategic logic can I align those choices with those above me?
4) How can I communicate the logic of my strategy choices to those who report to me?

If you as a manager can do the first three of these four, then you will own your choices and own your strategy. If you do the fourth, you will set up your subordinates to repeat these four things and thereby own their choices and their strategy, and pass on the task to the next layer of the company. If each successive layer assumes this level of ownership, the organization can make its bosses’ statement a real strategy rather than an empty slogan.”

I can personally say that these points are all very important to infuse into the culture of your company. Both from my Wells Fargo experience where these are deeply ingrained in the corporate culture to the smaller scale of my own company, clearly communicated strategy is the key.
When not only your direct reports, but your two downs are spreading the gospel, you will be successful.

If you need help getting your team to walk the talk, I’m happy to help.

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.

 

The Most Over Looked Metric In Recruiting

Which recruiting metric is most important to you?

This is something I am asked all the time and I generally go back to something I came across awhile ago. I have yet to find a better one…

“I am convinced that the most important metric and the only one I care to follow is; how long did the person I place stay with my client company? Are they still there, or did they leave? Were they promoted? Or were they Fired?”

Source: http://www.recruitingblogs.com/

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So, the metric we should be interested in improving is that of the success and tenure of our placements. How long do they stay? How well liked are they? How well do they fit in with the rest of the team? Do they get promoted? This is the true test of “Added Value” which is why companies hire recruiters.

I have hired over 150 people over the past few years and many of the best ones are still going strong, so we must be doing something right. 🙂

If you need help in your recruiting process, DMAIPH can help! My expertise with recruitment analytics makes me uniquely qualified to help you measure your most important requirement metrics.

HR & Recruitment Analytics – The recruitment and retention of top talent is the biggest challenge facing just about every organization. DMAIPH is a leading expert in empowering HR & Recruitment teams with analytics techniques to optimize their talent acquisition and management processes. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to learn how to get more analytics in your HR & Recruitment process so you can rise to the top in the ever quickening demand for top talent.

Outsourcing Tip > The Three T’s: Talent, Technology and Technique

I’ve been part of dozens of BPO team set ups and have directly implemented five this past year or so. In ALL five cases, we have had challenges because we didn’t have the right talent at launch, we didn’t have our technology lined up correctly and we didn’t have techniques in place to ensure a smooth transition of work and an optimal business flow.

Finding good talent here in the Philippines can be a difficult. I’ve blogged about this quite often, the skills gap is a major concern for the long-term success of outsourcing to the Philippines. There are so many good people with the right work ethic and the desire to learn, but so few of them are trained in a way that makes them day one ready to go in a call center environment. Making sure you have correctly identified the skills you need, allocating the appropriate recruiting resources, and building a pipeline to replenish loses and fuel expansion, is so much harder than it sounds.

In regards to technology, there are so many ways to connect clients, customers and operations here in the Philippines. The Cloud allows all sorts of processes to be easily shifted to remote staff and the culture in the Philippines is very tech driven, it’s a great match.

The challenge is sometimes the technology needed is not as easy to introduce as expected and telecommunications and online access very greatly across the country and the workforce. Having a tried and test technological solution and being prepared to deal with the connectivity issues will help assure a much smoother transition of work from abroad.

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Most call center operations I have worked with don’t have a clear concept of what they want the day-to-day to look like. The lift and shift approach where you just take a process from overseas and apply it here never works without adjustments. Many times you can find more optimal ways of doing things when you set up because you are able to look at the process end to end. Taking advantage of fully understandings the process being outsourced, documenting it and training on it with a clear plan are all keys to success.

So in conclusion, often what people assume would be the easy parts turn out to be the hardest when it comes to the talent, technology and technique needed to se up a successful outsourcing operation. DMAIPH specializes in helping call centers bring more data to their decision-making and ensure a more optimal approach.

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.

Outsourcing Tip > BPO Contract Negotiations: Learn About Both “the Big Picture” and “the Fine Print”

This is the title of a seminar I put together awhile back for small and medium-sized BPO owners, executives and managers. The objective was to address the latest business challenges in the BPO Sector as related to contract negotiations.

We engaged several practitioners to come up with an approach to empower the audience with new and innovative ways to optimize their contract negotiation process.

Here are some of the highlights:
• The biggest challenge that comes with contract negotiations is generally around money. A well thought out and detailed business proposal is key in mitigating misunderstandings and conflict around the cost of outsourcing work.
• The smoothest transitions are generally ones managed by a seasoned project manager, but if you don’t have one, we outlined what needs to be done.
• We also talked about how process mapping can lead to process improvement and how to account for that in the contract.
• Using models to show base, best and worse case scenarios is key to making sure the contract will not become a negative business hindrance to either party.
• We will discuss the importance of clearly and consistently engaging and communicating with key players both internally and with overseas partners.
• Many time negotiations begin informally and just involve the principles as they have a handshake agreement.
• Service Level Agreements and Production Quotas should either be included in the contract or in an addendum that clearly outline expected results.
• If pricing is depending on meeting certain metrics, its imperative that both the goals and how the goals will be measured and reported are included in the contract.

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At the end of the workshop, attendees should have walked away with the following items of knowledge:
1. An appreciation for all the work that needs to happen before the actual contract is signed between the business and the overseas partner.
2. Several tips on how to make sure the contract is an ironclad as possible in terms of anticipating challenges.
3. Several tools and resources to help them in preparing the BPO contract.
4. A checklist of things to not forget to account for in the actual contract language itself.

So, when it comes to setting up an outsourcing partnership, don’t fall victim to charging ahead without a clear idea of what you need to happen in the contract negotiations process to ensure success!

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.