Tag: Analytics

Continued Growth in Data Analytics Outsourcing Market

http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/analysts-forecast-continued-growth-in-data-analytics-outsourcing

Came across this interesting article and thought I’d share it…

The Trend of Outsourcing Data Analytics Activities

Over the past few years, businesses from all realms have come to accept the benefits of effective data analytics in understanding consumer choices properly and maximizing revenue potential. This has significantly boosted the demand for effective data analytics services in the global market.

However, not all organizations have the in-house knowledge, resources, and experience that it takes to analyze data effectively. What’s more, the resource pool of data analytics professionals has grown tight in the recent years, leading to a dearth of analysts who can develop competitively advantageous data insights. This has significantly boosted the global demand for effective data analytics services in the past few years.

The report on data analytics outsourcing market presents detailed insights about the major elements of the market and gives an overview of some of the factors that are impacting the market’s developmental prospects.

The data included in the report comes from a number of sources, including face-to-face and telephonic interviews, industry databases, and field observation data. Data pertaining to factors such as the primary concerns faced by the global data analytics market in the present scenario, the major growth drivers that are leveraging the market’s growth prospects, and the major trends that are defining consumer priorities in the market has been collected. The validity of the findings has been confirmed by cross-checking with multiple sources of information. The entire process of the research and development of the report also draws on the prior experience of researchers and inputs from industry experts.

I’ve sent up a couple of analytics team in the Philippines for clients in the U.S. and India. If you find yourself short on talent, resources and/or funding, I can help you get a team up in running in no time.

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Why Analytics Projects Fail: #2 – Lack of Vision

Lack of vision often accompanies lack of focus when good analytics projects come up short or even fail.

The end product produced by the hard work being put into the analytics project has to be championed from top down. If the top dog is not talking about your project and pushing the merits of its implementation, they people will fight getting on board. Their focus will go astray.

Lack of vision is most often caused by a rush to implement a new analytics tool or a need to quickly upgrade reporting. A good analytics solution needs clearly thought out goals and buy in from all stakeholders.

Vision comes from being on the same page. A good project manager can control the vision message and repeat it like a broken record at every project message. An analyst gifted with good communication skills can keep sharing the vision to remind everyone of the benefits at the end of the project. It takes people dedicated to the project to keep it moving.

Vision can be handled like a marketing campaign. A catchy project name, an engaging tagline, a central theme accompanying communications and updates can all keep people focused on the end goal.

If your project is floundering because of lack of vision, then you need to channel your inner cheerleader. It often takes an analytics champion to produce the a positive outcome. And if you are reading this blog, that champion is probably you.

Nothing helps get a vision across better than good visuals… what does the end state look like for everyone involved. Find ways to motivate them with posters, with slogans, with dashboards, with free food. Just keep reminding them where we are going and how awesome it will be when we get there.

 

Lack of vision can also be an issue when an analytics projects are not well planned out. Maybe the scope was too narrow or too broad or perhaps the technology we are using is obsolete.

Vision is a glimpse of what the future may look like. If I can’t conceptualize why we are doing what we are doing for this project, then we can’t very well share the vision we are supposed to be seeing.

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My final thought on dealing with lack of vision, is that no one will be better at fixing this then you. As a data person, you have to be bold in your use of data to push the vision and you have to be brave in taking the lead on sharing the vision as much as possible.

Analytics should be accessible across your organization.  If you are in a situation where your analytics efforts are being stymied by lack of vision, connect with me and I’ll help you get things straightened out.

Analytics Culture – The key to using analytics in a business is like a secret sauce that fuels Data-Driven Decison-Making. 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.

DMAIPH Helps Companies Revitalize Their Business (2 of 3)

The second type of company we have helped successfully is  one looking to revitalize. Profits are down, customer flow has shrunk, product and services aren’t selling like they used too. We can offer our business intelligence package of customer insights, demographic profiling, competitive landscaping and market assessment. We can also offer virtual staffing support to assist with marketing, scheduling and follow-up.

I’d like to share a story about one of our clients who came to us at a crossroads with his business. This client is a chiropractor who was trying to figure out what to do with his business. Having lost 40% of his patient base and seen his revenue drop by 60%. He was at a cross road. He had tried a couple of consultants, spent lots of money and was still heading the wrong direction.

In talking with him, it was clear he had lost touch with his market and was not able to offer a very compelling solution to bring new clients in. We suggested we do a series of business intelligence exercises to help understand more about his business, the opportunity around him and come up with some potential solutions.

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Because he didn’t have a lot of money to waste, we suggested using a team of interns to help keep costs down. It would be a great analytics exercise for the doctor’s practice and for the eager young minds we had been working with.

We dove into the project and came up with the following resources; we built a competitive landscape, constructed a demographic profile and put together a customer insights report. Each one using public data, analysis done by the interns with my guidance and direction, and used Tableau to roll all the data and findings into a dashboard to show the doctor how he’d gotten to the point he was currently at.

After identifying some action items based on our assessment, we then helped the doctor but some into practice and helped him turn his business around successfully.

By employing very curious minds, giving them direction on where to find data and how to analyze it and sharing the data with an open-minded end user, we successfully validated my approach to using analytics to help a small business.  We have done the same for a half dozen other small businesses and can do the same for yours.

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Analytics Consulting – As a founding member of Gloabl Chamber Manila, DMAIPH specializes in a variety of analytics consulting solutions designed to empower analysts, managers and leaders with the tools needed for more data-driven decision-making.

We have helped dozens of companies get more analytics in their business. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly so we can tailor an analytics solution made just for your unique requirements.

Q2: Can you tell us what makes you an Analytics Champion?

Well, the first thing you should know about analytics is that there is no one right way to do things. Analytics is in many ways a new profession and up until very recently few people have seen being an analyst as career path. In fact the majority of analysts became so by accident.

Like in my case, most analyst are drawn to analytics because they like to solve problems, have an affinity for working with data, are tech savvy and above all else… insatiably curious. By the time I first had analyst in my title, I had already been doing analytics for several years.

Right out of college I found my novice skills with Excel, my interest in sharing knowledge and my ability to solve problems leading labeling me the data guy. There is nothing specific in my background that would suggest I’d become an analytics guru someday.

Majored in History with a plan to be a teacher. Obtained my Master’s Degree in Education. Started to teach. The school I was working at went bankrupt. Took a job with Wells Fargo Bank just to pay the bills and 15 years later I had amassed a wide range of analytics skills.

If you ask anyone with analyst in their job title, most of them have similar stories. Until recently you could not even get a degree in analytics as schools are just now offering analytics focused courses and degrees.

In 1998, I had the good fortune of being hired by Wells Fargo. The factors that contributed most to my success with the bank were two things inherit in the culture; its progressive use of data in decision-making and its accepted practice of moving up the corporate ladder by moving between departments.

If I had to pick one thing above all others that had made me a good analyst, it is my ability to quickly assess a problem and then identify the data needed to solve the problem.  For my money, finding the right data is the most important trait to have and also the hardest to teach. It comes out of being curious and letting that curiosity drive you to find answers.

For 15 years that drive lead me to add new skills, learn new technologies, and develop new methods to become a proverbial jack of all trades when it comes to analytics. I often describe myself as a super hero, analytics being my super power and the wide range of skills I’ve picked up being items on my utility belt.

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I am far from an expert on most of the ever increasing number of analytics tools out there, but I know what they can do and what they are good at. There are definitely a lot of people who are better at different aspects of analytics and no one can know it all. But in the end, I have become in many ways a guru of analytics.

I love talking about analytics, explaining it in layman’s terms, empowering people new to the concept, turning on the light in a dark room. I also love talking about prescriptive analytics models, using SQL code to write a complex join between data tables or figuring out what tool would be best use to build a business dashboard.

Providing people with the fundamentals of analytics is what I have been destined to do.

The Fundamental of Business Analytics – Business Analytics is the application of talent, technology and technique on business data for the purpose of extracting insights and discovering opportunities. DMAIPH specializes in empowering organizations, schools, and businesses 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.

Infusing HR Analytics into Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Classes

One of the things I have been working on is helping a top school here in the Philippines develop a strategy to infuse more HR Analytics into their Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Classes.

This effort is a precursor to a class specifically on HR Analytics, which is to the best of my knowledge, the first ever here in the Philippines.

So as I put more thought into the syllabus of each class, it occurred to me that a good way to approach analytics is to introduce it slowly over the length of the 3 classes, which follow in a natural progression.

Starting with the OB class, we can focus on how to identify data in an organization that will be useful to a HR team to measure things over time. To help really get at causality of human behavior on a wide scale, you need to have the data to understand context.

In the HR Management class, we will spend more time working on the inventory part of analytics, which is to bring the data into an analysis and reporting structure that helps us discover patterns and trends based on that data.

Then the HR Analytics class, we will then proceed on how to integrate the data and the analysis into tool like a business dashboard.

At a high level, the students will gain an appreciation for the wealth of data HR can access in an organization and how the analysis and reporting of this data can lead to more data-driven decision making.

Its great to have an understanding of why people leave a job, and to have good reporting on attrition patterns, but you also need to have the ability to enable strategic action based on data and not just observation or simple metrics.

That is what our students will be able to do that will separate them from other Psychology grads entering the workforce. They will be ready day one to be HR Analysts who can bring a much needed data centric skills set to a very people driven discipline.

If you are a school administrator or professor and need to get more analytics in your course work so your students are better prepared for the analytics centric jobs, connect with me. I can show you how. I even have a textbook you can use. My new book Putting Your Data to Work is ideal for the nascent analytics learner.

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Analytics Education – Facilitating a mastery of the fundamentals of analytics is what DMAIPH does best.

All across the world, companies are scrambling to hire analytics talent to optimize the big data they have in their businesses. We can empower students and their instructors with the knowledge they need to prepare for careers in analytics.

Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly so we can set a guest lecturer date, On-the-Job Training experience or other analytics education solution specifically tailored to your needs.

 

BI Professionals Spend 50-90% of Their Time ‘Cleaning’ Raw Data for Analytics

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BY ON AUGUST 26, 2015 • ( LEAVE A COMMENT )
Last year, the NYT shined a light on big data’s “janitor” problem – that data scientists and business intelligence pros spend too much time cleaning, not evaluating data. But how big of an issue is it, really?

Xplenty just wrapped a commissioned study of +200 BI pros and found that a third spend 50-90% of their time just cleaning raw data. This is one of the first reports to tie an actual # to the ETL process.

Source: bigdataanalyticsnews.com

From my days at Wells Fargo being an analyst I know how hard it was to maximize your analysis and communication time and minimize time spent finding and cleaning data. This was especially true for me as I was using more unstructured data to do things like competitive intelligence then structured data.

I see it being even more of a challenge now because the % of unstructured data in any business has exploded the past few years. Being able to mine valuable insights from unstructured data is a time consumer, at least until you get a process in place to extract and refresh the data using some kind of technology.

In addition, businesses continue to find new data points to bring into their data warehouses, dramatically increasing the amount of structured data.

What this means is a lot of analysts are spending a lot more time looking through mountains of data to figure out exactly which data to use. Its not going to get easier.

Good data gathering methodologies and nimble BI tools can help cut down on some of the workload, but in the end we just keep making data faster then we have the ability to truly process it.

There is just no replacing the human factor of someone knowledgeable about the business who can interpret the data and decide what data to use and what not to use.

Which makes life even more challenging, because once we determine what data we want to use, we still often have to take the raw data and clean it up so it is valid and so it will fit nicely into our BI tools.

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If you have having trouble figuring out what data to use in your business and if you find yourself spending far too much time cleaning the data, perhaps DMAI can help. We have a Data Science team ready to assist your organization with just these types of challenges.

It All Starts With A Business Question…

A Business Question is any type of question that is asked to help understand the business better.

Business Questions are generally asked by executives and senior leaders to help them make more educated decisions.

Often middle management and professional staff are required to provide the answer to the question.

There is no bad question.

However, there are many bad ways to try to answer the question.

Good analysts are able to take the question and find data to answer the question, analyze the results and report their findings.

This is true with just about any kind of analysis work.

Learning how to best tackle business questions is what DMAI specializes in.

We have several upcoming events where I will be showing people how to answer business questions using the data they have in and around there business.

  • August 4 – Recruitment Analytics @ the DMAI  office in Ortigas
  • August 6 – Fundamentals of Business Analytics with Inspire @ the Richmond Hotel in Ortigas
  • August 11 – Data Analytics  @ the DMAI  office in Ortigas
  • August 13 – Big Data and Social Media Analytics @ PNP Headquarters in QC
  • August 27 – Big Data and HR Analytics @ SMX with Ariva  
  • September 1 – Recruitment Analytics @ the DMAI  office in Ortigas
  • September 15 – Data Analytics  @ the DMAI  office in Ortigas

Lots of opportunities to hear more about analytics in the coming weeks!

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Analysts Are The Guardians Of The Truth

Every once in awhile I hear a story about someone misusing data and it makes me want to turn into the Hulk.

Manipulating data to advance a political gain happens all the time.

Fox News is a master at it. Most politicians bend and twist data like a pretzel just so it will make them look good and their opponents look bad.

I always think of Mark Twain’s famous quote, “there are lies, damn lies and statistics”.

In today’s age is expected form politicians now. When its election time we know most of what we hear is not the whole story and we just accept it.

This also happens a lot outside of politics. It happens in big business. When business people manipulate data to mislead people. Marketing and Sales people are constantly tempted and often even incentiveized to twist the truth too.

But what makes me the maddest. What drives me to Hulk levels of rage. Is when someone does it just because they dont want to face the truth. When they get data, run some analysis, see results, dont like the results they see and then they change the data.

To an analyst like me, thats just flat out unacceptable. Analysts have to be the guardians of truth, using data as their shield and their convictions as their sword.

We know marketers lie. We know politicians tell damn lies. But when people we know and work with manipulate statistics to further short sighted and selfish goals, we have to draw a line.

So keep hope alive and stand up and say, no. Dont use my data and my analysis to build a web of lies. If you do, you are going to have to deal with the Hulk!

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Dan… Stick To The Plan

Having one of those days we all have once in awhile… where you invested so much time and energy into a plan, but you feel a need to change the plan.

For some it is comes with not playing well by rules. The more rules the less freedom and the less sense of  having control.

For others it may be the plan not longer fits where their life has evolved.

And then there are some who just like changing things. Mixing them up so they don’t stagnate and get bored.

Me, I’m all three.

I often hear the term serial entrepreneur… people who start things up and when the business reaches a certain point of maturity, they move on.

Never thought that one fit me too well. Im not really the cut bait and move on, I just like adding new things to what I am already doing.

I also think a lot about my super high expectations… since it is so hard to keep up with me, just about everyone tires and slows down eventually. Its impossible to expect the average person to stick to my plan, which makes it hard for me to stick to it.

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However, at this point I have built something special. The company still needs a lot of work. The business plan needs to evolve faster than it has. We need to patch some holes in the boat. But overall, DMAIPH is in a pretty good spot.

So this is one of those “Stick To The Plan, Dan” days.

Look at the data, fight off the wanderlust (at least for now) and carry on.

Change is coming soon, I crave that change and Hope is just around the corner… but not today.

Work on payroll, add something to the book, blog…

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.