Tag: Dan Meyer

Building Our Brand

I had the privilege of working for the bank that is routinely ranked as one of, if not the top banking brands in the world. In my 15 years with Wells Fargo I learned some very valuable lessons about branding and how it can be used not just in marketing but across the organization to bring about a sense of enchantment to both customers and employees.

Having that experience, I continue to guide DMAI in a similar direction. We have a great logo, a clear mission to become the top name in analytics in the Philippines, a great tagline in Making Data-Driven Decisions and my name and face have come to stand as one of the more recognizable players in the BPO industry in the Philippines.

We have built a solid brand. Now as we grow, the challenge is to keep pushing the brand forward with equal amounts of consistency and innovation. We have a great story to tell when it comes to our origins, our evolution as a business and our role in the future of analytics in the Philippines.

With that in mind, I want to firmly establish some DMAI Brand Guidelines for all of our print, online and social media marketing efforts. We have a great team working on building the brand, so imagine how much more impactful we can be if we follow these simple points:

  1. Stick with red, white, blue and black. Look at the great brands of the world and you will notice the always have the same colors in use. McDo has Red and Gold. IBM has blue and white. Apple is silver.
  2. Size of fonts should always be readable (big enough to see without looking at it closely). You can never have a font size too big. If you can’t read something from 10-15 feet away, the message you are trying to convey is powerless. Verdana is the most easy to read font form either close up or far away.
  3. Company Name should always be DMAI (Decision- Making, Analytics and Intelligence). Ever since we started the company year 2013, we’ve been using the term DMAI in Social Media, Radio Guesting’s, Seminars and Speaking Engagements. There are 3 different companies under the DMAI umbrella already and soon we will be adding a 4th. BDO is BDO in public even though its legal name is Banco de Oro Unibank Inc.
  4. For job fair marketing materials (banners, standees, flyers, brochures) you can either use pictures of the employees with or without me, never with me alone. Always include the logo and avoid being wordy. Our message when it comes to hiring has to be about our team members.
  5. For all non-job related marketing materials, this is where we leverage my image. My name and face give us a lot of mileage within the academic and professional worlds. I really have successfully become the biggest name in analytics in the Philippines. Let’s keep maximizing that fact.
  6. For FB paid ad, layouts may not include images compromised of more than 20% text. Simple is best. Lots of open space, a catchy image and the bare minimum use of text. 90% of our FB messages are viewed on mobile devices.

I hope these points help guide us all in our marketing efforts. DMAI is well on its way to being a powerful and successful brand, and as Wells Fargo’s brand says… “Together, we will go far.”

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Looking More Closely At The CHED Memorandum on Business Analytics

Looking closer at the course description for the Fundamentals of Business Analytics course published by CHED in 2013. Amazing how closely it matches to the Intro to Analytics training i have been doing since 2012 when I founded BPO Elite.

The course provides students with an overview of the current trends in business analytics that drives today’s businesses. The course will provide understanding on data management techniques that can help and organization to achieve its business goals and address operational challenges.

Learning Outcomes:

  1. Define business requirements.
  2. Verify correctness of the contents of the data architecture.
  3. Describe where to look for data in an organization and create required reports.
  4. Understand data management concepts and criticality of data availability in order to make reliable business decisions.
  5. Demonstrate understanding of business intelligence including the importance of data gathering, data storing, data analyzing and accessing data.
  6. Understanding the functions and data access constraints of various departments within an organization and identify reports that are crucial for intelligent decision-making
  7. Work on various analytics tools available in the market for various business functions.
  8. Participate actively in business discussions with various departments and create common reports or specific/unique reports with regard to predictive and prescriptive analytics.

I think the biggest areas that I can add to my approach and highlight in my book is the reporting piece. How to create a report and make it a living document is something a lot harder then most people think.

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Analytics Education – Facilitating a mastery of the fundamentals of analytics is what DMAIPH does best. As a key parnter of the Data Science Philippines Meetup Group, DMAIPH champions the use of using data. 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.

Why The Philippines? The Shift In Services Across The Globe Leads to My Adopted Country

“The world is currently witnessing a fundamental reorganization in the way services are delivered to customers. This is what is behind the movement to outsource. It’s a lot more than just saving money by shipping jobs overseas.” – Harvard Professor Robert E. Kennedy

In his book the Services Shift, Kennedy outlines 5 primary reasons for this shift in services. All 5 have a great deal of influence on why the Philippines has become the call center capital of the world.

The globalization of services, in which different tasks are being carried out by different individuals in different locations, is about gaining access to the best combination of talent, resources and markets.

  • Technological Innovations like easy access to the internet and stored data.
  • Emerging Market Growth in traditionally closed markets
  • Global Macroeconomic Liberalization of government polices toward trade
  • The Corporate Imperative to both reduce costs and improve quality
  • The Convergence of a Global Business Culture based on the English language and American business models.

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There are so many forces for this move to outsource and analytics has moved to the top of everyone’s wish list of things to look globally for.

If you have been thinking about getting your feet wet in setting up a team in the Philippines, I can help. I have set up a dozen different teams of all shapes and sizes for various U.S. companies.

Adding a team in the Philippines will add a lot of value to your business, so connect with men and we can discuss a specific solution for you.

HR & Recruitment Analytics – The recruitment and retention of top talent is the biggest challenge facing just about every organization. You really have to Think Through The Box to come up with winning solutions to effectively attract, retain and manage talent in the Philippines today.

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.

What Makes A Good Analyst?

Three different sources on what makes a good analyst…

From one of the most influential books I have ever read,  the Accidental Analyst… An ANALYST is a person who analyzes and skilled in analysis. Four Character Traits that most analysts have:

  • PASSION for helping people solve real problems
  • KNOWLEDGE of the business being analyzed
  • EXPOSURE to thinking analytically and problem solving tools
  • EXPERIENCE using data to solve problems

Certain personality types most analysts have:

  • reflective
  • intuitive
  • deep-thinkers
  • and able to make quick judgments

In addition, the International Institute for Analytics and Vendor Talent Analytics, Corp. surveyed 302 analytics professionals in 2013. Curiosity came out as the top skill in a study of the characteristics of analytics pros.

And finally from KDnuggets.com:

“The Analytics Professionals in our 2012 Study are very creative and curious. They have an insatiable thirst to learn; wanting to look everything up on the Internet immediately because they simply “have to know.”. When something doesn’t work, they’ll assume there is a rational explanation and jump in to find and solve it.”

Print

Guidelines For BS in Business Adminstration Track In Business Analytics.

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This is pretty school stuff! To the best of my knowledge, no other government body anywhere in the world is taking such an active approach to updating college curriculums to implement analytics training.

Recent innovations “have developed new tools and techniques enabling business management and public institutions to adopt business analytics into their organizational processes and information ecosystems. Necessarily, from such innovations emerged corresponding demand for human resources with skills and competencies defined by users of business analytics and translated by CHED into industry led curriculum.”

DMAI has been actively taking part in both awareness building around the demand for analysts and in training on business analytics for over 2 years now. The time is NOW to take things to the next level!

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The Concept of Analytics

I start just about all my Power Point presentation trying to get a sense of where the audience is with their comprehension of analytics.

Per Wikipedia, the definition of analytics is simply the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data.

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While most people have an idea of what analytics is: data, analysis, metrics, and business intelligence are just the start… it is an abstract concept that is difficult to summarize in a sentence or two.

Most business leaders know that they need more analytics based decision making in their operations, however few have figured out how to obtain it as analytics software or engaging high priced consultants doesn’t suffice.

This approach is more about empowering analytical thinking then it is teaching a technological skill. I have found that being able to harness the power of analytics is as much an art as it is a science. In the end, analytics is about three things; finding data, analyzing it and communicating the results.

Over the next several blog posts, I will take the core slides of my standard Introduction to Analytics Power Point and share the content here.

When I think of analytics and what it can do to empower people, companies and ideas, I always think of this quote:

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”  – Theodore Roosevelt

Conversational English > That Elusive Skill Stopping So Many Call Center Careers From Getting Started

Learning a foreign language is tough for most of us. I took two years of Spanish in high school and didnt try very hard. I got average grades and really didnt pick up a lot. Then I spent six months in Japan, immersed in Japanese culture and picked up it very fast… didn’t learn how to write much, but my conversational Japanese became passable.

Three years into living in the Philippines and my Tagalog is ok, I can follow along most conversations but still struggle with pronunciation because most of my day is spent speaking English.

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Conversational expertise in a language is really hard if you don’t have the chance to speak the language everyday. And that brings us to the topic at hand. Conversational English as a requirement for call center employment.

There is such irony in the fact that so many Filipinos want to work in a call center because it means good, stable pay and benefits. But proportionally so few Filipinos really want to push themselves to learn how to master Conversational English. In a land deeply connected to the U.S. and awash in American culture… many Filipinos only speak English when forced too.

When they get into the application process for call center jobs, they fail because even though they understand English and have had years of English language study, they just havent spoken it enough to pass the interview.

So to all those who try and fail, to all those trainees who keep trying and to all the future applicants… the only way to secure that well paying job with good benefits is to practice. Force yourself to speak as much English as possible.   Always love Tagalog and keep speaking it, but practice, practice, practice…  English Only Please!

You Don’t Build A Business… You Build People

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It’s funny to me that I shared this on LinkedIn and someone had the thought to spin it into a negative thing. Someone sarcastically replied that this is false and that big bosses just use people to make money. I’m guessing he sees this as a way to get people to work harder, but it the end only the top people benefit. Or something like that.

When I saw this, I immediately thought about a training program we have just kicked off to address a significant challenge we have in both my business and in my industry. The call center industry in the Philippines is probably one of the most hyper competitive labor markets anywhere in the world today.

To be able to be successful you need to find people who are stick around. So looking at the best way to do that is to build them up. To train them, to empower them, to enchant them.

Being equal parts educator, analyst, entrepreneur… this concept is something I firmly believe in, I have the data to back it up and the success to prove it is working. So take that mister sarcasm… DMAIPH is a great example of this philosophy actually working.

Analytics Leadership – DMAIPH specializes in arming the Data-Driven Leader with the tools and techniques they need to build and empower an analytics centric organization. Analytics leadership requires a mastery of not just analytics skill, but also of nurturing an analytics culture. We have guided thousands of Filipino professionals to become better analytics leaders. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to discuss a uniquely tailored strategy to ensure you are the top of your game when it comes to Analytics Leadership.

IBM’s SMART Approach to Analytics

Came across this 5 point methodology for applying analytics in a business… very similar to the 3 I’s that I use in my training. I’ll start using both going forward.

S=Start with Strategy
What problems do you need big data to help you solve? If you’re running a business you might think it’s as simple as “How do I increase my profits?” But a question like that is inevitably going to lead you to more questions.
How do you generate more sales? How do you increase visitors to your site or store? How do you make your customers happier?

In this first step you need to be clear about your strategic objectives as well as the key strategic questions you want to have an answer to. You need to have this nailed down before you worry about collecting your first kilobyte of data.

M = Measure metrics and data
Once you know what data you need to answer your most strategic business questions, you can work out how you are going to capture it. Everything we do, online and, increasingly, in the real world, is capable of being recorded and stored. If we visit a website, records are kept of how long we browse for and where we head off to next. GPS systems in our phones as well as CCTV surveillance keep track of our physical movements.

Of course much of it is (hopefully) anonymized. Big data collection isn’t about tracking individuals, it’s about tracking the masses, so patterns can be spotted giving clues to overall trends. This part of the process involves designing the actual systems that will collect what your strategy tells you is needed.

A = Apply analytics
Increasingly, we are finding that the sort of data which contains really valuable insights is very messy. The slightly more technical term we use for this is that it is unstructured data. The sort of neat and tidy data you get when, for example, you ask someone to fill in a form giving you their age, height, weight and data of birth, is structured. The sort of messy, disjoined data you get when you analyze the contents of an email exchange or CCTV recording is unstructured.

The hidden value in this unstructured data is where most big data divers are finding the real sunken treasures. If you’re a business, being able to spot trends affecting your industry before your competitors is what will give you your edge. In order to implement this part of the process you will need to get to grips with the ever-growing range of tools and methods becoming available for making sense of messy, complex data sets.

R = Report results
The most insightful insight ever is useless if you can’t explain what it means to the key decision-makers in your business. Presenting the information necessary to drive change in a clear and digestible format is as vital as any other step of the operation. This part of the process has analogies to storytelling. There will be a beginning, a middle and an end, detailing why you need the insights, what you did to find them, and how they will result in everyone living happily ever after.

If you use data visualization and narratives to tell that story in a focused and interesting way, it’s far more likely people will understand what you are trying to do, and be as motivated as you are yourself about implementing data-driven change.

T = Transform your business
Change—specifically positive change—is the ultimate aim. Transformations you make to your products, service, marketing strategies or internal processes, guided by insights from your Smart Big Data analysis, is the catalyst which will drive that change.

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The Secrets of Money Ball Recruiting

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“There are rich call centers, with big budgets and huge recruitment teams. There are poor call centers with small budgets and just a few people. Then there is 50 feet of crap. And there is us.”

I conducted a Recruitment Analytics Training yesterday and shared one of my methodologies. Based on the movie (and book) Moneyball, I talked about how to be successful you need to find undervalued candidates who other call centers have passed on.

“If we try and play like Convergys in here (with our recruitment efforts), we will lose to Convergys out there (on the streets looking for talent)”.

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So we need to boil down the recruitment process to the one thing most important for our business in every single employee.

Some of my points:

  1. We spend too much time looking for trainable skills like Good English, Good Communicators and Good Interview Takers.
  2. We need to stop hiring job hoppers and people looking to move up without having paid their dues.
  3. The one skill set we cannot teach, that we need to start making our top priority… is dependability.
  4. Will they show up on time every day for work is the single biggest need we have.

So that’s the one personality trait we are placing at the top of our recruitment process. We need to probe and dig and research, to find out will they be someone who will show up for their shift everyday.

That’s our “get’s on base” metric like in MoneyBall.  We can’t help the customer if we are not at work ready to help the customer.

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.