Tag: Dan Meyer

Three Keys To A Successful Virtual Team

I’m borrowing this idea from an article called “Going Virtual: Hiring the Right Team for Remote Work”
Going Virtual: Hiring the Right Team for Remote Work

Among other things DMAIPH has a side business focusing solely on building and managing virtual analytics teams, based in the Philippines, for small and medium US based companies. In the past year we have set up three teams and the lessons we have learned about how to be successful validate the three points in the above article.

Key #1: Hire only people with significant work experience. I love working with fresh grads as they are mostly blank slates who you can empower and educate to fit your own vision. However, our experience here is that the best virtual employees are ones with significant office based experience.

One of the great benefits to setting up a virtual team in the Philippines is the large pool of former call center agents who have significant industry experience but have left due to family commitments. Tapping into that talent pool has been a huge boon for DMAI.

Key #2: Make every hire a trial hire until you determine fit. Attrition with virtual teams is by default pretty high as employees can have a lot less loyalty to a person they never meet. In addition, coaching and mentoring are challenging to do effectively online so its really important to find the right fit before entering into a long term partnership.

Another plus of doing business in the Philippines is that its standard to bring staff in on a six month temporary contract. After the six months they are evaluated and either released or picked up. We offer a standard pay increase at six months when a contract employee is normalized. Its really helped us build a core team of people who will be with us a long time while at the same time not forcing us to keep people around who really don’t want to be here.

jobspicture2

Key #3: Put barriers in the process of hiring new people. As we have evolved the virtual business we have become better and better about building screens that really do optimize the talent pipeline process. Like most companies we have a number of minimum requirements that help target the right applicants and we also mix in assessments that require the applicant to show some of the analytics skills we need.

The combination of experience, having them walk a mile in our shoes and making it kinda hard to get hired has really lead us to providing top end talent for a reasonable price.

Analytics Jobs – DMAIPH hires, refers and connects Filipino analytics talent. The Philippines is at the center of the action when it comes to solutions to the global need for analytics. Working with DMAIPH to find work, hire analytics talent or set up analytics teams will ensure you are tapped into the best of the best when it comes to analytics in the Philippines. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to find out how to take advantage of this booming opportunity.

Optimize Your Business and Competitive Intelligence With More Data-Driven Decision-Making

Here is a Training Proposal I just submitted. I hope it gets approved as it will be a fun class to teach.

Title: Optimize Your Business and Competitive Intelligence With More Data-Driven Decision-Making

Length: 8 hours in a 1 day session

Facilitator: Daniel Meyer, President of DMAI and Inspire Analytics Expert with over 15 years of experience with Business and Competitive Intelligence experience. Served as top BI and CI Analyst for Remittances at Wells Fargo Bank for seven years.

Main Focus: Customized program on Business and Competitive Intelligence (i.e. identifying BD opportunities which includes effective market monitoring, and competitive analysis).

Through a variety of lecture, discussion and group exercise, participants will be empowered to maximize the data around them to deliver industry leading research and analysis.

Topic Areas Include:
• Overview of Business and Competitive Intelligence Concepts
• Brining More Analytics Into Your BI and CI Process
• Finding The Right Data At The Right Time
• Building and Understanding Your Competitor Landscape
• How To Conduct More Data-Driven Competitive Analysis
• Measure the Effectiveness of Your Market Monitoring
• Using Data-Visualization To Enhance Your Reporting
• Capitalizing On Business Development Opportunities

Participants: In-house Research team who are involved in the following services: Competitive Research Reports, Industry and Environment Scanning Reports, Market Research and Strategic Reports

522

Business Intelligence Buzzwords = Nosebleed

http://www.analyticbridge.com/profiles/blogs/kill-the-buzzwords-the-real-meaning-behind-popular-bi-terms

In the Philippines, “Nosebleed” is the common response for having to deal with a challenging problem, whether it be speaking a lot of English or trying to understand a complicated business problem.

When I read the attached article, it made me think of the number of times I get the Nosebleed response when I talk about analytics terminology.

In any talk I give on analytics, I make sure to always start with a definition and then build up a glossary of terms and definitions to make sure everyone is on the same page. I also like to show the audience that things aren’t usually as difficult as they seem, they just need to get past the nosebleed inducing buzzwords.

brain

Big Data is kinda scary because it sounds complicated and expensive.

Data Visualization is very broad and difficult to visualize if you aren’t familiar with the concept.

Data Scientist sounds like someone who doesn’t even exist in the Philippines yet.

But when you take a minute to step back and see that big data just means the data universe in your business that you are already using every day, that data visualization is charts and maps and graphs, and that a data scientist is really just the data guy you already have, then its not so nosebleed inducing.

Once you have the baseline to start from then you can go back and show the complexity of each buzzword without losing the audience.

If you or your business is suffering from nosebleed because the buzzwords in your analytics solutions sound too expensive and too complicated, then give me a shout out. I can help simplify it for you.

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.”

540

“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.

Picture1

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.

Image 

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.

1960033_10152334044802022_1470432615_n chili

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

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.

img_8385

…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.