13 Months in the Philippines – Lesson 7 – November 2012 – Flying Solo

Muntinlupa City, Metro Manila, Philippines

When I got back from the U.S. in early November, things were very different. And that’s and understatement. They weren’t just different everything was starting to fundamentally change. My partners and I split ways. The project in Clark ended. I no longer had an office to go to. My right hand girl left to get married and have a baby. My trainees all found jobs. Professionally I was flying solo for the first time and it was exhilarating. I decided to take what I had learned from BPO Elite’s short coming and apply the lessons to a new company that would become DMAI.

However, I also knew that even though I was charting my own course, I would need lots of help from people to be successful. I ratcheted up my networking and took on a new consulting gig with a medical transcription company. I started looking for marketing partners who can help me get my message to a broader audience and I started looking for better short term ROIs on my projects.

By the end of the month it was paying off. I was starting to make decent money and had a master plan to launch the new company in January.

From an analytics perspective, I dove deep into the needs of my new client. I did a lot of research on healthcare outsourcing to learn the players, the trends and the sweet spots. Gathering data and fashioning it into a marketing strategy was priority one. Determine which products would give the company the best ROI, updating the marketing message and focusing in on key markets was the plan. It was a well polished business strategy that was deeply grounded in my analysis. The sky is the limit!

Analytics Tool > Microsoft Access > http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/

Analytics Concept > Needs Assessment > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needs_assessment

YouTube Resource > http://youtu.be/AiAHlZVgXjk

My Analytics Story – My passion is solving problems by bringing together the best talent, cutting edge technology and tried and true methodologies. DMAIPH is all about empowering people towards better Decision-Making through the use Analytics and business Intelligence. This is what I do best. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly for a free consultation about getting more analytics into your career and your business.

13 Months in the Philippines – Lesson 6 – October 2012 – You Can’t Go Home Again

Alabang, Metro Manila, Philippines

October was a crazy month. Started out with an office in Taugig. Then spent most of the month in Clark. End the month back in California for vacation. Each story could be its own blog post, but for the sake of moving the narrative along, I’ll just briefly touch on each.

We found this great office space in Taugig. It wasn’t the best location, but good enough. It wasn’t the perfect size, but more than enough for our first year or so. And it was very reasonable as far as price and lease terms. The problem was we weren’t making enough money to cover the cost and my partners felt it to risky to keep the office with the hope that we eventually start making positive revenue. It would have made a great home. I’m still convinced that was a huge mistake because with a dedicated space I could have been running all kinds of trainings and seminars there. Anyway, it’s another simple analytics exercise. Basic accounting is always a foundation of any analytics exercise. Are you brining in enough money to pay the bills?

Going to Clark was a pretty cool experience. I got used to taking the MRT from Makati to QC everyday, I like the drive on the NLEX, and I felt at home in Clark. Being an old American Air Force base in the middle of one of the most beautiful parts of the Philippines, it felt like I was in Florida. Having grown up in a military family and spending most of my childhood summers in Florida… its was like being home again. Getting out into the provinces on a regular basis reaffirmed my belief that the future of the BPO industry is not in Manila. Things didn’t work our with your client, but I made a lot of connections in Clark that will always be worth the lost time on the failed project. One of the key lessons here, understand the amount of effort it takes your workforce, clients and/or customers to travel to get to you. A lot of companies don’t really analyze the market they are set up in, especially when it comes to recruiting talent.

At the end of October we came back to the US for a mini vacation and it was well-timed. BPO Elite was dying, the family needed some comfort time back home and it was just in time to catch the Giants winning the World Series. However, after spending six of the most amazing months of my life in the Philippines, it really didn’t feel like home. Its a lesson I’ve known since I spent a semester of high school in Japan, but home really is where the heart is. And for so many reasons for me that’s no longer the US. It’s the Philippines. You cant go home again, because where ever you are passionate and feeling alive… that’s where home is. And its the hardest part of analytics to understand… because there are no number or datapoints involved.

Analytics Tool > Microsoft Power Point > http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/

Analytics Concept > Process Improvement > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_improvement

YouTube Resource > http://youtu.be/Q89qAbAAR3Q

13 Month in the Philippines – Lesson 5 – September 2012 – Cracks in the Pavement

Clark, Pampanga, Philippines

In September we stated working for a client that at first seemed to be a wonderful opportunity. They asked us to help them set up a manpower staffing business in Clark, Pampanga. It was a very interesting proposition. We would go out and sell the business and get a 50% commission on any business we brought in the door. We were given an office space, internet access, business cards, a business proposal and we found a list of potential clients to market too. We started doing a multi channel sales campaign with an e-mail blitz, phone call and in-person meetings. We also did some deep dive competitor research including mystery shopping. And we networked with the government agency in charge of the Clark Freeport Trade Zone. But we made a lot of assumptions and mistakes and after about three weeks of travelling from Makati to Clark (about 2 hours each way), things hadn’t worked out the way we had hoped for. Let’s look at a couple of the issues and analyze them.

1. We decided to set up shop in an area we were not at all familiar with. To mitigate this we hired a local with manpower experience.
2. We had to spend a lot of time travelling, so we had a small window for meetings. So we made sure all appointments where confirmed the day before.
3. We wanted to get to know the way things worked. So I networked with several key people via LinkedIn and in person appointments.
4. We didn’t have any upfront revenue. We got our client to pay most of the upfront costs for marketing and promotions.
5. We need to get our name out there. We sponsored a job fair and I got a speaking engagement at the event.
6. We had to assess the market opportunity. I had a couple of trainees build a prospective client database and map out locations.

So all things looked good. We had a great opportunity, I had applied a lot of analysis and we were ready to go.

But there were crack in the foundation and they had nothing to do with my analysis or our strategy. They had to do with people.

Even the best laid plans don’t work our if you cant count on the people to execute the plans. Partners got distracted, staff had to deal with personal challenges and personal life started to suffer from professional stresses. By the end of September there were more cracks in the pavement then I had cement to fill them with.

But it was still so much fun, so much adventure, so much excitement I just rolled with the blows and kept pushing forward!

Analytics Tool > Tableau Public > http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/

Analytics Concept > Competitor Landscape > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_intelligence

YouTube Resource > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj1q4zunuN0&feature=share&list=PL8D46F50D27222FD4

13 Months in the Philippines- Lesson 4 – August 2012 – Mother Nature Strikes

Manila, Metro Manila, Philippines

In late July, 2012, the Philippines was pounded by several typhoons and monsoon rains. There was one period where it rained hard for four days straight non-stop. Before the storms, I was in full swing… setting up speaking engagements, attending job fairs, conducting trainings, and shopping for clients, but then the storms came and everything ground to a halt. At the time, after three months of non-stop working, it seemed like a nice respite.

For those of you who have never been in Manila during a flood, its pretty hard to describe with out it sounding dramatic. In short, the city floods almost every year for a number of reasons. The people are just used to it. Walking in water up to your waste and dealing with school and business closures… its now big thing to most residents of Manila. But for me it was a pretty overwhelming experience. After coming back from a field trip on the 3rd day of the heavy rains, my son was stranded at his school. And I was powerless to do much. We walked a couple of miles from Makati to Manila in heavy downpours to get to his school. There were no taxis or public transit, so we had quite an adventure getting back from Manila to Makati.

Anyway, because of the floods, I did have to cancel once training class. It was a full class of 15 and had a lot of people with call center experience. It would have been a very fun class.

After the floods, things changed pretty significantly and pretty rapidly. More on that in the next blog post. But August was kind of a lost month. I didn’t conduct any other trainings that month due to scheduling issues and for the first time I started to wonder if my plans were going to work.

As an analyst, this is where I had to do a better job looking at and listening to the data. We weren’t making a lot of money on the public trainings and we had only placed 3 of our initial 30+ trainees directly. The business model was not working as it was intended to. Our ROI was not good for job fairs, we were not getting clients to sign up with us directly and I hadn’t quite figured out the marketing yet. So based on all the info, a change in course had to be made. So by the end of August BPO Elite moved in an entirely new direction.

Analytics Tool > SuveryMonkey > http://www.surveymonkey.com

Analytics Concept > Customer Insights > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_insight

YouTube Video > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS_IkObdTc0&feature=share&list=PL7EC252B253873D5D

13 Months in the Philippines – Lesson 3 – July 2012 – Growing the Business

Taguig City, Metro Manila, Philippines

So after two months of putting the pieces together, it was time to start aggressively growing the business. With an office in Fort Bonafacio, two hard working employees, some amazing trainees and a clear plan of attack we set out to train and place as many analysts as possible. Based on the trainings we had done in May and June, the Intro to Analytics class was rock solid. We were attracting more and more candidates for the class, we had some clients offering us ad-hoc analytics work and we places three analysts with our first key business partner. SO how did we get there?

When I talk to people about business strategy, the first thing I ask is what kind of data are they using? How are the accessing it and how do they refresh and measure it? You need to know the competition, you need to know the demographics of your clients and your market and you have to have customer insight data. Here is who we got it.

Who trains people to be analysts? Not really anyone externally to their own company. To date, I still believe we were the first analytics training program in Manila. So we were competing with other training programs and hiring processes. So we went to job fairs and we published online. We tracked recruiting expenses and determined ROI. A couple of our trainees did some in-depth competitor analysis to know who was hiring analysts, what their duties where and how much they were getting paid.

We also got really good at understanding the best candidates for our program. IT and CompSci grads from the mid-tier college and universities. We started targeting them directly via LinkedIn and at job fairs. We put together a candidate database and started using Bullhorn’s free tool.

And we gather a lot of client satisfaction data. We surveyed our trainees using Survey Monkey, we asked them to write LinkedIn testimonials and we set up a Facebook group to network. We asked our clients for feedback and posted highlights on the web site, the Facebook page and the LinkedIn.

We were rocking and rolling! And than Mother Nature started being a problem.

Analytics Tool > Wikipedia > http://www.wikipedia.org

Analytics Concept > Demographic Profile > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_profile

YouTube Resource > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aHtHl-jcAs&feature=share&list=PL7EC252B253873D5D

13 Months in the Philippines – Lesson 2 – June 2012 – Training is My Passion

Pasay City, Metro Manila, Philippines

I did a trial run of the Introduction to Analytics training back in December 2011 with some interns and business partners, which helped me prepare a two-day training class. I launched the two-day class with the target of fresh grads in late May 2012, and I conducted several of the classes over the course of the next six months. It was in June however that I really figured out that I was an amazing trainer and that I could enchant an audience by talking about analytics.

I have always liked being in front of an audience and being empowered to talk about things I am passionate about it. I get a huge rush of adrenaline that can last for several hours. This calling originally led me to traditional classroom teaching but after several misadventures post graduate school, I took the job with Wells Fargo to pay the bills. Fifteen years later I left Wells to do training full time. In the interim I did a lot of ad-hoc and informal training in various way at Wells although I never had trainer in the title.

Per Wikipedia, a Trainer is a person who educates employees of companies on specific topics of workplace importance. While a teacher is simply who provide schooling for pupils and students. I have found that I am exactly in the middle. And there are very, very few people who can train like a teacher. People who can provide hands on, useful content in a short time frame, but deliver it in way that has the empowering effect of taking an actual academic style class are worth their weight in gold. These are the great trainers or favorite instructors who end up becoming speaker and lectures. They have both the ability to train on skill and teach on knowledge. This is what I learned about myself last June.

From an analytics standpoint, I learned a lot about how to construct a training program. Budget, Recruitment, Venue Management, Staffing, Marketing, etc. I learned a lifetime worth of lessons in a few months. I was able to look at each of these topics and find data to compare what I was doing to other benchmarks. Am I efficient, am I cost-effective, am I marketable. Lots and lots of data to bring into my analysis of how to grow my business.

Analytics Tool > Microsoft Excel > http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/

Analytics Concept > Big Data > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data

YouTube Resource > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhjuyH4RTrM&feature=share&list=PL7EC252B253873D5D

13 Months in the Philippines – Lesson One – Finding the Right People

Lesson 1 – May 2012 – Finding the Right People

Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines

I took a couple of trips to the Philippines in early 2012 to lay the ground work before committing 100% to moving there lock, stock and barrel. When I was there, one of the things I did was set up some interviews for my first BPO Elite employee.

Now don’t get me wrong, I ended up with an amazing employee who would become one of my best friends. But the process itself had some serious flaws. Let me break them down. And even though I have extensive experience in recruitment and hiring, I made many of the same mistakes in the process that most managers make. They put it on themselves to do it all, they are the only ones in on the decision-making, and they don’t really look at the available data to help them.

When recruiting. I found out the true power of LinkedIn. I networked with a couple dozen candidates, and narrowed it down to six to interview based on e-mail conversations before I left the US. When I arrived, I set up phone screenings with the six and ended up then conducting two final interviews. Pretty standard stuff and thanks to LinkedIn, all the candidates where qualified to be my very first employee, a recruitment specialist. However, I did all this myself. And even though I have partners and an assistant back in the US, I took it on myself. That’s lesson #1, you cant always do everything yourself. It takes up a lot of time and it makes others think you don’t need or want your help. Next time I do this, I need to delegate and be more inclusive.

The next thing I did wrong was that I didn’t have one of my partners interview with me. I based my decisions on my gut. Now as an analyst, I am kicking myself about this, but as a first time business owner… its a very common mistake. There is tons of data that shows that candidates hired after interviews with more then one person as much as a 100% chance to stick around longer than those interviewed solely by one person.

The final lesson that comes to mind is that I didn’t do a very good job of understanding the data available when it comes up to the recruitment industry in the Philippines. After being there a while and gathering data and insights, I over paid, I over promised and I over recruited. I hired two, at way more than the market price and I gave them pretty favorable terms. All things that more research would have uncovered.

So In the end it worked out, I got a great candidate who stuck with me thru thick and thin. I just wish I would have hired me the analysts to do the prep work for me the business owner. Hehe!

Analytics Tool > LinkedIn > http://www.linkedin.com

Analytics Concept > Marketing Analytics > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_analytics#Data_and_analytics

YouTube Resource > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jDjeNJrN14&feature=share&list=PL7EC252B253873D5D

Simple Recruitment Analytics Exercise: Recruit your own Super Hero Team

Here is an example of simple exercise I sometimes include in my recruitment analytics trainings. It’s a good icebreaker/team builder that starts the conversation about how to measure the effectives ness of different roles in a recruitment process.

Situation: There is an asteroid about to hit the Earth. An evil super villain has created a ray that is attracting the asteroid here.

You need to recruit a team of heroes to complete the following tasks

1.Stop the asteroid from hitting the earth.

2.Find the super villain and stop his ray.

3.Evacuate people from the impact zone in case you can’t stop it

Rules: You must pick 3 heroes and you must stay under budget on their “salaries”.

You can only spend 200 salary points total.

Superman – 150

the Hulk – 100

Batman – 75

Thor – 100

Wonder Woman – 75

Iron Man – 100

The Flash – 50

Captain America – 75

Green Lantern -50

Hawkeye – 25

Aquaman -25

Black Widow – 25

Hawkgirl – 25

Darna – 50

The discussion is always interesting and most teams come up with a different combination of heroes. Besides the lead in to recruiting, I also talk a lot about how when we recruit, we have to think about what appeals to our target demographic. Which in the case of most recruiting for the BPOs here in the Philippines means 18-24 year olds who like technology, games, super hero movies and anime. Trying to find creative ways to engage them and keep their attention is as big a challenge as any other one facing recruiters.

And for the record, the most common solution is just to hire Superman and save the rest of the money since he can handle all three tasks in a matter of seconds. 🙂

If your organization is struggling with recruiting and retaining talent like so many others are, then you need the equivalent of an analytics superhero to help you save the day.

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.

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