Tag: small business

Get In Front of People

The single biggest asset to my business is me.

Knowing this helps guide my strategic plan.

The more I am in front of people talking about analytics the more the business will prosper.

The more people who here me talk about analytics will get excited and start believing they can master analytics too.

The more attendees, trainees and audiences who learn something from me, the more referrals to follow.

Branding for any company is all about building something that sticks in the minds of its customers as it also attracts new customers. Great brands don’t have to market themselves as much as they do just continue to do what they do best.

That has always been the goal of DMAI. To market me to the point where we are the name brand in analytics in the Philippines.

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Analytics is something every business needs, but most businesses struggle with. It not easy to use data to empower better decision-making. The boom in big data makes it more challenging. The dearth of analytics talent available makes it seem impossible to many business leaders.

So that is why we need to get me in front of them. To show them how they can unlock their data to tap new prospects and discover new opportunities.

Once they have a sense its not as daunting as they thought, once they feel they can do what I do too, then our brand gains power. With each interaction between me and those who need me, we level up.

That is how we execute our master strategic plan. That’s why #IamDMAI

Small Business Analytics – The field of small business analytics is just starting to blossom as companies are looking for more data-driven decision-making to prosper in the age of Big Data. DMAIPH is at the fore front of providing analytics training, consulting and outsourcing options to small businesses. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to set up a free consultation on how to get more analytics in your small business.

Engage The Network

Networking. Why do some many people fail at it? What do the great networkers have in common that make them great? What should you do when your networking efforts don’t produce the results you expect?

Asking myself these questions a lot lately.

I know a lot about networking strategy and have seen the master’s do it well. I have a lot of experience in marketing myself and my business. I have built a strong and recognizable brand. In many ways I am an expert on networking.

Yet networking is not easy for me. I am never really satisfied with my results. I am perpetually adding and creating and sharing. It’s in my DNA. But it’s still not easy.

When I talk about analytics I get energized. The more I talk about analytics the more energy I have to put into networking. Passing out business cards while sharing my story is awesome. Having people tell me they follow my blog and enjoy my writing is super awesome. Being in front of a crowd of curious minds who want to know more about analytics is super awesome x 1000.

So for me to engage my network, I can do a lot in person. But there are so many hours in a day I can devote to that. So engaging via social media is key to building the network substantially. Social media is 24/7 and can attract people who never have a chance to see me in person.

I have a marketing plan for engaging people via personal interactions.

I have a marketing plan based on appearing at events, conferences and schools.

I have a social media marketing plan for sharing content online.

And I have a media plan to build the network through more traditional methods as well.

You have to have these plans written out so people can follow them.

You have to talk about them constantly so people understand them.

You have to measure them consistently so you know if people are engaged with them.

That’s networking. That’s how I do it.

That’s why #IamDMAI

The field of small business analytics is just starting to blossom as companies are looking for more data-driven decision-making to prosper in the age of Big Data. DMAIPH is at the fore front of providing analytics training, consulting and outsourcing options to small businesses.

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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.

 

 

 

 

Stick to the Primary Goal

When you start feeling like you are going in several directions at once, but you are not happy with the progress you are making overall, then you need to sit down and do some strategy planning.

It has been awhile since I added some structure to what we are doing with DMAI so we don’t spend time doing things that don’t drive us towards  our primary goal.

The primary goal of DMAI is to bet the name brand when it comes to analytics in the Philippines. The reason we exist is to take advantage of the huge gap between supply and demand when it comes to analytics talent in the Philippines labor pool.

In the past few years the demand for analytics talent has boomed at a rate that has far outpaced efforts to attract, train and empower the supply. The past year or so has seen a great number of new players enter into the analytics and data science training space, but it is not enough to meet the global demand for analytics that the Philippines is caught up in.

As I add more and more data scientist and analysts every day on LinkedIn, I am seeing a pattern that is both concerning and exciting. Like in the U.S. and across the globe, the number of data science and analyst jobs mushrooms, but by and large the people filling the openings lack the experience to really be effective at them. Which of course means they will need more training. DMAI is in a good place to address this opportunity.

We have worked hard on building the brand and getting the name out. Working with key business partners to speak at conferences, conduct public training workshops and appear in the media has given us a lot of access. The amount of content we have created between social media, blogs, training materials and now books adds to our ability to share content.

So for the next 18 months, we will be asking ourselves every day this simple question. Is what we are doing right not working towards that goal of being the name brand in analytics in the Philippines? If not, then it’s not a priority no matter how much money it makes or how important it seems.

There can be only one top dog. And the dog’s name is DMAI.
#IamDMAI

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Small Business Analytics – The field of small business analytics is just starting to blossom as companies are looking for more data-driven decision-making to prosper in the age of Big Data. DMAIPH is at the fore front of providing analytics training, consulting and outsourcing options to small businesses. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to set up a free consultation on how to get more analytics in your small business.

 

DMAIPH Fuels New Businesses Ready For Launch (3 of 3)

The third type of company we can add value too is one ready to launch. You have a great idea, you have the funding, you have an awesome product or service, but you aren’t 100% sure if you have everything you need to get out there and make money. . We can offer our business intelligence package of demographic profiling, competitive landscaping, social media strategy and market assessment. We can also offer virtual staffing support to assist with marketing and operations. Our hybrid staffing solutions will give you access to a very talented work force that is flexible and affordable.

We have shown marked achievement in helping a couple of new businesses get out of the gate successfully.  One client we helped was a mobile app designer who had a great idea, enough capital tyo get started, but little idea on how to really understand the opportunity to make money. In addition, the client was hesitant to take on all the HR work in hiring a team when he had no idea how many people he would need in the short term. We helped them with both.

Using the same methodology, we used with the chiropractor, we conducted a business intelligence assessment to help figure out how to identify customers and where to find them. We also used our home based, hybrid staffing model to hire six people to help the client have get off the ground. Charged with editing pictures for the mobile app site based on set criteria, 24/7, with as close to real time response as possible, the team quickly became a key part of the business strategy.

Another new business we helped get off the ground was someone who wanted to open a call center business in Manila. She was well funded and motivated, but didn’t really know where to start. The client really needed help knowing how to settle on a location and to set up the business. She also need help designing her marketing and social media strategy. So that is where we started.

We developed a social media strategy for the business for both client marketing and employee recruitment. You would be surprised by the number of businesses who still have not figured out an online branding strategy to sell their business.

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In parallel with the social media, we also conducted a business intelligence assessment to help her pin down the location for her to set up the business. Worried about being in a place that was both convenient and not overly saturated by competitor, our data and analysis pointed her to the right place. She has been there for 4 years now, expanded her site twice to accommodate growth, and added several new customers all while having little challenge in recruitment.

If you are thinking of starting a new business, we can help. Let us show you how to use the data around you to make good strategic decisions.

Analytics Consulting – 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.

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.

DMAIPH is Good at Helping Companies Looking to Expand (1 of 3)

The first type of company we generally get involved with is companies looking to expand. Huge growth is just around the corner and there is a need to staff up quickly,    but given some uncertainty as to how much growth will be needed how soon, you want a little more flexibility in staffing. Our virtual, hybrid staffing solutions will give you access to a very talented work force that is flexible and affordable. We can also assist with developing the expansion strategy with our business intelligence package of demographic profiling, competitive landscaping and market assessment.

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Let me tell you about one of our clients who came to us in expansion mode. We started with six work from home staff who were tasked with adding key words to online auction items. Starting with a small team who would just do a small percentage of the key wording for our client. We quickly found our talent pool was very large and very deep. So we quickly built the team up to a dozen and then 25 and ultimately 50 people. We worked closely with the client at first but over the first six months also built up our own expertise to the point, the client became very hands off.

Work from home positions make a lot of sense for this work as its very independent and easy to assign, track and review. We also got past a lot of challenges with work from home team, but really building the team using social media to connect them and make them feel like part of the larger organization.  This hybrid approach where the employees feel both independent and connected has led to extremely low attrition.

We also found that in the Philippines, there are literally a million former call center employees, with college degrees, good English and the drive to do a good job who left the call center industry to spend more time with family. So our work from home jobs are right in line with their needs.

Things have worked so well, the client has had us add a graphic design team, an email-marketing team, a desktop support team and a customer care team in addition to the key word team. The key word team has added a QA team and a 2nd level support team as well.

From a financial standpoint we helped the client save a lot of money by staffing in multiple locations, added the ability to do 24/7 customer care and never miss a beat with meeting our SLA.

This is the kind of thing we can do for any company looking to expand both rapidly and strategically using our home based, virtual team solution. Just connect with me and I will explain how.

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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.

How to Build Your Business Strategy

Business strategy is something that comes naturally to me. I’m good at anticipating challenges, at doing research to assess the risk and reward to multiple options and I love to use data to validate or refute initial findings.

Though easy for me, I have found that being successful with business strategy is not as natural for most business owners, senior managers and decision-makers.

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When I set up my first company, it was based on a year of research and lots of networking. When I launched my second business it was based not just on research and networking, but learning from the mistakes made the first time with financial planning and partner relationships. Now on my third business, having taken the best of everything that worked before and finding ways to mitigate the things that went wrong before.

Now, for most business leaders you can’t just hit the rest button every few years, but you should hit the reset button on your initial strategy. Adapt to changes in the market. Glean new insights on cutting edge technology. Stay on top of industry trends.

That’s the first key to business strategy. Understanding that it is a continual process that evolves. Many businesses fail because they don’t change with the times or because leaders just stick with what has always worked. That’s dinosaur thinking.

Any good business strategy has to adopt a continuous process improvement policy, using something Six Sigma or Lean to keep things form getting stale.

A good business strategy also seeks out new technologies that can disrupt both their business and their business marketplace. What was cutting edge and trendy six months ago most likely be as effective six months from now. Good Business intelligence tools that can do cool data visualizations and build business dashboards help us stay ahead of the game. I show a lot of people how to do this using Tableau Public, which is free and easy to learn.

The next key to business strategy is integrating customer insights into everything you do. If you don’t listen to your customers, if you can’t predict what they need, and if you have a strategy that puts profit before customer experience you will probably fail.

It amazes me when I see bad customer service, products that no longer meet customer needs being produced and unimaginative marketing campaigns. In this day and age, with access to our customers at unprecedented levels, there is no excuse for failing to get it right the first time.  We do a lot of surveying and engage using social media to stay connected.

The third key I include in my business strategy planning and consulting is understanding the competitive landscape. Knowing where we stack up in the marketplace, what are our strengths and weaknesses, what is hot and what is not… you need to put as much focus on what is happening outside the business as you need to know what’s happening inside.

Almost everyone I talk with about their competitors share with me one common feeling… I don’t really know what my competitors are doing. In fact a high percentage even struggle to identify who their key competitors are. We are active in industry organizations, online social media groups and attend competitors events to stay up to date.

Business strategy is a lot more than just business intelligence, customer insights, and competitive landscapes, but it is a good start. If you are able to add these to financial models and demographic data, you will have a well-rounded business strategy. And then its just a matter of keeping it fresh, resetting it every so often to make sure you don’t become a dinosaur.

Let me know if I can help. In the past few years I have helped companies of all shapes and sizes refine their business strategy using my keys to success.

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.

My Thoughts On FilAm’s going back to the Philippines

Just got this message from a connection on LinkedIn.

Thought a blog post might be the best way to reply.

“I am a Filipino-American who was born in the Philippines and moved to Chicago when I was 10 years old. I always wanted to come back home, but hesitate to do it since the Chicago and Manila have totally different economies. I saw that you studied at Indiana University and now work in the Philippines. How did you do it? Do you like it? I usually go home every year and I will be coming home again this Christmas season. Any feedback would be very appreciated.”

I think there is a lot of opportunity for FilAms to be successful in either working in and/or setting up businesses in the Philippines.

From my experience, some of the advantages you will find include:

  • You can add a lot of value to businesses with American clients by role modeling your business acumen, your English and your understanding of American culture.
  • With big call centers you can find work in management or working with the clients.
  • With smaller call centers you can find yourself in a pretty senior position.
  • If you want to get into being a BPO broker by matching U.S. clients with call centers there is always room for that.

After getting your feet wet, you can probably set up your own small business that focuses your talents and interests like I have done.

I train people to be better analysts, introduce analytics to college students and do some consulting on analytics projects as well.

As for how I got my start, I worked for Wells Fargo as a business analyst for about 10 years and during that time got involved with some outsourcing projects. Things all fell into place about 3 years ago an I moved to the Philippines to set up my own business.

So, I am a big advocate of doing the something similar yourself.

A couple of other things to think about thought is getting paid in pesos doesn’t go as far as getting paid in dollars. The bureaucracy and the corruption can be maddening at times. The poverty and the congestion are not easy to see every day. But all in all the Philippines is probably in the best places it’s been in a while as far as business climate.

With the right planning and execution you can have a much more rewarding life in the Philippines.

Hope that helps!

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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.

Time Consuming Tasks, Your Small Business Should Outsource

Many entrepreneurs and small business owners reject outsourcing because of the perceived extra cost.

However, they fail to calculate the value of opportunities lost because they sank too much time into energy-sapping tasks best left to others.

DMAIPH has a team of top talent that can take on several of the things you are doing that eat up way to much of your precious time.

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We specialize in:

  • Graphics Design
  • Social Media
  • Market Research
  • Competitor Intelligence
  • Customer Feedback
  • Data Mining
  • Basic Analytics
  • Administrative Support

We can also build you a business dashboard using the free and easy to use Tableau Public (www.tableaupublic.com) business intelligence tool. Our team of analysts will also show you how to use Tableau Public to make more data-driven decisions in your business.

Contact us today for a free consultation. DMAIPH has been providing outsourcing solutions to U.S. based small and medium sized business for over 5 years.  Our offices in the Philippines are set up with state of the art technology and staffed with top local talent.

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.