An Organizational Strategy Road Map for Analytics

1. Let’s start with what a strategy is.

2. A strategy: ● is a description of the overall way in
3. which an organization currently is, and is to be run
4. ● covers a year at a time ● aligns the organization’s business
area,
5. resources, and activities to the market in which the
6. organization operates ● attempts to handle issues in the short
7. run while, at the same time, trying to create competitive
8. advantages in the long run
9. What we want to highlight in this definition is alignment.
10. Anything that anyone does in an organization should be
11. aligned to the overall mission and vision of the
12. organization.
13. If a project or an initiative is not aligned with
14. the organization’s strategy, then there’s really no point in doing
that project in the
15. first place.
16. This holds true for Analytics initiatives.
17. One of the reasons we are not seeing more and more
18. organizations in the Philippines embrace Analytics is that
19. the leadership team is not seeing the value of Analytics
20. projects being initiated within a unit or department, which
21. is usually IT.
22. Analytics projects are usually started within a
23. unit without aligning the intended output to the
24. organization’s overall objectives.
25. Thus, when presented to the leadership team, the potential value
is
26. lost.
27. Let’s see how we can fix this.
Company’s Vision and Goals

1. Let’s look into how an Analytics strategy roadmap can be

2. developed for a retailer.
3. Recall that we have the following roles in Analytics:
4. ● Data Steward ● Data Engineer
5. ● Data Scientist ● Functional Analyst
6. ● Analytics Manager Let’s add a few more roles that we can find
7. in most organizations that will be supporting our
8. Analytics team: ● Leadership
9. ● Department Head ● IT Engineer
10. We will show in this example how these roles are involved
11. in the strategy roadmap.
12. Through hard work and overall business savviness, Aling Maria’s
sari-sari store has transformed
13. into a large retail company focused solely on Filipino-made
products.
14. Her company’s vision: a Filipino brand for every
15. Filipino product at every Filipino’s home.
16. As the CEO, she and her LEADERSHIP team sets annual
17. objectives for the company.
18. This year, she wants to, among others, increase their market
share from 15%
19. to 20%.
20. This is the goal that she cascaded to the entire
21. company at the start of their fiscal year.
22. The various departments took this to hear and developed
23. their own strategies that will contribute to the larger goal
24. of increased market share.
25. In their annual planning, as a case in point, The
26. DEPARTMENT HEAD of the Marketing Department, said,
27. “In order for us to increase our market share, we need to
28. attract new customers.”
29. She then asked several ideas from her team who are experts in
their own right
30. in marketing.
31. She got the usual suggestions of increasing marketing
32. campaigns, going into social media, getting celebrities for
33. endorsements.
34. She agreed, in principle, but she wanted to be more focused and
more targeted.
35. One FUNCTIONAL ANALYST suggested, “How about looking into
36. past sales records and see who are our loyal customers?
37. Perhaps we can deduce who to target based on this information.”
38. The department head, having read somewhere about data
39. being the new oil and knowing that the leadership team is
40. in support of innovative ideas in the company, said, “Let’s
41. try that.
42. And, oh, by the way, I think our IT department is
43. trying out Analytics and has a team of people doing some
44. proof of concepts.
45. If we need to, we can probably borrow some of their people.”
46. The functional analyst goes back to her desk and starts
47. looking into the customer database (which she has access
48. to as part of her job).
49. As she scrolls past, because of her expertise in marketing and in
retail, she
50. began to have this nagging feeling that there are certain things
51. about their customers that could tell them who to target.
52. Looking at the data, she has this hunch that gender,
53. generation, location, and income level could affect a
54. customer’s decision to buy.
55. She would like to investigate further but she doesn’t know how to
proceed.
56. She remembers what her department head said and went to IT.
57. She explained her dilemma to the IT department head who
58. quickly (and excitedly) introduced her to their lead DATA
59. SCIENTIST.
60. The data scientist also got excited as she felt
61. that, finally, she can do something that is aligned to their
62. organization’s agenda.
63. She talked to the functional analyst and explained to her that
what she currently
64. has – that nagging feeling, that hunch – is actually
65. a hypothesis.
66. And that is how Analytics projects are started:
67. with a hunch that needs to be proven by data.
68.
69. A Proof of Concept
70. As part of the research method, the data scientist further
71. explained that they need more data points to test their
72. hypothesis.
73. She would definitely need access to data.
74. With the functional analyst, the data scientist went to the
75. DATA STEWARD of the customer and sales data.
76. As the data keeper, the data steward asked both on
77. what data they would need and why.
78. She scrutinized their request and questioned the need for
sensitive, personally-
79. identifiable information, that is, data that could point to a
80. single known person.
81. Based on her evaluation, she determined that such
information as name,
82. TIN, and actual birth month and date will not matter in the
83. project.
84. The data scientist agreed, and they were then
85. given the needed data.
86. Using her skills in statistics and Analytics methods and
87. algorithms, the data scientist went on and trained and
88. tested her model to determine whether gender, generation,
location, and income level do
89. affect a customer’s decision to buy.
90. And, if they do affect decision making, to what degree do
they affect that
91. decision.
92. After several iterations, the data scientist was able to come
93. up with a formula to score a potential customer’s decision
94. to buy.
95. In her formula, she determined that gender, generation, and
income level contributed equally
96. to the decision-making process of customers, but
97. that location doesn’t matter at all.
98. Furthermore, the formula suggests that millennials would be
their most likely
99. customers.
100. Having only basic domain experience in marketing and
101. retail, the data scientist conferred with the functional
102. analyst.
103. Upon seeing the result, the functional analyst got
104. excited as her hunch was correct.
105. Furthermore, based on her domain expertise, she did feel
that millennials
106. would be their most likely customers.
107. At least now, she has data to back her intuition.
108. The functional analyst went on and setup a meeting with
109. her department head to present their findings.
110. With the help of the data scientist, she created a
111. presentation with easy-to-understand visualization that is
focused
112. on their message, “We need to target millennials”.
113. The presentation included a high-level view of
114. the research method that was done but it was not technical
115. or even mathematical as these will not have any use
116. for the department head.
117. At the end of the meeting, the department head
118. congratulated the functional analyst and the data scientist
119. for the presentation.
120. She was very impressed, and she also felt that what they
presented made sense based
121. also on what she has observed.
122. She also just needed data to back what she observed.
123. And now that she has, she invited the functional analyst and
the data scientist
124. to a meeting with Aling Maria herself.
125. On the day of the meeting, quite nervous but also
126. confident of the output of their small project, the team
127. presented their findings.
128. They started with echoing their company’s goal which is to
increase market
129. share.
130. They then presented their research study on which
131. customer segment to attract, discussed their findings,
132. and, towards the end, connected back their project to the
133. company’s overall goal.
134. Quiet but listening intently the whole time, Aling Maria just
135. smiled . . . and gave two thumbs up!
136. She gave the marketing department the green light to
proceed
137. and even directed them to see what other data they
138. should consider to achieve their goals.
 Operationalizing Analytics
1. With the green light to proceed, the marketing department
2. went ahead and implemented the “customer attraction”
3. algorithm of the data scientist.
4. However, in response to Aling Maria’s ask to look into other data
5. that they should consider, the department head felt that this
6. now needs to turn into a real project.
7. Using the successful proof-of- concept as a business case, she
was given
8. the go ahead to proceed.
9. To manage a project this big, the department head employs an
ANALYTICS MANAGER.
10. With her project management skills, the analytics manager
11. assembled a team to plan for the project.
12. She knew that she needed the functional analyst and the
13. data scientist to be part of the team.
14. But as they now are going to operationalize the proof-of-concept
and as
15. they also now need to look into other pieces of information,
16. they need more people in the team.
17. In their first meeting, the functional analyst, again, gave a
18. hunch – a hypothesis – that product brand and quality
19. matters to buying decisions.
20. Furthermore, she felt that they need to look into social media
and/or
21. customer surveys to get feedback about the products
22. that they sell.
23. As they needed new data, they met with the data steward
24. who told them what data they can have – including data
25. about their supplier and products which is in a totally
26. separate database system – but they don’t presently
27. collect customer feedback or social media information.
28. Having some experience managing Analytics projects
29. before, the analytics manager determined that they would
30. also need an IT ENGINEER and a DATA ENGINEER in the
31. team.
32. The IT ENGINEER would have to develop an application that
would get customer feedback.
33. The DATA ENGINEER would need to bring together data from
social
34. media, the customer database, the supplier and products
35. database, and the sales database into a single repository
36. for the data scientist to work on her new algorithm.
37. With a carefully laid out project plan, the analytics
38. manager monitors the entire project, providing regular
39. updates to the leadership team and addressing challenges
40. in a timely manner.
41. After data has been consolidated and transformed to pieces of
information, the
42. data scientist gained new insights on how product brand and
43. quality, and customer feedback affect customer buying decisions.
44. With these insights, the functional analyst came
45. up with imperatives for the leadership team not only
46. on customer segments that they need to target but also
47. on the products and brands that they should be selling.
48. With a story on how data was transformed to information
49. to insights and to imperatives, the entire analytics project
50. team confidently presented their findings to Aling Maria
51. who, again, at the end just smiled and said with
52. confidence, “Our market leadership is assured thanks to
53. data.”
54.
An Analytics Strategy that Works

1. So, is the “story” that I told you too good to be true?

2. No, not really.
3. Of course, Analytic projects, like any other projects, would take a
reasonable amount of
4. time.
5. And, like any other projects, there will be challenges
6. that will need to be addressed in a timely manner.
7. But it is not totally impossible to have successful analytics
8. projects such as the use case that I just presented.
9. What would help make an Analytics project successful?
10. Well, just look back to what you learned in the previous
11. modules.
12. It’s the DELTA+ model.
13. 1.
14. You need consolidated and integrated data of the highest quality
and accessible to the
15. right people.
16. 2.
17. You need an enterprise-wide culture that is open to
18. innovation.
19. 3.
20. You need leaders who are willing to take a chance in
21. what could be potentially new for them.
22. 4.
23. You need targets that are aligned from the top of the
24. organization down to all the departments and units.
25. 5.
26. You need the right analytics professionals at the right
27. roles.
28. 6.
29. You need just the right technology for your project.
30. 7.
31. You need to know the right analytical techniques to
32. apply to your project.
33. So, how do you start?
34. In most cases, you have to do a proof-of-concept first to prove to
your leadership
35. that there’s value in Analytics.
36. In doing a proof-of-concept, select a project for a specific
department
37. first making sure that your project’s goal is still aligned
38. with the overall goal of the organization.
39. Have targets that could demonstrate value, for example, return
on investment,
40. or productivity gains, or cost savings.
41. Do you need already all the analytics roles to begin with?
42. No.
43. From the use case, the proof-of- concept was just done by a
functional analyst
44. and a data scientist.
45. You need a functional analyst with really strong
46. domain expertise to start off with a hypothesis and a really
47. good data scientist to test and prove (or disprove) that
48. hypothesis.
49. With them and a supportive leadership team, you would have
started to build a successful
50. analytics strategy roadmap for your organization.
51.