Oz Analytics

The Business Case Just Gets Better

I'm not blogging as much as I used to as Doclens is taking up much of my time, and when it's not Doclens then it is my consulting activities which have now gone global. So the best way of keeping up with my comings and goings is to subscribe for free to Doclens.

Despite this, I will blog every now and again and today is one of those days ...

A couple of years ago, Bain published an infographic called 'The Who, Why And How Of Big Data'. The gist of the message being communicated was that Financial Services companies that spend big on big data were twice as likely to be outperforming their peers in just about every metric that matters: speed, quality, and financial return.

My consulting activities and running Six Degrees of Data have thrown-up a lot more data on this and it has become pretty clear to me that the Bain infographic remains true - but the business case is even stronger today. Investing in big data and analytics returns a healthy 2 - 5 times. Of course, there is still one critical qualification to this: you've got to be in an organization that really 'gets' data and analytics. Brain dead companies defending their incumbent market share still waste huge amounts pretending to invest in data. Those few projects that they succeed at are still unlikely to be transformative.

That's the sad truth and it is hard to conclude otherwise. Take a look at the many articles on Doclens for the stats to back this up.

Here is the Bain infographic from 2013:

You can read more of my original analysis on Doclens.

8 Weeks Into Our Beta Launch

It's been sometime since my last blog entry. Apologies, but I have a good reason: I launched my beta website doclens.com. It's now a couple of months on and time to communicate what the experience has been like.

First off, what is doclens?

Our mission is to make data driven narratives by discovering insights from reports and articles.We do this by:

1. Using the online research and opinion published by thought leaders such as consultancies, think tanks and academic experts. We estimate 50,000 – 100,000 items are published annually in our beta target market of analytics and big data people in the financial services industry. We automatically monitor this research as it is published.
2. Our DocLens platform automatically reads, understands and analyses this research and links it to profiles of the people and organisations involved.
3. We then curate the information and publish the best 1% to our website – making it possible for you to keep up with best practices, be the most informed person in your organisation, and make smarter decisions. All in just minutes of your time.

We turn information overload into personal strategic advantage:

Doclens is a lean startup. We have 4 people involved - with only one currently working full-time on the venture. We are also self funded. So resources are incredibly tight, but as the lean movement has taught us, it is amazing what can be achieved.

So here is a summary of the first 8 weeks of Six Degrees of Data as a 'trading entity'.

The launch has been a success. Being a data scientist, I measure success against a set of short-term targets we agreed on prior to launching. These are:

• 100+ subscribers by the end of 2014
• 5,000 article reads within 8 weeks of launch
• Average visit time > 2.5 minutes.

I'm pleased to say that all 3 targets were exceeded.

Whew ...

What else can I say about the experience so far? Well here are some of the highlights, in no particular order of importance or time sequence:

• For 3 of the 8 weeks we conducted A/B tests using 4 social media networks to advertise, using a total of 14 different messages. Twitter has been the outstanding performer for us.
• That said, we have also been actively tweeting and posting about the content being published on doclens each day. Judging by the number of retweets, favourites, mentions and clicks we are getting, this is maybe even more effective than paid advertising. I'm not yet sure how I can test this in practice (given our resource and budget constraints).
• Our customers are of course central to everything we do and some of the organizations they represent are:

• There is no particular geographic concentration in our hundreds of users - at least nothing unusual that I can detect. The USA, Western Europe and Australia feature heavily, as does Scandinavia, New Zealand and Singapore. Our users come from over 80 countries now.
• 95% are data and analytics professionals. Good news as this is are target market.

So what hasn't gone well or smoothly? A few things, that's for sure:

• Social media advertising. LinkedIn, Google and Facebook have not performed well so far. Advertising on Twitter was about 5 times more effective than these other channels. I still don't know why although my 600+ followers on Twitter may be a factor. I need to run some more A/B tests to resolve this.
• Customer engagement. People just aren't commenting on the content we are posting. Perversly, they seem to love the content and we get lots of visits. Our most popular articles have now been read thousands of times each. The silence is puzzling and I will probably survey our customers soon to find out what is going on.

Longer-term (6 month) targets were also set and these are:

• 1,000+ subscribers
• 20,000 article reads
• Average visit time > 5 minutes
• CAC < 40 cents
• Launch of our analyse-your-own-document service.

CAC = Customer Acquisition Cost. In our case, the cost of advertising on social media.

So these are the basic measures we are using. They are useful to have and us help focus on the things that matter.

It has been a slog, with many, many hours expended. And many more to come. But it is fun, we are learning every day and I wouldn't be anywhere else at the moment. I'll let you know if this is still how I feel in about 20 weeks time.

The Naked Analyst

I've just started a YouTube Channel covering everything you wanted to know about being an analyst, business analyst, data scientist, and any other data-using role in business today.

I'm doing this because I want to give back a little to the analytic community that has given me such a great career. In short, each video will give you (hopefully useful) tips from a 25 year veteran of the analytic profession. My hope is that people will find it a useful way to spend a couple of minutes and that it will compliment this blog.

I may live to regret the name 'The Naked Analyst' but hopefully most viewers will notice that I am, in fact, not broadcasting naked and will move on to more fertile pastures! I chose the name hoping that this will indicate my 'unaligned' status. Unaligned in that I am talking about analytics without any particular bias or influence from the myriad of vendors and consulting companies.

So no hidden agendas and no marketing push to buy the lastest tool from a vendor promising to solve all of the problems in your organisation. Not that this ever happens ...

Here are the first 2 videos. The first is a quick introduction to the channel:

 

This second video is Part 1 of some tips for people who would like to get their first job as an analyst:

 

I've also put together a related playlist on YouTube of a few videos that include those made by others on similar topics that I have found on the net. 30 minutes of watching this whole list should give you some insight into how you can go about finding that first job. Good luck!

Founder Institute 2014

As a part of our pivot to a desktop product we looked around at the options in Australia to grow our idea into a real business. After a month or two researching and asking the advice of a wide range of people, we settled on the Founder Institute (FI).

The Founder Institute is the world’s largest entrepreneur training and startup launch program, helping aspiring founders across the globe build enduring technology companies. At its heart is a four-month, part-time program, where you  “learn by doing” and launch a company through structured training courses, practical business-building assignments, and expert feedback.

At the Sydney program there are over 40 mentors involved in the current program and the whole thing is being orchestrated by Benjamin Chong of both Right Click Capital and the Sydney Seed Fund. Lets just say that the man is a human dynamo and he  brings an energy and intensity that is refreshing after the more staid world of corporate global media.

The simple reason we chose the FI were that they seem to offer a very practical approach to accelerating high tech start-ups. So we applied and were (thankfully) accepted after passing a set of tests.

Well it is now 6 weeks since we were accepted into the Sydney 2014 program. That's about the half-way mark and the pace has been hectic. But Six Degrees of Data is still in the program. Of the 28 founders who started, there are now only 11 left. The reasons for such a big withdrawal rate are:

1. That's the way the program (and the real world) is structured. There are multiple hurdles that each founder has to overcome. All parts of the program must be completed on time and mentors must rate the work and idea as being good enough to continue.
2. Some (many?) people are either not sufficiently prepared for the cut-throat environment at the FI. It's not at all unfriendly and I have seen an extraordinary amount of support offered by mentors and co-founders throughout the program. But it is emotionally 'intense' to say the least, and
3. The program workload is a lot heavier than many expected. Perhaps heavier is not the right word. Personally challenging describes it better.

I'm pretty happy to still be around as the FI is proving true to its word and it is directly helping to build Six Degrees of Data. I can highly recommend the program to anyone who is serious about getting out and building their own dream high tech start-up.

It ain't peaceful, but boy it's fun!

 

Scary Level Of Customer Engagement

At Six Degrees Of Data, the team and I have been struggling with a number of issues but always at or near the top of our list is ease-of-use. This is because what Bridger does is complex and difficult for many users to understand. We figure that explaining how we do semantic analysis is less important than making sure someone:

1. Understands what we do and why
2. It is as simple to use Bridger as it humanly possible.

If we can do this then we have a chance of building a user base, then a company and perhaps even a viable revenue stream. Dare to dream.

The scale of this challenge was bought home to me this morning when I received another Lean Startup newsletter by email. The topic was 'Rapid Iteration for Mobile App Development' by Sarah Milstein. Given the stage Bridger is at it sounded interesting so I read on.

The newsletter proved to be an interview with Mariya Yao, the founder and Creative Director at Xanadu. Mariya had some interesting things to say about customer engagement but I've got to be honest - some of what she says is a frightening. 

Here's what she says about what's needed to succeed:

"There are two questions that I recommend startups use to differentiate between being liked versus being loved. First is the question Sean Ellis popularized, where you ask your users, "How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use our product?" and have them answer with either, "Very Disappointed," "Somewhat Disappointed," "Not Disappointed," or "I no longer use the product." Sean did research across hundreds of startups and discovered that companies that had fewer than 40% of their users answer "Very Disappointed" tended to struggle with building a successful and sustainable business.

The second question is known as the Net Promoter Score, where you ask your users, "On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend us to your friends?" You mark those who answer 0-6 as Detractors, 9-10 as Promoters, and 7-8 as Neutral. Your Net Promoter score is the percent of Promoters minus your percentage of Detractors, which should be a number between -100 and +100. The world's most successful companies typically score around +50, and top performing tech companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon regularly score over +70."

Wow - that's quite a hurdle to jump.

Note - the  Sean Ellis referred to in the quote is, I think, a long time blogger on the topic of startups and marketing. You can find his blog here. He says that he is taking a break from blogging but past entries are well worth reading.

 So back to being scared.

Being an analyst at heart, I want to be able to measure the level of love and the net promoter score for my app. It is still early days for Bridger but if it is possible I want us to bake into the app a way of measuring these things.

As I read on, Mariya offers up a proxy I think we can use: "A popular metric for measuring retention in the mobile games industry is DAU / MAU, or daily active users divided by monthly active users".

If we can we will combine this with some direct market research of our users at the end of the next stage of development - a public beta of Bridger.

I'll let you know how we do in a few month's time.

Day 4 Week 5 of the CORTEX MBAnalytics

Continuing week 5 - part of the 60 day information management refresher course from the CORTEX.

The CORTEX

Master of Business Analytics

Week 5, Day 4

Theme: Analytic Errors

Week 5, Thursday

This week's theme is mistakes. Today we look into how people make decisions and you have a choice. 

WATCH    Choice 1:  Think Twice: Michael Mauboussin at CEP 2011     Streamed

30 minutes

"Think Twice:" Michael Mauboussin at CEP's 2011 Conference, YouTube video of Michael Mauboussin talking at the Center for Effective Philanthropy's 2011 conference.

READ       Choice 2:   Think Twice A cautionary tale for investors     70 KB

5 minutes

'Michael Mauboussin's 'Think Twice': A cautionary tale for investors' article by Vishesh Kumar, on the AOL DailyFinance site, August 2009. Available on AOL here.

READ       Choice 3:  Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition   To buy

??? hours. How fast can you read 204 pages?

'Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition' by Michael Mauboussin Chief Investment Strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management and adjunct professor of finance at Columbia Business School, hardcover book published by Harvard Business School Press, October, 2009, 204 pages. Available to purchase on Amazon.

Key takeout: Fascinating insight into how we make decisions - especially insightful on the subject of mistakes and experts. Choice 1, the video, is a great way to be introduced to Mauboussin's ideas. Choice 2 is the one to take if you really can't spend half an hour watching choice 1. Choice 3 is something to keep in mind. Now go out and read the book!

As always, comments, questions and ideas are all welcome. 

The MBAnalytics is just one part of the Business Intelligence CORTEX - a community of Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Analytics and Project Management professionals in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. Membership is free and the forums are very active with over 20,000 posts offering a uniquely Australasian viewpoint.

Day 5 Week 3 of the CORTEX MBAnalytics

You've almost made it to the end of week 3 - part of the 60 day information management refresher course from the CORTEX.

The CORTEX

Master of Business Analytics

Week 3, Day 5

Theme: Communication & Collaboration

Week 3, Friday

This week's themes are communication, and if you are listening and willing, a resulting collaboration. 

READ      Today's task:  Rethinking knowledge Work    300KB

30 minutes

McKinsey Quarterly 'Rethinking knowledge work: A strategic approach', Tom Davenport, president’s chair in information technology and management at Babson College, February 2011. Online here (registration required).

Key takeout: I have always found that striking the correct balance between freedom and control is one of the persistent tensions inherent when managing analysts in a corporate environment. Maybe this is also true in other analytic environments. In any event, this is the subject of Davenport's latest article - and once again he goes to the heart of the issue. He describes this tension and makes plain our choices. By necessity, this is only a high level discussion but for me it has delivered a strategic framework within which I have developed an actionable model of knowledge working that adapts to a wide range of analytic situations. I'm in danger of becoming a Davenport fanboy - and I'm nobody's groupie. So read it and let me know if I'm wrong.

Well, that's it for week 3. Have a good weekend and next week we checkout something a little different.

As always, comments, questions and ideas are all welcome. 

The MBAnalytics is just one part of the Business Intelligence CORTEX - a community of Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Analytics and Project Management professionals in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. Membership is free and the forums are very active with over 20,000 posts offering a uniquely Australasian viewpoint.

Day 3 Week 3 of the CORTEX MBAnalytics

Continuing week 3 - part of the 60 day information management refresher course from the CORTEX.

The CORTEX

Master of Business Analytics

Week 3, Day 3

Theme: Communication & Collaboration

Week 3, Wednesday

This week's themes are communication, and if you are listening and willing, a resulting collaboration. 

READ       Today's task:  Boosting the productivity of knowledge workers    3.3Mb

30 minutes

'Boosting the productivity of knowledge workers' by  Eric Matson, McKinsey

Consultant and Laurence Prusak, from the University of Southern California

Marshall School of Business, McKinsey Quarterly September 2010.

Key takeout: This considered piece concentrates on knowledge worker

interaction. To my surprise this is what knowledge workers do 50% of

their time and the central thesis of this article is that managers can best

concentrate their efforts "by identifying targeted productivity improvement

efforts to increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of the interactions

between workers".

As always, comments, questions and ideas are all welcome. 

The MBAnalytics is just one part of the Business Intelligence CORTEX - a community of Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Analytics and Project Management professionals in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. Membership is free and the forums are very active with over 20,000 posts offering a uniquely Australasian viewpoint.

Day 2 Week 3 of the CORTEX MBAnalytics

Continuing week 3 - part of the 60 day information management refresher course from the CORTEX.

The CORTEX

Master of Business Analytics

Week 3, Day 2

Theme: Communication & Collaboration

Week 3, Tuesday

This week's themes are communication, and if you are listening and willing, a resulting collaboration. 

WATCH    Today's task:  The Next Web     200Mb (streamed)

15 minutes

TED Talk 'Tim Berners-Lee On The Next Web' in 2009

Key takeout: Although I have reservations about any individual who claims to have

invented the web - the message Berners-Lee has on unlocking data is a very

useful contribution to our thinking about a key aspect of our rapidly approaching

world of global and open data.

READ       For extra credit:  TDWI Report on Spreadmarts    1.3Mb

45 minutes

'Strategies for Managing Spreadmarts - Migrating to a Managed BI Environment'

by Wayne W. Eckerson and  and Richard P. Sherman, TDWI best practIces report 2008.

Key takeout: This report balances nicely the Berners-Lee talk with the reality

in most organisations today: spreadsheet based analytic solutions dominate.

More effective management and use of these solutions will have a great and

direct positive impact on corporate performance. TDWI is a great source of US

 oriented analytic information. Their website is worth exploring.

As always, comments, questions and ideas are all welcome. 

The MBAnalytics is just one part of the Business Intelligence CORTEX - a community of Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Analytics and Project Management professionals in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. Membership is free and the forums are very active with over 20,000 posts offering a uniquely Australasian viewpoint.

Day 5 Week 2 of the CORTEX MBAnalytics

Congratulations for reaching the end of week 2 - part of the 60 day information management refresher course from the CORTEX.

The CORTEX

Master of Business Analytics

Week 2, Day 5

Theme: Big Data Practitioners

Week 2, Friday

We come to the end of our exploration of big data by taking a look at how eHarmony is making use of Amazon's big data business services.

READ       Today's task:  eHarmony in the cloud    700KB

15 minutes

'eHarmony in Cloud', presentation by Brian Ko, Sr. Software engineer at Behr

Process Corporation, 2009. No idea what Brian's connection to eHarmony is.

Key takeout: eHarmony uses Amazon's EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing) because it

has a pay-per-use model that lets you get up and running quickly, scales

rapidly and at a cost much lower than doing it in-house. The cost advantage I

hear most often is that the cloud cost is about 25% of doing it in-house.

WATCH    For extra credit:  Retail Analytics    1.2Mb

60 minutes

'Realizing the Potential of Retail Analytics - Plenty of Food for those with the

Appetite', a working knowledge research report by Tom Davenport, Babson

College in 2009.

Key takeout: This insightful research highlights a dozen ways that analytics is

driving the performance of a whole range of retail businesses. As Tom himself

says: "there is little doubt ... that the aggressive adoption and exploitation of

analytics has led to competitive advantage among some of the world’s most

successful retailers". These lessons are not just valuable to retailers.

 
 
Well, that's it for week 2. Have a good weekend and next week we venture into new territory.

As always, comments,questions and ideas are all welcome. 

The MBAnalytics is just one part of the Business Intelligence CORTEX - a community of Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Analytics and Project Management professionals in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. Membership is free and the forums are very active with over 20,000 posts offering a uniquely Australasian viewpoint.