Ask QueBIT About Analytics

Episode 42: Launching a Diversity and Inclusion Program

Guests: Andrew Chavis, Dallas Crawford, Odile Davis-Wolfe & Gus Slaughter

In Episode 39 we talked about how companies that have inclusive cultures and embrace diversity also end up with real business advantages. These are a consequence of attracting the best talent, and then creating the conditions for that talent to meet their potential. Other positive impacts are increases in employee engagement, morale and loyalty. The “right thing” from an equity and justice point of view, turns out to be the right thing for business success as well.

Today’s Ask QueBIT podcast takes a brief detour away from analytics and technology to explore QueBIT’s own efforts to address these important questions. Our guests are the architects of QueBIT’s Diversity and Inclusion Program, affectionately known as the QueDIP Committee. In this episode we take an honest look inward, and touch on some of the very difficult questions that cause people of sincerely good intent to hold back from engaging.

We hope is that our conversation will help others overcome any hesitation they may feel in initiating a dialog on this topic with their friends, colleagues and neighbors.

Episode 41: From “spreadsheet hell” to better decisions at Eversource

Guest: Fran Berger

As the largest utility in New England, Eversource has all the planning and reporting needs one would expect of a Fortune 500 company – and maybe more! Operating in a highly regulated and unionized industry while also a public company, not to mention occasional acquisitions and mergers, leads to some unique challenges.

According to Fran Berger who manages performance and financial systems at Eversource, the decision to invest in IBM’s Planning Analytics technology platform (then called TM1) thirteen years ago was prescient and far-sighted (though they may not have realized it at the time!) The first corporate budgeting application built on this platform involved only a small handful of finance users, but once the capabilities of the technology were established, adoption grew. And grew.

Today hundreds of users in finance and operations interact with the system every day, benefiting from secure self-service access to the data they need to do their jobs, via the web or Excel spreadsheets (which integrate directly with Planning Analytics). Since the data is validated and controlled centrally in the Planning Analytics platform, everyone knows they are working with the same, trustworthy single-version-of-the-truth. This in turn frees up time for high-value analysis work, which in turn drives better decision making.

It’s a great story, filled with tons of ideas, great advice and lessons learned.

Episode 40: Why Master Data Management Matters

Guest: Clare Hutton

Our clients often ask us whether we “do” Master Data Management (MDM). It’s a good question because Master Data Management is important to DO, but answering the question can feel a bit like tip-toeing through a minefield. This is because the term “Master Data Management” means different things to different people. QueBIT’s answer may be “yes” or “no” depending on what you are thinking of.

This is why, when QueBIT launched its internal Guilds initiative in 2019 as a way to build community through having cross-functional teams explore and “go deep” on different topics that interested them, we selected Master Data Management as a guild topic. The goal was to drill down past the jargon, the hype put out by “MDM” software vendors and QueBIT’s own experiences, to understand the essential business problem that MDM purports to solve.

In this episode QueBIT Master Consultant Clare Hutton, who led the guild, shares the guild’s findings, including clear, elegant and simple definitions of “Master Data” and what it means to “manage” it. We also get into some practical recommendations for how to proceed with addressing your MDM challenges.

Episode 39: Diversity, Inclusion … and Transformative Analytics

No guest

This episode was partly inspired by an article in the November-December 2020 issue of the Harvard Business Review titled “Getting Serious about Diversity: Enough Already with the Business Case”. The point of the article is that harnessing diversity to add value to your business is not just about hiring more women and black people to check a box, but about HOW willing you are to reshape your power structure to harness that diversity.

In QueBIT’s 20+ year history of delivering successful analytics-based projects to hundreds of companies we have lived through countless case studies that support the position taken in the article. Projects rarely succeed or fail just because of technology selection. The biggest factors that drive success pertain to leadership and culture: Do team members trust each other? Are they engaged, or just going through the motions? Do they feel supported by their executives, or set up for failure?

These are big questions that clearly cannot be addressed by a diversity initiative alone, but we hope that our specific example of how diversity and an inclusive culture can positively impact the end-result will provide useful food for thought. While there are no absolute answers to the daunting problems that businesses face, there are steps you can take to nudge the probabilities in a favorable direction.

Episode 38: You can’t have Agile Planning without Building Models

Guest: Richard Creeth

Most businesses rely on spreadsheets as a tool to inform, and to drive decision-making. Often these spreadsheets contain models where certain inputs drive calculations to produce outputs. Examples of common calculations include [Units] * [Price] or sales projections. Because spreadsheets are so ubiquitous, easy and (sometimes) FUN to build models in, they tend to proliferate across businesses, like weeds. This is where well-known limitations around controls, auditability, scalability, collaboration and accuracy begin to dilute the benefits of using them. And yet – a business cannot succeed without these models.

In this episode Richard Creeth who is a physicist-turned-UK Chartered Accountant talks about the art and science of modeling a business, why it is indispensable, and how to transcend the limitations of spreadsheets to take full advantage of all that technology has to offer, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered predictive modeling.

Episode 37: Learning about Splunk

Guest: Jim Miller

It’s not easy keeping up with technology but one of QueBIT’s Master Consultants, Jim Miller, has found a neat way to do it: he writes technology books in his free time! Jim’s latest book, which will be available at the end of the month, is called Mastering Splunk 8.

In this episode Jim gives us a short introduction to what Splunk is, illustrated with real-life examples of how to put it to use. Then he takes us through his process for producing a book starting with inspiration and topic selection, all the way to technical research, writing and publishing.

If you find yourself curious to learn more about Splunk, you can order Mastering Splunk 8 on Amazon.com, and while you are there check out other books by Jim.

Episode 36: Analytics Shorts: 3 Stories

Guests: Christine Schoenen, Dan Viterise, Jim Miller

This week we are showcasing three of QueBIT’s expert consultants: Christine Schoenen, Dan Viterise and Jim Miller. They have so many great stores to tell, but very little spare time, so we came up with this idea of the three-minute-story. Tell us about a favorite project in about three minutes by recording it on your own phone, whenever you have a moment!

It’s a fun format, and you get to hear about a property manager in the hospitality industry, a global insurance company and a heavy equipment rental business … all in under 15 minutes!

Each of these companies had a different planning and analysis business problem that they solved using analytics technology and a little help from QueBIT. We hope these examples help you imagine the value analytics technology can bring. It goes far beyond merely saving time, reducing manual effort and better governance, important as these all are. What we strive for is to help companies improve the quality of their decision making, by presenting all the relevant information to each individual at the time they need it, and in a form they can readily consume.

Guest: Gary Quirke 

What do “cash forecasting” and “looking out for bears” have in common? Both these activities have existential consequences. The damage a bear can cause is obviously terrifying to think of, but if your company runs out of cash and you lose your job as a result it can be quite frightening too.

A company with a good model-driven cash forecasting process can anticipate cash problems far enough in advance to take mitigation steps, for example to delay payments, renegotiate terms or cut costs.

If its cash forecasting process is sufficiently detailed and supported by the right technology, a company will easily be able to consider a range of scenarios and prepare different plans ahead of time to be in the best possible position as reality plays out. Conversely, not having this capability is the equivalent of tripping over a bear cub with mama bear in sight.

In this week’s podcast episode we interview QueBIT CEO and UK Chartered Accountant, Gary Quirke, who gives us a quick lesson in cash forecasting, and the potential of analytics technology to take it to the next level.

Guest: AG Tan

Planning, forecasting, reporting and analysis are core business activities served by analytics technology. Many companies are busily re-doing plans and forecasts in response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, to figure out how to stay in business (when demand has plummeted) or how to maximize capacity (when demand has sky-rocketed). At the frontlines of all these efforts are financial analysts working in the corporate finance, treasury and operational planning functions. If they do a good job, better decisions are made, a company survives, jobs are saved, and the economic recovery is hastened.

This is extremely important work that is poorly understood, and little appreciated, by those who don’t do it for a living. Especially poorly understood is the qualitative value of giving financial analysts the right tools to manage data, build models, collaborate and share information. Companies that understand this are flying supersonic jets in comparison with companies that don’t, which are doing the equivalent of riding bicycles.

In this week’s episode we explain the critically important contribution of financial analysts, and point out a huge, neglected business opportunity!

This episode is sponsored by QueBIT, experts in analytics. 

Guests: Justin Croft and James Saronson

When there is so much going on around you that you can’t do anything about, it is helpful to reflect on the things you can control. If your job involves business planning and forecasting, it’s about becoming more comfortable with uncertainty. This can be done by exploring a range of possible scenarios ahead of time, so that you are prepared to act regardless of which scenario plays out.

There is nothing new in this concept: planners explore scenarios all the time.

But the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered the context in which planning and forecasting takes place. Most of all, it has compressed the timeline and increased the frequency. Annual budgets and quarterly forecasts will not be any use. Companies need to look at their business assumptions by month, by week or even by day! Analytics technology to support planning and forecasting functions evolve from being a nice-to-have, to being indispensable.

In this week’s podcast episode, Justin Croft and James Saronson – both data scientists – talk about specific ways in which technology can support planning and forecasting processes at times like these.

This episode is sponsored by QueBIT experts in analytics.