It’s Magic – The National Data Analytics & Insight Conference

Last week we were back at The National Data, Analytics & Insight Conference 2016, hosted by The Forum, which, once again proved to be a great success. The Forum gave an overview of where our industry is right now which was followed by some best practice seminars, split across Customer Insight, Quality and Customer Experience focussed sessions.

There were lots of ideas and improvement initiatives shared which gave the 200 strong audience much to take back to the office to help drive their continuous improvement and customer transformation programmes.

Ian Robertson, Customer Contact Specialist at The Forum, started the day off with a magical start.

Who knew that magic was so insightful and thanks to Ian, I also have a new magic trick to delight TeamDJ with at our Christmas Party……..but back to the conference.

Ian explored how techniques used by magicians can also be used to help us find ways around barriers within our organisations.  See more here

In addition to magic.  Ian talked about ‘Interacting with Key Stakeholders’ which developed into a theme of the day and is something  that is of increasing priority in the roles I am helping recruit for in my daily activities.

To make data insightful it must be presented in a clear manner. Ian’s top takeaways were:

• Define the actual needs
• Break the problem up into manageable stages
• Don’t confuse your audience – keep it simple
• Explore alternative solutions
• Look for transferable ideas and techniques

The next session I attended was by Jamie Wilde and Adam Jones from Geoban, who are the Data Analytics and Customer Insight Team of the Year. Geoban have been on a very exciting journey over the last 12 months and have developed some great customer insight for their stakeholders. One key takeaway from this session for me, was the way they use and present data – they have automated their reports and also have given their stakeholders access to self-service analytics – this allows the user to find what they want and helps keep it simple for them to get the information they require, whilst allowing the team to develop better business reports the business wants and needs.

Next up was Andrew Riddell, Analyst of the year from Anglian Water,  who offered a great insight on the growth and development of the team he works in.  Andrew and his colleagues at Anglian Water have developed some informative dashboards which have allowed the organisation to grow, develop and get a better understanding of their customers. Andrew had some top takeaways to consider , which were:

• Understand your own roadmap to drive continuous improvements
• Look outside yourself and organisation – often the solution already exists
• Share best practice and experiences
• REPEAT!!!! – Dashboards do not last forever.

Andrew also spoke about how Anglian Water has embraced Myers Briggs behavioural profiling to help develop a knowledge base of the types of Analyst they employ and need for the future and the behaviours that will make effective employees in the future.   This has created some insightful and interesting results which they are now able to use as part of their recruitment process.  This was something particularly interesting to myself, as Douglas Jackson Search have recently launched a new upgraded recruitment platform to include behavioural profiling amongst other tools to help our clients select the best and ‘right fit talent for their roles, more details can be found below.

The afternoon session explored the move from MI & Reporting to valuable Insight. This session started with keynotes from Vicki Clasper and Andrew Alexander from Sainsbury’s Bank.   We learnt how Sainsbury’s Bank have used power BI to improve their analytical processes by reducing manual processes, giving them more time to add value and reduce the risk of errors.

This was followed by Marie Montoya, Operations Analyst from RSA. Marie’s presentation was helping analysts to get their message across and present their data in the most compelling way.

Stage one: Make the message clear:

• Each page/slide tells a single, clear message which is evidenced by the data in your chart
• The messages from each page/slide combine to tell the story you want your audience to take away

Stage two: Present the data simply:

• Determine the message that you want to get across to our stakeholder
• Identify the comparison and pick the right chart
• Present it simply/minimise the clutter.

The day ended with a very inspiring keynote from Mark Davis, Deputy Director – Contact Centre Services at Environment Agency. Mark expressed the importance of conferences like this and how the information shared helps ‘sharpen your saw’, helping you improve your knowledge and make you job easier to challenge and share ideas with other specialists across your industry.

Thank you to the team at The Forum for another great event!

If you would like to find the presentations from the Event or more information about the forum please see here

How did you find the event? What did you go there to gain? Or even share? It would be great to hear from you.

If you are interested to know more about utilising video assessment and or, behavioural profiling as part your recruitment selection, then contact me on 01543 308 669 or, Perry@douglas-jackson.com for a free no obligation demonstration, information and or, advice. Watch the video here.

Perry Fletcher is a Recruitment Consultant at Douglas Jackson, specialising in recruiting technical, analytics and support roles including; Resource Planning, WFM, Management Information, Business Intelligence, Big Data, Customer Insight, Telephony and CRM.