Welcome to my blog that is dedicated to field of analytics, a source of fascination and passion.

We strive to include insights in this blog that span not only diverse industries but also insights from professionals around the globe. Our goal is to share our own best practices to transform data into useful knowledge and then to leverage insights to facilitate decision making or targeting.  We encourage diversity of thought as well as respectful dissension.

Companies spend millions of dollars on analytics and research, many times without tangible benefit.   Questions may be asked to answer a hunch or simply because the answer would be interesting.   In most cases, I will argue, the “what will we do with this information once we have it” is not tied to the questions themselves.  The consequences are wasted shareholder resources and missed opportunities or, ultimately, the diminution or demise of the company.  To be a worthwhile use of resources, the potential usefulness of the insights to be gleaned from the analytic process should be ascertained.  How will those insights be used?  How will the results contribute to the bottom line?  Analytic research results in very useful, insightful information but must be approached in a practical insight-directed way.

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About Taymour Matin, Hidden-Insights Blog Founder

Most recently, I have led the brokerage analytic team for Wells Fargo Advisors.  Prior to the Wachovia / Wells Fargo merger, I was hired by Wachovia Bank from General Electric, where I was employed the prior seven years.   The GE  experience enabled me to bring innovation and thought leadership that I honed in the private label credit card industry (PLCC) into the brokerage world.  At Wachovia, I was hired to develop and lead the analytic group for its capital management business.  Prior to joining the bank, I had no experience in the brokerage but was hired to inject new ideas into the business.

To show the transferable nature of analytics, I have conceptualized and developed a lead-generation program (triggered by client life-event changes) that increased incremental assets by approximately $16 million over a four-month period.  I have created the underlying methodology for an IRA pilot using predictive modeling to identify clients’ propensity for IRA rollovers.  The estimated opportunity for the pilot itself was $2 billion in incremental assets.  In addition, I have performed market sizing on mortgage lending opportunity for Wachovia Securities, leading to 2007 launch of Net Interest Income initiative that contributed an additional $55 million in net new assets.  These accomplishments began as simple insights that were made actionable in a span of three years in the most turbulent period in the company’s history.   What are the factors that led to this success?

Well, as you know, I did not possess any brokerage experience so it is safe to rule out industry experience.   I outline a few ingredients that I believe contributed to this success.

1) Persuasive communication and a passion for “doing” – actually using the knowledge and insights to make or save money.   However, passion alone is not enough.  It is necessary to take a relatively complicated analysis or methodology and translate it into layman’s English at several levels.  First, the opportunity must be estimated and justified at the senior leadership level in the form of a business case.  Next, a case for a project needs to be made using clear and persuasive communication skills at the middle management level.   Since most of the “action” happens at the field level (in the brokerage example, by Financial Advisors), a “play book” that meticulously outlines how the plan will be executed by mostly non-analytic sales people is imperative.  Finally, a commitment to objectively measure the impact of what has been done is necessary.  If a project did not result in a success, courage is needed to admit it, learn from the mistakes, and move on.

2) Transferable Analytical Skills – data mining, analysis, modeling, segmentation, etc. were all used at Wells Fargo Advisors.  Although these skills are not industry specific, knowing the data is industry specific.  My team, also relatively new to brokerage, acquired this knowledge via on the job training and the helpful guidance of experts.  The cool thing about analytics is that this tool set can not only be applied in different industries, but the application of a proven technique in a new industry results in something entirely new.  For example, the life-event triggers that resulted in $16MM incremental assets at Wells Fargo was in many ways very different than the product triggers that my team developed at General Electric using SKUs.

3) Project Management and Organizational Skills – thankfully, these skills were relatively transferable as well as the analytic skills.  It is critically important to organize the analytically driven project whether or not it is being led by a PM.   What is the objective of the project and how can you solve the problem using analytics?  Having a good notion of what the end state looks like and then working backwards will help ensure that your map of specific action steps is always on target.   I have seen many solid ideas foiled in execution as the plan – often very detailed, doesn’t tie back to the end-state vision.