The evolution of data analytics

Jeremy Coughlin is Vice President of Enterprise Analytics at Coast Capital Savings, responsible for enabling organizations to effectively leverage data. He has a background in psychology (BSc.) and business (MBA) and has been working in the analytics profession for over 20 years. Jeremy is also a board member of the BC Technical Safety Council and a volunteer board member of the Vancouver Analysis Committee and the North Delta Sunfish Swim Club.

How has the field of data analytics evolved over the years?

Business operations have long benefited from data analytics. However, in today’s world, the capabilities and methods used to create, collect, and use data have advanced significantly. As a result, data analytics is now seen as a tool that can help us differentiate ourselves from the competition and deliver more value to consumers.

For example, I work for Coast Capital Savings, a credit union with approximately 600,000 members, making it the largest credit union in Canada by number of members. The biggest problem with credit unions is that people don’t know what they actually are or why they are different from banks, which is why most people don’t know about credit unions and don’t pay much attention to them.

Credit unions do the same things as banks that we offer, mortgages, bank accounts, debit cards and credit cards, all the same things, but we are member-owned. This means we are not accountable to shareholders and the only people we hope to serve are our members. So it’s a very fundamental difference. So when you look at banks that they’re interested in, they may be raising fees to increase shareholder profits, but that’s not our interest. So once you explain this to someone, they might consider starting a credit union.

The most important thing is to align your work with the organization’s vision

The reason people don’t understand credit unions now is that when credit unions did come out, they were essentially serving the so-called underserved. So the people who are underserved or underbanked are people who live in remote geographical communities, or they work like fishermen and really don’t have good money movement and banks don’t like to work with them. So credit unions came into being so that people could come together to buy things like houses. But the world has changed a lot now, and things like geographical isolation are no longer the same. So when people look and say, well, why would you know, why credit unions don’t make sense anymore, that’s where the data comes in. , they’re leveraging the data that’s there to make profits for their shareholders and their owners. And credit unions, our only goal is of course to make the financial lives of our members better. So we want to use the data in the same way , just to make their lives better. That’s why data is so important to my role. That’s the driving force behind everything I do.

What challenges are faced in the field of data analytics and how can they be effectively mitigated?

Since our entire practice is now moving into the cloud, our biggest challenge today is finding people with good cloud experience, which is difficult. In my experience, I’ve found that we have a lot of open positions all the time, but it’s hard to find good talent to compete with the likes of Amazon and Facebook. So we spend a lot of effort recruiting and finding the right talent, and more time creating training materials, creating documentation, hiring more junior people, and being a place where people can grow and learn.

What are the technology trends impacting the enterprise analytics market today?

So the technology landscape has become so complex and it’s moving so fast that one of the biggest challenges you find is when you even start a project as you call it, you identify the needs, you find the tools, you find You get people to do it, you have a budget, you have everything organized, you’re starting this project, and like, as you’re starting it, you realize there’s something new that you might want to change What is being done, because there is already another way of doing things, maybe even better.

So you’re constantly rethinking your plans and you’re constantly saying, okay, should we go another direction or should we get this done and see where we are now. Therefore, rapid changes and different options and tools create a very complex management scenario. How do you know what is best for your organization because there are many right ways to do things, and there are many right answers. So it’s very complex.

What best practices should businesses adopt to stay ahead of the competition?

The most important thing is to align your work with the organization’s vision. For most people there is a lot to do, a lot of good and a lot of work to do, so how do you decide what to do next or what to focus on. So the most important thing I find is to really dig into the core mission that your organization is trying to achieve and focus on that. Because there’s so much noise, everyone’s asking for all kinds of different data, everyone’s asking for reports, everyone’s asking for so much. So how do you decide, what do you do to me? You look at those requests, you look at you and everything around you, you compare them to your mission statement, and then you say, which requests are closest to the mission that we’re trying to drive. Those are the things we really focus on. And then you communicate that to your stakeholders and say, listen, this is why we’re doing this in the first place, because this is how it ties into our strategy. While that’s true of everything else, they’re all good ideas.