Giovanni Monopoli is the Strategic Analysis and Financial Planning Manager within the Finance Department at QVC Italy.
Next month, he’ll be presenting at the Analytics 2014 conference in Frankfurt, Germany about how the broadcast channel uses analytics – specifically SAS Forecast Studio. With live broadcasts 17 hours a day, QVC needs real-time feedback on offer satisfaction to help it know its customers better and offer the right products.
I recently had the opportunity to get Monopoli’s thoughts on a myriad of topics including the latest trends in analytics and tips on getting into the industry.
What are some of the biggest trends in analytics right now and why are they so popular?
Monopoli: Social Media Analytics because the social network is one of the most disruptive new communication channels; the Big Data mainly driven by a technological improvement but maybe still without a fully understood use in the business and the Forecasting tools since now there are good tools to approach the topic.
What are some of the challenges and solutions for communicating data to your workforce?
Monopoli: The biggest challenge is to make it single and explain the direct impact on the business netting the communication from technicisms.
What changes do you predict will happen in the analytics field over the next 10 years?
Monopoli: I hope one of the trends to be the increased flexibility of the use of the analytics tool. I think still now we use business analytics tools (like SAS Enterprise Guide) to crunch numbers but still use Excel to prepare big and complex planning models. This is because Excel’s business analytics tools are powerful but not flexible.
What advice would you give students considering a job in analytics and those already in the workforce to put themselves in a position to pursue these jobs?
Monopoli: I’d suggest to take care of the communication phase of the results. Still too often I see young guys very smart in crunching numbers but ineffective in communicating the value of their job.
I’ll be interviewing Monopoli at the Analytics 2014 conference in Frankfurt on 4 June as part of the Inside Analytics video series. Do you have any other questions you would ask him? If so, please leave me a comment below.
