Data Talks Podcast

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This month, we’re joined by Scott Berinato, Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review and author of both Good Charts (2016) and The Good Charts Workbook (2019). We broaden our understanding of data visualization to include other types of information design, learn best practices for making better charts, and discuss what our visualization tools might do to facilitate good design.

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This month, we’re going to learn how to maximize the return on your BI implementation by empathizing with your user. Joining us for this conversation is designer, speaker, and founder of Designing for Analytics Brian T. O’Neill, an independent consultancy that helps companies apply human-centered design to data science and analytics. We explore how to assess users’ and stakeholders’ needs, serve a variety of users with one implementation, and make sure our BI is actually facilitating decision support — not just appearing to.

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This month, we’re turning our attention to the crucial role SaaS marketing teams play in the deployment of feature enhancements and major product updates. How do feature launches differ from initial product launches?  How do you reposition your product when it undergoes a revolutionary change? What’s the process for going to market again? Georgiana Laudi and Claire Suellentrop, co-founders of SaaS marketing and growth consultancy Elevate, join us to relay some critical advice on making the most of your feature launch.

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This month, we are rejoined by CloudKPI co-founder CEO Maeve Kneafsey for a discussion on reporting to investors for SaaS companies. Knowing which metrics to include at which stages of growth can be a challenge, as can getting at the stories behind those metrics. Kneafsey shares her expertise on the subject and explains how machine learning and predictive algorithms are helping SaaS providers surmount these reporting challenges.

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Did you know there are 43 different ways to calculate churn? This month, we get some much-needed guidance from CloudKPI co-founder Maeve Kneafsey on counting customers, measuring churn, and calculating customer acquisition cost (CAC) — it’s not as straightforward as it sounds. Should you count customers by contract, for example, or by logo? Should you keep your eye on both counts, and if so, to what end? We explore these and other nuances around summarizing SaaS performance.

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When most people think of BI, they think about extracting insights from their data, not about their data. This month, George Firican explains why BI can be a surprisingly effective tool in data quality auditing — particularly for organizations looking to save money by investing in multipurpose software. Firican’s expertise is informed by his work as the University of British Columbia’s Data Governance and Business Intelligence Director as well as his passion project Lights on Data.

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We talk to data visualization expert Allison Torban about preparing dashboards and their components on clients’ behalf. As a Data Visualization Designer for the American Enterprise Institute and host of the Data Viz Today podcast, Alli has extensive experience clarifying the goals and contexts around her clients’ data viz projects and working with them to build something appropriate and actionable. We learn some tricks of the trade and how they might be applied to the process of building out report and dashboard libraries for SaaS end users.

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VanillaSoft CMO Darryl Praill and his decades of marketing experience joins us to talk about sales metrics and how to build a high-performing sales dashboard tailored to a spectrum of stakeholders. We also learn what metrics SaaS sales teams should pay particular attention to and what common dashboarding missteps to avoid.

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Booz Allen Hamilton principal data scientist and executive advisor Kirk Borne explains “analytics-first” business strategy (not to be confused with data-first business strategy). We learn what it takes for businesses to begin doing data science and hear about companies who have found success in asking the right questions and establishing a culture of curiosity around analytics.

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We disambiguate some common BI buzzwords with entrepreneur and c-suite data analyst Lillian Taylor. Together with co-host Travis McGrath, we hack through forests of jargon using a machete of specificity and nerd out over pop culture and emerging tech.

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We follow data whisperer Jen Stirrup through the circles (rectangles?) of spreadsheet hell, learning how companies find their way there and what they must to do escape. Protip: put an executive in the lead if you want to make it out at all.

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We talk to PricewaterhouseCoopers Technology and Analytics Director Alex Rubin about his unusual work in sourcing, testing, and evaluating emerging technologies. As part of PWC’s tax division, Alex focuses on evaluating process discovery, intelligent automation, and data analysis solutions. We find out what he looks for in each of these technologies and what test cases he uses to push them to their limits.

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Senior Software Developer Dave Killough and VP of Product Development and Delivery Tom Gimpel of SofterWare about the data science behind their nonprofit fundraising platform, DonorPerfect. We find out what sorts of experiments they run, what insights they’ve uncovered, and how they use embedded BI to pass that value on to their clients.

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We bring on three-time entrepreneur and Exago CEO Mike Brody to discuss management strategy with Les Trachtman, six-time CEO successor and author of “Don’t F**k It Up: How Founders and Their Successors Can Avoid the Clichés That Inhibit Growth.” Being good at founding software startups doesn’t necessarily make you good at scaling them, but some smart tactical decisions can help you make the transition.

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Bryce Lee, Director of Product Management at Strategic Insurance Software (SIS or Sisware), and Marc Jorrens, Founder and Solutions Architect with Outbound Software, talk about why they chose to invest in embedded ad hoc business intelligence software and what impact that has had on their end users.

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Exago Support Manager Jeff Kalpakis talks shop with Zendesk Senior Advocate Manager Brian Harris, exploring such topics as team structure, internal communication, and what to do about those pie-in-the-sky enhancement requests.

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Kevin Smith of NextWave BI and Deanna Glinka of Quorum Software share tips and trade war stories from behind the front lines of data product management.

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John Myers of Enterprise Management Associates and Gary Hollis of FM:Systems discuss data security as it pertains to personal privacy and software as a service (SaaS) applications.

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Jason Kochel of WorkWave and Leo Daiuto of The Revolt Group talk about marketing BI to very different user groups.

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