Analytics | Process | Strategy | Innovation | by Tan Wei Xiang

Author: twx

  • Make the Most Out of Your Business School Experience (NTU Nanyang Business School Graduate)

    Make the Most Out of Your Business School Experience (NTU Nanyang Business School Graduate)

    After attending business school for 3 years, here are some of the reflections which I have which may be beneficial to all who want to study at business school. Do note that this is an account from my own experience and many other students may experience vastly different experiences. Here are some tips from me to make the most out of your business school experience:

    1. Do as many internships as possible, across different industries, and different functions.

    While in Nanyang Business School, and many other business schools, we would have one compulsory internship which we may have to complete, I encourage you to go out of your comfort zone to experience the different industries. Some of the benefits include the following:

    Firstly, by having more internship experience, you can gain a better understanding of the world of business. Many industries operate in different styles and manners. Having experienced the automotive, information technology and medical device industries, I felt that despite having roles which were in business, in Talent Management, Market Research and Marketing, I could apply my business and analytics knowledge in a variety of ways. This allowed me a better understanding of how what I learn in school can be actively applied.

    Secondly, you have more touch points to stay as relevant as possible. You will get to understand what are the skillsets required by each industry, and you gain a head-start compared with other graduates without prior experience in the industry. An understanding of the business operations in the role would allow one to connect the dots and grow to understand more on business functions and responsibilities.

    Thirdly, culture. By having more internship experiences, you have the opportunity to compare the various kinds of cultures in each organisation. This would determine whether you believe that you fit into a particular company or industry. By seeing more types of cultures, as fresh graduates, we could also better discern what kinds of cultures fit our personal goals in developing as future business leaders.

    If you need help on looking for internships, this post may be useful:

    https://tanweixiang.com/ntu-nbs-internship-hunting-guide-tips-from-an-nbs-graduate-with-3-mnc-internship-experiences/

    2. Try to work with different people.

    While you may feel comfortable with just working with your closest pals sometimes, actively mixing it up once in a while allows the chance to tweak your working patterns to fit an ideal role.

    More often than not, when you are working with the same people across different modules, you end up fulfilling a particular role in the group, be it as the one who leads in the discussions, the contributor, task manager and so on, and this may be a missed opportunity in trying something different.

    By working with different people, you get the chance to get more creative and hone multiple skills, sometimes going just specifically on design and presentation, and other times managing extremely complex calculations. By actively switching up things, I found it an impressive learning opportunity for me.

    3. Surprise yourself by going out of your comfort zone.

    Many naysayers may say that in business school you are learning the same thing as everyone else, which means you are not really set apart from others. I would beg to differ.

    Some ways which I managed to actively surprise myself to grow my learning experience:

    • Joining over 7 communities during the course of my studies.
    • Starting a profit-making small business and collaborating managing the end-to-end of the business with both business and non-business students.
    • Going for an exchange programme to France where I had the chance to learn from many different cultures.
    • And so on…

    For me, I believe that my business school experience was a great opportunity to learn, grow, lead and serve. I hope that you would actively seek out internships, work with new people and go out of your comfort zone.

    In addition, if you liked reading about this post, do follow us on our LinkedIn Page. Also, you might know why I picked business analytics at Nanyang Business School!

    Image Credits: Original image by Wengang Zhai on Unsplash

  • What I Learned from Analysing 500 New Users Using Google Analytics

    What I Learned from Analysing 500 New Users Using Google Analytics

    Hi everyone! It’s been quite a while since we had a new analytics post. This time, we are doing some analytics on our own website here at https://tanweixiang.com/. Over the past two months, we have gained close to 500 new users, and therefore we decided to curate this special post as a reward to show some behind the scenes web analytics.

    Do read this post, click around, share it, for us to have more complex data to be analysed in future!

    A quick overview of Google Analytics, there are some general reports on Audience, Acquisition, Behaviour and Conversions. Audience is basically who views our posts. Acquisition answers the question on how we get the audience. Behaviour answers questions on what content our audience may be more interested in. We would not be writing about conversions as we have not researched too much into this yet.

    The types of reports available on Google Analytics.

    Audience

    1. Most of our Audience are from Singapore.

    For the past two months, Top 3 Audience are from Singapore, United States and Hong Kong.

    For the past two months, our top 3 Audience are from Singapore, United States and Hong Kong. It is aligned with our expectations as the content is mostly tailor made for Singapore, and shared through social media accounts with a high Singapore following.

    2. Most of our Audience access the website with a Mobile Phone or Tablet.

    Top 3 Systems used are Android, iOS and Windows.

    From this, we found out that 80% of our audience access the website using a mobile phone or tablet. Therefore, we know that it is important to keep our system optimised for mobile phones and tablets, which typically have a smaller screen size than laptops and desktops.

    Acquisition

    1. While Largely Driven by Social Media, We have grown a Direct Audience and Achieved some SEO.

    About a third of our audience comes through direct and search engine traffic.

    While social media remains the key to some of the post traffic, we are heartened that there is also a large amount of organic traffic coming in. With this, we feel more confident in curating original content for great readers like you.

    While we’re at this, do take a look at one of our posts which may have been missed on:

    Key Takeaways from my In-office turned Work-from-Home Internship

    2. Our Top Social Media Traffic is LinkedIn, While Instagram Follows Closely Behind

    Linkedin, Instagram and Facebook are our top 3 social media.

    LinkedIn remains as the top source where users visit. A key possibility is that the blog attract more readers in the Business sector. Being a blog on Analytics, Innovation, Marketing and Management, this is consistent with the expected audience. Instagram remains close behind as student content also drives some of the traffic for the website.

    Behaviour

    1. Our Readers Tend to stay on Each Page for 1.5 Minutes.

    The average time each user spends on a page.

    1.5 minutes is the current duration our readers tend to spend on a page. The implication could be that the content may or may not be interesting enough, or just the vast sea of content all around and there is not enough time to read through everything. When we manage our own digital posts, we could try to benchmark on how long to post, in order to ensure that the attention span of the audience is not overlooked.

    2. Our Top Pages includes the Root Domain, as well as posts catered to Business School/ University Life

    Our top 3 posts, as well as our main page.

    This summary of views by page title indicates the content which interests readers more. A good blog post generates great viewership, this is why we will continue to curate posts which interest you as the reader.

    That is all for the analysis for today! Hope you enjoyed, do follow us on our channels, we only have linkedin so far! https://www.linkedin.com/company/tanweixiang/

    To read some of our top posts, do click the links below:

    https://tanweixiang.com/ntu-nbs-internship-hunting-guide-tips-from-an-nbs-graduate-with-3-mnc-internship-experiences/
    https://tanweixiang.com/three-reasons-why-i-picked-a-specialisation-in-business-analytics-at-nanyang-business-school/
    Nanyang Business School: Business Analytics Module Selection Guide
  • Business Model Innovation: Photo Studio

    Business Model Innovation: Photo Studio

    For the first post in this Business Model Innovation series, I was inspired by a photo studio which I came across last week, I found the small business concept extremely innovative and decided that I would write the first post based on this. I’ll be analysing the business based on the Business Model Canvas. There may be many ways a business can be run, but I hope that this post can serve as a basis to explore your creativity.

    Unique Value Proposition

    To create and document unforgettable memories for (our customers).

    To strengthen the Unique Value Proposition (UVP), there will be a need for a clear definition on the customers.

    Customer Segments

    There are a few customers who will document important memories, to list a few important life events:

    1. Birth of a Child
    2. Graduation
    3. Wedding
    4. Other memorable events

    Based on this our target audience will be different. This is a segmentation by life cycle stage.

    Other possible segmentations can be geographic, psychographic, behavioural segmentation.

    Key Partners

    For the ease of analysis, we have chosen the customer as graduates and next we can think of potential partners. A key question is where the customer comes from, secondary school, polytechnics, university. In order to reach the customer, we establish some partners. Potential Partners can be the Ministry of Education, the various higher education institutions, special education institutions, the various student clubs.

    Key Activities

    Some key activities in this business value chain is lead generation, sales, the photography services, editing, finishing, as well as packaging of the final product.

    Other activities can include business functions like marketing, procurement, and other support functions.

    Key Resources

    The key resources of the business come from the partnerships, where you want to have exclusive rights to the customer, as well as potential incentives which you can offer. Having enough cashflow would also be important to ensure that the high overheads from studio rental. The staff would also be essential in securing sales and carrying out the business activity with standard.

    Customer Relationship

    The customer would first need to be baited in with something. A loss leader can be used or even offered for free to up-sell to different photography packages.

    The customer can also have loyalty benefits, early discount to lock them in and returning benefits, referral discount, etc. This is also the place where you can exercise your creativity.

    Channels

    The channels for your photo studio can be offline or online. The offline channels which could be explored includes booths at the locations offered by various partners, where the customer will be at. For graduation, the added benefit would be also schools will usually have designated vendors for the various segments in the event, every student who wants to attend the graduation will likely take notice of your business.

    Online channels through google AdWords or SEO can also generate potential leads to your website.

    Costs

    To list a few possibilities:

    1. Rental
    2. Salary
    3. Cost of Materials (Photo Frame and Photos)
    4. Cost of Capital (Photography Equipment, Photo Printer)
    5. Cost of Freebies
    6. Other Business and Support Costs

    Revenues

    To list a few possibilities:

    1. First Photo Sales
    2. Subscriptions
    3. Deposit for Advanced Booking
    4. Lifetime Membership Fee for future discounts
    5. Additional Add on Packages (e.g. finishing, larger photos, repeat prints, embossing, waterproofing, soft copy)

    That’s a photo studio business summarised in one page, do let us know if it worked for you and do let us know the other business models you may be interested in!

    Interested in exploring other business ideas? Do drop us a note at businessmodel@tanweixiang.com.

    If you loved our post, follow us on our LinkedIn for updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tanweixiang

    Do look at our analysis on hair salons too! You can also read our analysis on DIY Bakery.

    https://tanweixiang.com/business-model-analysis-hair-salon/

    Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash

  • Which Major to Pick? Business Analytics vs Marketing (Ex-NBS Student)

    Which Major to Pick? Business Analytics vs Marketing (Ex-NBS Student)

    As a recent business graduate, I was once faced with the choice to select my specialisation in business school. Two of the most important contenders being Business Analytics and Marketing. For the record, I have taken 6 Business Analytics Modules in Nanyang Business School, 1 Marketing Module in Nanyang Business School, and 2 Marketing Modules during my exchange at ESSEC Business School in France. I eventually decided after my first year to specialise in Business Analytics. I shall do a one by one comparison by features so you could make the informed choice in knowing what you want to specialise in.

    Career Prospects

    Let’s face it, most of us come to business school with the intention to focus on our careers. This shall be the first point which I will focus on.

    As a Business Analytics Graduate, what I observed is that Business Analytics Students are very versatile. A large proportion would decide to go into Banking, Technology and Consulting related roles as business analysts, data analysts, financial analysts, operations analysts, marketing analysts, human resource analysts, etc. There would also be a certain proportion who will end up in leadership programmes organised by the various multinational companies due to the fluid nature of analytics being applicable to many walks in management!

    For Marketing Students, classmates who I have met tend to be interested in a variety of careers. A significant portion would aim to go into the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) or Retail sector, or into Marketing Agencies, focusing on branding, trade marketing, social media, e-commerce, sales among many other possible roles. There would also be some students who move on to B2B marketing, non-profit organisations or Human Resources. Marketing also similarly can be applied to many walks in management and are also highly sought after by leadership programmes.

    Be it whether you’re a Business Analytics or Marketing Student, this post may be relevant for you!

    https://tanweixiang.com/ntu-nbs-internship-hunting-guide-tips-from-an-nbs-graduate-with-3-mnc-internship-experiences/

    Quantitative Content

    For Business Analytics, the quantitative content tends to be the massive amount of coding involved. I have personally been involved in Python, SQL, R, SAS, Tableau, PowerBI, Excel projects among many others. It is also important to understand the underlying assumptions behind each of the statistical models which are used when doing analysis. Some of the models include regressions, decision trees, linear and non linear programming, association rules etc. This content is generally more applicable to the wide business context.

    For Marketing, there is some quantitative content. I shall use the example of the marketing module which I took in NTU, Marketing Analytics, where we did a variety of analysis, with perceptual mapping, Customer Lifetime Value Calculations, Regressions, Conjoint Analysis. This content is more specific to the marketing and management context.

    Qualitative Content

    For Business Analytics, there is a focus on problem solving approaches, problem formulation, analysis and conclusion, along with recommendations. It is a rather standard but important framework.

    For Marketing, there is more qualitative content, including creative problem solving, connecting the dots between the theory and practice.

    Classmates

    For Business Analytics, in Nanyang Technological University, there is a good mix of classmates, with a third of the cohort being students who take computing classes. This means that you could learn from the computing perspective, coupled with your own business knowledge.

    For Marketing, classes tend to be majority business students, with a sprinkle of social science students occasionally. There will likely be more knowledge exchange while in class and expect class participation to be extremely exciting!

    Tutors

    For Business Analytics, tutors tend to come from a variety of fields, with some who have a mathematical and programming background, and others with business management and consulting backgrounds.

    For Marketing, tutors tend to come mainly from the business management sector, specifically in the consumer business industries.

    Mode of Assessment

    For Business Analytics, the mode of assessment is commonly group project heavy, with it taking up a majority of the semester time even outside of class, as well as some quizzes. Out of my 6 modules, only one had a formal final examination, and every module had at least one project deliverable.

    For Marketing, the key focus is on in class activities, quizzes and final examinations. Besides some readings and exam preparation, most of the learning is done inside of the classroom while interacting with one another. You may have a bit more of a work life balance while doing marketing modules, but they definitely require in classroom attendance.

    This is my two cents worth when comparing Business Analytics and Marketing!

    Follow me on my newest journey of Adult learning in marketing:

    Why I decided to return to University while Working Full Time

    Do read this article for why I took Business Analytics.

    https://tanweixiang.com/three-reasons-why-i-picked-a-specialisation-in-business-analytics-at-nanyang-business-school/

    For more on how to maximise your business school experience,

    Make the Most Out of Your Business School Experience (NTU Nanyang Business School Graduate)

    Photo Credits: Photo by Samson on Unsplash

  • Key Takeaways from my In-office turned Work-from-Home Internship

    Key Takeaways from my In-office turned Work-from-Home Internship

    Hey everyone! Hope that you had a fulfilling summer break or work from home experience. I am writing this post today as many of us have probably been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and had our lives affected in one way or another. My Product and Digital Marketing Internship was also shifted home halfway through.

    Here are some key takeaways from my experience working from home which I hope would inspire you to make the most out of your experiences.

    1. Learn New Skills

    One of my projects which I did during my internship was to create logistic regression models using customer relationship management system data, in order to drive sales in the company. As we shifted to work from home, I was initially a bit disappointed that we could not delve deeper into the logistic regression models which I originally wanted to spend more time on perfecting. However, the change to work from home also meant I had to do something with the time! I was fortunate to be given the chance to instead help out with the social media management, a golden opportunity for someone who is still a student.

    While I have done my own social media projects previously, managing one for an MNC was a different story altogether. There were key performance metrics which helped in tracking and managing the social media used.

    On a side note, I also took the chance to document the process of perfecting the logistics regression model, and develop a standard for the next person taking up the CRM analytics role!

    2. Agile and Relevant Projects

    The COVID-19 pandemic allowed the opportunity to explore many new opportunities in terms of product marketing, with many of the projects targeted at trends which occured during COVID-19, such as the increased importance of hygiene faced by consumers. It was really fulfilling to gather market intelligence in a real-time basis as the situation was constantly evolving!

    3. Experience a New Form of Collaboration

    While I personally believe in the importance of being able to speak to colleagues in person to gain insights, the chance to work from home has given me the chance to collaborate with colleagues online. This new form of collaboration included online meetings and setting regular checkpoints to chat with colleagues on the progress of a project as we no longer had the luxury of being seated right next to one another. For me, this allowed me time to think through my projects with different lenses before checking back with my colleagues on the progress.

    Some food for thought…

    No matter what the situation, always try to seize it as an opportunity. What do you see around you which could help you learn? While it may seem to be devastating to have your plans derailed, look out for the silver lining which could still cushion the impact and maximise your learning experience!

    Tough times don’t last! Tough people do! Press on everyone!

    If you liked this article, do read on my guide to searching for your next internship!

    https://tanweixiang.com/ntu-nbs-internship-hunting-guide-tips-from-an-nbs-graduate-with-3-mnc-internship-experiences/

    Having a new internship? Here are some rules I follow for success:

    4 Internship and Work Rules to Succeed in Management Functions

    Need a break? Here’s a list of things you could still do in Singapore during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

    9 Things to do Alone in Singapore (COVID-19 New Normal Special)

    Image Credits: Photo by Tina Witherspoon on Unsplash