Datamum

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of your organization?

Our organization is a major university in Tennessee.  At the time, Stephanie Thompson[owner of Datamum] worked for us.  We have an enrollment of 22,000 to 23,000 students. We are four-year public, doctoral degree, research-intensive university.

What is your role and responsibilities?

My current role is the associate vice provost for information technology services.  When Stephanie and I worked together, we were both associate directors of our respective units. I was over the desktop support and the server support technical group and she worked in the office of institutional research doing business intelligence and statistical reports, reporting.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge that your organization was trying to address?

I’m familiar with a couple of the things that she worked on.  One project that we had that was pretty big was called SETE.  That was the Student Evaluation of Teaching Effectiveness.  She did a great deal of work on that.  That was a system that gathered responses from students about their experiences in courses with regard to how the instructors performed. Stephanie’s role in the project was to take that data and perform any necessary analytics to create appropriate analyses for individual faculty members or departmental aggregate information and for college aggregate information. She then created all the correct recordings for all of the different segments.

We worked together to try to offload that work onto some of the departmental servers, to free up the work stations.  She was very involved in that. She was very interested in doing as much as she could do to automate things and increase efficiency. She was very easy to work with. 

SOLUTION

What technologies were used for that project?

We used SAS because our department configured and supported their SAS server and everyone was using SAS on the desktops.  We worked together to get the SAS desktop clients to integrate with the server. I think we were using SAS/CONNECT .

Can you please provide a sense of the initiative in dollar terms?

From a budgetary standpoint, we already had the hardware infrastructure and the application software already in place. Some cost was required for the online piece but it wasn’t an expensive project.

When was that project completed?

The SETE system has been in place for six or seven years. It was definitely completed during her tenure.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have stats or metrics to track improvement?

When we implemented the new method, our participation rates went up. The ease of the new data tool through our centralized portal drove participation rates up. They didn’t have to deal with paper anymore. It was easy for the students to quickly complete it.

How did Stephanie[owner of Datamum] perform?

She and I had a great working relationship.  She has a very good grasp of technology. She takes a lot of initiative to use new technologies or find better ways to do things.

When working with Stephanie [owner of Datamum], what is unique or special?

One of the things that always struck me about her and still does is her thoroughness. When she gets into a project, she really digs into it. And she really is able to quickly learn the data and what it means to the constituents.

She worked directly with the provost office, the vice president of academic affairs at the time to make sure that the reporting and everything met his needs. She enjoyed a very good working relationship with the stakeholders. I think people really felt that the work was really good.

One of the things I always liked about Stephanie was being able to talk with her about data. She can talk about data. She can talk about coding. She was very thorough in those regards.

She is also very actively involved in SAS. She’s very involved in the SAS meetings and their international conference. She helps coordinate some of those sessions. She helps coordinate our regional events. She’s very engaging in that regard. She is very involved in training other people to use SAS, to write SAS code. I believe she’s taken on some very large projects dealing with SAS. I would definitely say that she’s a SAS expert.

Looking back on that project and your work with her in general, is there any area that you think she could improve upon or maybe you would do differently?

I only worked with Stephanie in a lateral role. There were no great weakness that stood out. She was professional and businesslike.  And when she got the specs for a project, she got down to business.

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of your company?

We are a large automotive corporation that is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. We are based in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. We sell auto parts and also fix cars. We have around 20,000 employees nationwide and about $2 billion in revenue.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the vice president of merchandising for auto parts. I am responsible for making sure that each store has the right amounts of parts that are in demand locally. That means that we need more American parts for areas like Detroit, but more Japanese parts for motorists in areas like Los Angeles.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your company's business goals for this particular project?

We needed to develop statistical models for different areas for our automotive products. These forecasting models were designed to improve inventory efficiency and increase turns. This will allow us to sell more in each store and reduce lost sales. Of course, the whole idea is to improve profits.

SOLUTION

How did you select SPSS and SAS software?

We trusted SPSS at the time because they were the experts in their field. We found out that they didn't always understand the automotive industry. We hired Stephanie [the owner of Datamum] to validate their data models. She knows the automotive industry better than SPSS. She also did some separate work for us using SAS to validate the different data models.

What was your process for selecting Datamum to work with?

Stephanie and I used to work together at another large automotive part corporation. I have always known her to be a great analyst that is an expert in SAS. She also knows the automotive industry in and out, which was the determining factor. I'm glad we hired her to look at SPSS' ideas and models.

What parts of the project was Datamum involved with?

We built many databases in-house and our team needed helped validating them. Her job was to validate these models and determine if they would actually help out operationally. She determined that the SPSS models weren't valid and that we needed more robust data capture. She worked closely with us and with the SPSS group to find the best solution.

Can you give us a sense of the size of the initiative either in dollar terms or personnel hours?

The project cost was five figures for Stephanie's part. We also had three or four people from SPSS working on it for three months. It was a large effort. Also, we will make new data models soon, and I'm pretty sure we will hire her again.

When was the project completed?

Early this year. I can't remember exactly.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project, do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement?

The project was successful although it was technically a failure. We discovered that our existing data models were not valid. They weren't going to help our organization improve sales efficiencies. Stephanie discovered that, and we are very happy that she did. We need to improve the data capture process for better forecasting. She will help us with the next steps, but she ensured that we didn't waste more time and money on incorrect forecasts.

How did Datamum perform?

They were great. Stephanie really knows her stuff. Everyone knows that she is a SAS expert and a solid analyst. The main reason we hired her is her automotive experience. I can't emphasize that enough.

When working with Datamum, what is unique or special about them compared to other companies?

She takes a nuanced view of the industry while providing expert data analytics. That is extremely difficult to find.

Is there any area that you think Datamum could improve upon or maybe you would do differently?

I can't think of anything actually.