Hello Karandeep, you are Head of Analytics & Insights at Digital Annexe. Please, tell us about the relevance of digital/web analytics for your work. What are you doing in this field, and where do you want to go within the next year?
Analytics is at the heart of what I do to earn my living. Whether it is tagging a digital asset (sites, apps, wearable devices) or to solve a data quiz, it’s all related to digital analytics. I am a hard core practitioner plus digital analytics trainer and role my sleeves up to get my hands dirty to improve conversion. Next few months are looking very promising as we are picking a lot on our training products which are keeping me really busy but one which I am looking to expand on is wearable analytics. With all those sophisticated gadgets in the market, it is vital to understand how much they are contributing as a ‘device’ to improve overall funnel conversion.
According to the Harvard Business Review, being a data scientist is the sexiest job of the 21st century. What makes your profession so sexy? Do you consider yourself as a data scientist, or rather something different?
I believe every job is sexy if you enjoy doing it. This profession is really specialist and you need to be aware of everything from top to bottom to find the hidden gems of information from underlying numbers. Data Scientists not only prepare all the roadmap and architecture to get the right numbers into the system properly but look for those hidden small/big winning situations for the businesses to bring more revenue.
What mobile device can you not live without?
My smartphone Google Nexus 5 (I think I am obsessed with Google).
Can we take a peek at your phone’s home screen?
What app do you use most often?
Whatsapp!
What social media network or website do you frequent most when you’re not working?
Twitter and Linkedin
What’s the first thing you check on your phone in the morning?
A daily commandment (Hukamnama) from the Golden Temple, Amritsar – A message from The Lord – Guru Granth Sahib. This is 500 yr old practice which most of the Sikhs follow around the world
Take me through your typical workday.
I don’t know what a “typical” day looks like….but I wake at 4:30am and do meditation for atleast 30min if not more. Leave home at 6:20 to catch 6:37 train (from Leicester) to London. Reach my desk around 8:15ish and clear my queue or high priority emails. This is my most productive hour and a half until the team starts to roll in. Most of my day time is spent in meetings and emails. At this stage, my primary activities are focused around global expansion. I’m dealing with various client engagements, fine tuning internal procedures, preparing for speaking engagements, and talking with professional (analysts mainly) solving their ‘numbers’ related issues.
Which professional challenge keeps you up at night?
A day before the public trainings always keep me awake to get me as much prepared as possible.
What has been the most exciting work development this year?
The launch of our public training products has been (so far) the greatest this year. It’s been really successful and opening new avenues for us.
How many miles have you travelled this year?
13000+ so far (4 months still to go)
Can you tell us something about yourself that your team would be surprised to know?
10 years ago, I was going around with two girls, both of them were very close friends but they never got to know about 3 of us. This carried for almost 1.5 years and eventually we all ended up breaking. Even to-date both of them don’t know that was going around back in those days under the nose of each other. That was cheeky!
What other career would you like to try?
I would like to become a Royal Air Force pilot if given a second chance.
What is the last business book you read?
Building a Data Analytics Organization by Judah Phillips
Outside of your company’s efforts, what marketing campaign or video caught your eye recently?
Tweet a coffee from Starbucks and British Airways’ ‘Magic’ Billboards
What makes the topic of your session “Five statistical concepts every digital analyst should know” so important and relevant?
I believe an incorrect statistical approach to the data analysis is of not much use. Many a times, a nice of piece of analysis incepted using wrong engine, sometimes even incompetent driver end up with nothing but another dump report. Making it all more difficult to understand what those numbers actually mean. This topic will discuss those critical building blocks that need consideration to avoid the misrepresentation of data.
What can the participants of your session expect from your presentation – and what do you expect from the attendees?
Participants should expect some interesting real life examples and statistical techniques which can help in optimising overall customer behaviour.
I would expect that attendees engage themselves and ask or share some of their own similar experiences (if any).
Please make a prediction for digital analytics: what comes beyond big data and what trends drive digital/web analytics in the upcoming 1-2 years?
I believe the focus is now more and more on conversion optimization using data analytics. Now if you combined these terms areas you end up getting can be termed as ‘conversion analytics’ which will be the hot topic in coming few months. Unlike ‘Growth-Hacking’, this will focus only and only on analytics driven conversion bringing more business and value which every client love to have.
And one more personal question: what is your favourite digital/web analytics tool, algorithm or method? And why?
Google Analytics – It’s Powerful, Easy to Use and in most cases Free