MCGUIRK ANALYTICS & CONSULTING

I often think back to very sound advice I received from my mentor early in my analytics career. As someone that did not have a significant client-facing role at that point in my career, his advice to me as I worked on analytic projects was to make sure I could always explain, justify, and defend each and every decision and recommendation I made as I progressed through the analysis. To put myself in the shoes of the client and fully anticipate and understand their needs and th

As more and more businesses begin to adopt customer-centric business practices, they are exploring new ways to capture customer feedback that will inform and inspire decision-making that leads to better customer experiences. Many companies have implemented Voice of the Customer (VOC) programs that allow them to do the following: Listen to customers – Ongoing collection of timely and relevant customer data Analyze customer feedback – Use of analytic techniques to turn data int

O.K. Jim McKay (R.I.P), I have not exactly “spanned the globe to bring a constant variety of sports” insights, but I did attend the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference for the first time last week and I was not disappointed! The event includes a tremendous line-up of league and team operations heavyweights, sports media personalities, authors and analytic firms doing some amazing things in the world of sports analytics. A couple of WOW moments for me included the following:

I have recently been spending a good deal of time reading and learning about human-centered design thinking. Particularly books about creative confidence and design thinking authored by David Kelley and Tom Kelley, brothers and founder (David) of one of the leading design firms in the world, IDEO. Yes, this is a departure from spending an exorbitant amount of time developing the left-side of my brain. In one of their books, the term Hybrid Insights is used to describe the mor

In today’s business environment, more and more companies are adopting customer-centric business practices. According to marketing and CX experts Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, the authors of Managing Customer Experience and Relationships, customer-centric businesses ensure that the customer is at the center of a business philosophy, operations and ideas. From my perspective, these customer-centric practices provide benefits to both consumers and businesses. Consumers benefit

For many years, the customer research and analytic business functions have operated as largely independent practices within organizations. This was understandable as new analytic techniques and approaches were just starting to be implemented in early adopter departments such as sales, marketing and CRM. But now that analytics has reached a similar level of maturity as research, change is necessary. Continuing to operate as two independent business functions is suboptimal. Bef