What can I do with a master's in Management Analytics? Part four: Consumer Insights

Print | PDF

The previous three articles in this series have focused mainly on the ways in which analytics professionals operate within the world of banking and finance, but there are many more places where individuals with a background in math and business can make a contribution.

Two decades into the 21st century and the trends are unmistakable – the information age now drives the majority of business, government, and individual decisions. But how did big data get such esteemed status so quickly and become, as some observers have dubbed it, ‘the new oil?’

To answer this question, we can look to Joe Lyons-Rising (BA Econ ’02), whose career marks the sudden spread of insight-driven business intelligence.

“Analytics and data science weren’t really careers on my radar 20 years ago,” says Lyons-Rising. “These kinds of courses were more suited to math or science programs, not something you’d normally take in business school. All that’s changed now, and it shows you how much the industry is aiming toward more standardized, empirical processes and decision-making.”

Lyons-Rising originally didn’t want to go to business school. His educational plans included becoming a mechanical engineer and working in the applied sciences.

“It was my step-father who sat me down one day and told me he saw me following in my family’s footsteps and going into business.”

An entrepreneurial drive ran in the family, as Lyons-Rising’s grandfather founded the slipper and shoe manufacturer Tender Tootsies after WWII – a company the family controlled until the 1980s.

Lyons-Rising took the good advice and enrolled in the Lazaridis School’s celebrated economics program with a management option. While in fourth-year, he began meeting up regularly with some friends at William’s Coffee near campus. The weekly get-togethers eventually led to a business venture for the three friends.

“While the business didn’t go as planned, I got the experience of wearing many different hats,” says Lyons-Rising. “During the same time, I had a good friend whose first job after Laurier was working at the market research firm, AC Nielsen.”

In talking with his friend at AC Nielsen about her job, Lyons-Rising began to get excited about the prospect of going into business intelligence full-time, which he did, eventually rising to director of customer insights at Sofina Foods Inc. and founding his own business.

“Business can be a little bit arbitrary depending on which area you are in,” says Lyons-Rising. “What I find most interesting and satisfying about data management is the science that follows a set process. I appreciate the scientific approach you have to take in order to do business analytics and business intelligence well.”

Lyons-Rising recalls one of the more involved projects he worked on while he was customer information manager at McCain Foods.

Category management is a term used to describe everything to do with a product’s packaging, branding, sizing, and understanding of how that product is used or consumed. Lyon-Rising worked on a team that was involved in completely resetting the category for frozen potato products – the foundational product at McCain Foods.

“We brought together specialists in consumer insights, marketing, sales, and finance, working as a cross-functional team for two years. We took a step back and asked, ‘what does the frozen potato category really mean when it comes to eating occasions?’”

As a brand with 50 years of history at that point, McCain Foods had not asked fundamental questions like that, and as a result, not much had changed about their practices, according to Lyons-Rising.

“We had to collect all the best data we had and started to use this information to make decisions about how to re-classify the category,” explains Lyons-Rising. “This led to different decisions being made such as putting all the snacking items together for the first time. Our demographic insights from Statistics Canada showed that smaller, one- and two-person households now represented 60 per cent of the population. This represented a big opportunity for frozen potatoes as sharable snacks.”

After two years of work, Lyons-Rising’s business intelligence team had reset the frozen potato category and watched as new products and marketing campaigns spun out from the work they had done to understand the company and its customers better.

“It was really satisfying to see this happen,” he says. “This was the point it all began being driven by data – sales data, demographic data, consumer behaviour data. All of it gets distilled into making the best decision about what moves product.”

Collecting and analyzing all those data can be a daunting task even for a professional like Lyons-Rising.

“What you’re looking for is what we call, ‘the big and different’ because with so many data, you can get analysis-paralysis.”

“Once you start to look at the big numbers and see how they are different from the other numbers, you can identify the swings and those paths often lead to insights.”

Lyons-Rising explains how hard facts like data are critical to the art of effective storytelling. In his current role as founder of Data Gives Back Inc., he works with organizations to help them track and understand their data, and therefore equip themselves to tell better stories.”

“Whenever you’re trying to pitch an idea and get someone to buy into it,” explains Lyons-Rising, “the best way to do that is to tell a story using compelling data and information. Storytelling is all around us and is used every day to get us to make a lot of our decisions.”

As for the future of the field he helped shape into its current form, Lyons-Rising is very optimistic.

“What’s happening right now is that we’re seeing the highest data flow of information than ever before. The future for this field is incredibly exciting because I have seen demand for these types of roles completely blow up. Data management, data science, and business intelligence are in every single industry now and more and more companies are coming to understand how important this is to their business. This is leading them to create roles and departments and putting resources behind it to stay competitive – my advice would be to follow this career path if you find it interesting and rewarding.”