According to an attendee at our recent Accelerating Analytics Breakfast in Sydney,
“Data and lots of it is the way forward for a more personal, tailored and engaging superannuation experience.”
We couldn’t agree more and were thrilled to host a full house at this year’s first breakfast briefing event.
With keynote speakers from our partner, Tableau and customer voice, HESTA, we showcased not only the value of a data analytics program, but what the benefits are for members when you commit to the process. Highlights from these presentations included the impact Tableau Software could make in profiling customers – to a deep level no – one ever believed could be done. Reminiscent of a scene from an episode of CSI, Mac Bryla from Tableau showed how it’s possible to profile a single individual customer’s movements to predict behaviours and patterns.
HESTA: Innovating Data Analytics
Up next was HESTA – an industry fund 18 months down the path of an innovative data analytics program. Benjamin Warren manages the Insights and Customer Experience data and analytics platform for HESTA. Benjamin shared many of his learnings establishing HESTA’s platform from the beginning:
- Start where you are – plan to kick-off your analytics journey simply and quickly, don’t spend time trying to architect the future, you simply cannot predict where you will end up. Instead, get working prototypes into the hands of your users. This can actually happen in a matter of weeks. From there, listen, learn, refine, and follow where the value is… not a quickly ageing master plan.
- Stand on the shoulders of giants – you will need great partners on your journey. HESTA accelerated their analytics program by working closely with technology companies like Laneway Analytics and its strategic partners, Tableau software and AWS.
- Mission focused analytics – we all want to prove business value with any new initiative. For HESTA, the design of its analytics journey was mission-focused from inception: how can we really understand ‘who our customers are, what do they need from us, and how can we help them.’ While there is lots of clever tech going on behind the scene, HESTA is constantly measuring their success against demonstrable improvements in member outcomes.
The reflection of a full house
There is huge momentum in super right now and our moderator, Stephen Huppert shared with us the challenges and concerns the simple act of doing nothing poses to the business and its future state.
Our full house audience reflected the huge interest in data analytics and what this can mean for a fund. With fintech innovators, funds, custodians and institutions in the room, it certainly indicated there is a recognition harnessing data in a way that creates better business insights is well understood by the broader market.
Laneway Analytics Super Fund Track Record
Over the last year, we have been working with, and talking with, more than 20 different funds. While each of the funds is at different stages of developing their data and analytics capabilities, and they are all taking a slightly different tact in how they meet these challenges, we are seeing these common challenges:
- What is the best way to get started?
- These data projects are notorious for not working, or cost blow-outs, can we actually deliver this? Will we actually deliver business value for our team, members, and customers?
- Even if we build a leading-edge analytics solution, will my people actually use it?
- Data science is great, but how can we create an organisation that embraces the use of data and we move to a data-driven culture?
These are great questions, and they articulate the fear that decision-makers are grappling with. At Laneway Analytics, our business and day-to-day work is based on solving these issues. A great way to accelerate your analytics is by:
- Learning how non-data people are actually using data in their day-to-day jobs
- Real examples of how leading tech is being used to solve multiple problems
- Learning from others that are at different stages of their analytics journey
- How our super fund data and analytics platform tangibly demonstrates what is possible
See you at our next Accelerating Analytics Breakfast event – or let me know if you would like Laneway to tailor an event specifically for your fund/team/business.
Thanks to our attendees and sponsors and a special thanks to our speakers and panellists:
- Ben Warren – Insight Platforms Manager, HESTA
- David Bain – Enterprise Accounts, Amazon Web Services
- Mac Bryla – Technology Evangelist, Tableau Software
- Stephen Huppert – Former Partner Deloitte Australia, super and actuarial leader
- Grant Callaghan, CEO and Co-founder, Laneway Analytics
If you would like to register for our next Accelerating Analytics event or learn more about how Laneway Analytics puts analytics into action, and the solutions we deliver, please contact us to learn more or email us at learnmore@lanewayanalytics.com.au.
About Laneway Analytics
Laneway Analytics help super funds identify and visualise the data they need to bridge the gap between data and the business to better understand members, fund performance, and differentiate and improve their services and products.
Our mission is to partner with super funds to accelerate their journey towards a culture of data-led decision making for the future.