Treasures I found being an Analyst for 2 years at AhaMove
AhaMove is a Vietnamese tech start-up providing on-demand delivery in Hanoi and HCM city. I literally start from nothingness at AhaMove, having made a lot of effort to grow out of it and here are the treasures I found along the way under Business Intelligence (BI) department.
Data pipeline is your lifeline
Like most of start ups, analytics begin from Excel. It was quite a comfortable experience, making metrics and building dashboards was easy. Those comfort didn’t last long, when you are in a start up with a MOM growth at 30–50%, your data and your Excel files memories grow at the same rate. My laptop keep “Not Responding” doing Excel every time I open raw data files to update new data to my dashboards. The job was boring, I hated it.
Then Metabase, a SQL-based BI tool was developed by a very inspirational, warm-heart engineer. He might appear on my articles several times. Using a SQL platform to extract data directly from database means that your data has a pipeline. It flows freely and continuously from NoSQL databases, to SQL databases, to your queries and transform into visualization to decision makers. That is the end of updating reports and “Not Responding” angriness, my life was easy again. The job was exciting, I loved it.
The more technical advance you get, the more creative you are
Switching from Excel to Metabase release BI team from boring tasks, giving time for creativity and innovations. After learning and applying SQL to our jobs, we further develop our skills on Python. I remembered my very first Python codes, a simple API call connecting Metabase to Sending Notifications API. At that time, we were on a project with other departments called “P3”, the goal is to boost conversion rate in Growth Funnel. Our solution capacity was not much, segmentation analysis and discount. Sending notifications to our target customers every Friday was not making things better. The problem is by the time we reach customers with our discount, they no longer need it. Then I came to Python to connect APIs and made a simple automation task, every time a targeted customer’s behavior signals “not making a first order after signup”, we send discount to support in 1–5 minutes. After that, my colleagues further completed automation codes and developed A/B Test, the results were significant, conversion rates did went up.
Without developing technical advances, we may get stuck because of our small capacity of solutions. Creativity is limited by solution capacity, technical advances could widen that capacity and also your creativity. Getting upgrade in technical skills help us to get away with manually updating data, give us new solutions to our problems, providing us time and bigger solution capacity for innovations. In other words, technical advances is food for creativity, igniting and nourishing innovations.
Innovation is like oxygen for a data career
If you are good at doing data, everything you do should be reproducible and transferable. If you are good at making reproducible and transferable products, you would never do the same thing twice. Reproducibility is one of our focus, that is why most of our work is new. That means if we stop doing anew, we lose our values, soon we get outdated. It is a heavy pressure and also what make this job so fun. Innovate to live.
Your job title may not change but your job description changes frequently
Transforming your organization into a data-driven organization is also a mission assigned to first generation analysts. At first, you may want to show your colleagues value of data, how to use data to make decisions. The fastest way to do that is working with them, get on projects, making reports and recommendation. At this time, you may find you as a consultant, project coordinator, reporter.
Next step is democratizing data and transferring technical skills to other departments how to manipulate data and extract value from them. Opening SQL classes, training others on job is must-do actions. By democratizing data, BI team will not be a bottleneck for other teams since other depts could actively extract data and visualize exactly the way they want. Besides, analysts have more time to focus innovating. At this time, your role is a trainer.
Analysts of other departments arise from your SQL classes, now they could query and analyze data for their own needs. You have to upgrade yourself to be a pioneer in more difficult tasks like data modelling, visualization, forecasting, A/B tests to keep making big impacts. This time you are an innovator.
Changing is not comfortable but it is necessary and exciting. Why live one life if you could live many lives?
Friends

What is better than working with good colleagues? Working with good friends. At AhaMove BI, we solve problems, share knowledge, grow, learn, play and laugh together. Every moment being with these like-minded, young, talented and caring people is a treasure. They bring out the best in me and make it better.
For the love of data, AhaMove BI Team is looking for BI Collaborator/Analyst in Hanoi, welcome both fresh graduate or experienced data analysts . If you are interested, send your CV to binhdo@ahamove.com or hungnd@ahamove.com
