Hugo Hurtado’s Data Journey
Hugo Hurtado has been working with the analysis of data and putting data into visuals since he graduated college. Today he is a Senior Finance Manager at Visa. He shares with me how he sees data as a great tool to tell stories, connect with people, and investigate information.
We talk about his everyday routine and he shares some examples of some of the projects he’s worked on. He also helps to further comprehend the hiring process for a company such as Visa and touches upon some of the global implications he must consider when analyzing such data.
He tells me about outliers, patterns, and trends that he has observed in his data.
Take a listen to the audio.
Hugo Hurtado Interview Transcript
[00:00:00] My name is Hugo, I work at Visa. I’m a senior finance manager at Visa. So I started working with data analysis. I think the more I started growing on my career and interacting with more senior executives. I started also to becoming more interested on data visualization because I tied that with probably data storytelling and trying to influence people with that data is a very different skill.
[00:00:25] And I think I ever since it has helped me also to influence decision making and working with bunch of different visuals depending on the type of decision I’m trying to drive and also depending on the audience I have. So I basically start with two type of data. One is financial data, but other is volumes.
[00:00:47] So I support the global client care organization. Basically, any point of contact where Visa provides service to their clients. That’s the area that I support. Approximately 2, [00:01:00] 000 people worldwide. We track with like headcount as well, where’s people located, salaries, that kind of information. There are a few reports that we run, let’s say, every month.
[00:01:11] So let’s say we want to onboard a new supplier. We use third party vendors to take some calls on our behalf. So let’s say someone in Colombia. So what the business does, they send me first what their proposal is of the allocation of the hours. And based on that, I will model what does that mean in terms of cost and compare to what do we have planned.
[00:01:37] And is it something we can afford? Yes or no? And I help them model, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we allocate the hours instead of proposal A, let’s do a different mix. and we can achieve some savings. So every number in finance is price times quantity. So that’s basically the two variables that you got to model.
[00:01:55] In the case of headcount, my price is the salary. The quantity is number of people that we’re going to [00:02:00] have that salary is influenced by where am I putting these people? Is it going to be in Manila? Is it going to be in Latin America? It’s going to be in the US and the quantity is going to be given by the volume that we’re expecting.
[00:02:15] Sometimes there are specific techniques that you can use. If you want someone to emphasize in something, I’m going to put it bold. I will play with fonts. I will like make them bold. I will make it a different color and so on. So help them focus on what I want to like drive the attention to where I want it to be.
[00:02:31] I think on the audience. It’s more about the type of information you show, like if you’re talking to financial people, I can go a little bit technical on financial terms. If I’m talking with operational people, I will try to, how do I make it relevant to them? Like, how do I use things and I relate them to something they are used to?
[00:02:51] For comparisons, you can use. Chart bars. One that I find that executive loves a lot is waterfalls. This is like usually if [00:03:00] you’re comparing, how do I got from point A to B? And then you isolate different variables, plus minuses, and then you build a, like a waterfall that shows that I would say every organization are work executive.
[00:03:12] Love to see that because it’s pretty clear. Also a way to engage your audience is using different visuals, right? Like when you’re telling a story, you want to keep your audience engaged. So if you just use the same, like same bar, same chart, every time, people tend to, at some point start, stop putting attention.
[00:03:32] So it’s good if you play around with different visuals and that keeps people engaged. So in my experience, what works a lot is try to understand two, three things. that are relevant to your audience and present them with data that they relate or that are relevant for you. There are two types of presentation.
[00:03:56] One, when you are the one trying to [00:04:00] inform someone and influence their decision. And two is something that everyone is aware. And you’re just giving them a status, for instance. I gotta be able to influence fact based with data. What are the implications of the decisions they’re taking? And there are cases where I don’t agree with the decision.
[00:04:21] And even if I’m a senior manager, I need to argue against a senior vice president. If I can make it data driven and drive the conversation. On how are we doing the best for the company. So first, I always like to look for outliers. Anything that is completely different. Does it have an explanation? Yes or not.
[00:04:41] Like, let’s say I have the employees located in specific places. And I have one employee in Russia. Like, I will start asking questions. Like, why do we have one employee in Russia? Do we need it or yes or not? So I always will look for outliers. I always will look for anything that has [00:05:00] been growing consistently.
[00:05:02] Either for good or bad. If it’s expenses. I want to make sure that they don’t keep growing as much. So I will also try to identify why or so on. And yeah, those are the main things that I will look on trends for financials particularly. I mainly get my raw data and I influence decisions. And my day to day is making sure the executives take decisions.
[00:05:29] I don’t know, call me a geek, but yeah, I think that I find I enjoy it. Yes. It’s looking at things that no one else does, figuring out problems and solving problems that other people won’t be evident to them. Really. Sometimes people will be afraid of data will take, think about it like something boring, but in reality is like kind of an investigation work.
[00:05:52] If you look at it that way is whatever you’re doing, always try to cross different variables among themselves. Like. [00:06:00] Cross this one with this one AB. So different permutations of data can tell you interesting things. If you like working with data, that’s the best approach. Like think about it as solving problems and kind of your own investigation.
