AOL Knows its Data – Do You?

Interview with Cindy Gallagher, VP & Assistant Controller, Accounting Services, AOL Barbara Hodge: Cindy, we hear a lot about data management these days. It seems like the next "big thing" for shared services. How are you approaching data analytics at AOL? CG: At AOL we have centralised our data analytics team within the shared services space. We have identified "data miners" within each of our operating towers – procure to pay, records to report, order to cash – each of who is matrixed to our main data analytics person. This individual collects all the data at the end of each month and provides reports tailored according to the needs of different management levels. Barbara Hodge: How do you go about the collection of the data? What kind of tools have you introduced to make this more efficient? CG: We actually use Excel for a lot of this kind of data analytics and mining. Within Excel, our analytics guru has created various reports and macros to help the "data miners" populate data. Everything flows through one Excel database and can be viewed in different ways. Barbara Hodge: How is this intelligence conveyed to the rest of the business, to the people who are actually making the decisions? CG: Our analytics guru compiles a 12 to 15-page deck every month that shows volume metrics according to different management levels. Level-one metrics are for the head of the operating units within shared services. Level-two metrics come to me. They are a summary of the most impactful metrics within each tower. That's followed by a level-three report, which is for the CFO-level report. The latter covers metrics and analytics that the CFO needs to be aware of in terms of how the business is running and help assess if have we opened ourselves up to any risk. The data package also includes analysis on the health of our organization. We score ourselves based on red, bronze, silver or gold – gold being a stretch target. Any metric that falls into the red category needs to have a business impact and a plan to rectify the metric within 30 days. All red metrics and the associated analysis are sent up to the CFO as well. Barbara Hodge: Cindy, are you finding that you need to introduce a different mindset into your team so that they combine interpretation of the data with intelligent analysis? Or is their focus simply on numbers and you let the heads make the decisions? CG: No. One of the things that I pride my organization on is having the insight and providing the value-add to be able to explain the data from a business perspective. For example, if spend is going up we will identify opportunities to control cost. We offer a high level of service to our business partners and it is important that we can interpret the data. The thing to remember is that if you're not telling the story, someone else will create a story for you — and it may not be the same story that you intended the data to tell. Barbara Hodge: What has the feedback been from the high-level recipients of this kind of data? CG: Our CFO came in back into AOL in 2009. He'd actually been gone for a number of years, so effectively came back as "new." His reaction, when we provided him with this report, was, "This is great, we need everybody in the organisation to do this." He subsequently mandated monthly metrics across the CFO organisation. Barbara Hodge: Data analytics is coming up as a high priority on CFOs’ lists. I think many shared services have been dealing with data, but are only now waking up to the fact that they have such an amazing resource at their disposal. CG: Yes, and they are now starting to leverage that resource! I think this demonstrates not only that shared services can provide better tools to manage the business – you've also got a great opportunity to partner with other business units and provide them with valuable information. We have created executive-level dashboards for other executives to show them how the actions of their employees impact us, and, conversely, how we can help them better manage their business. Barbara Hodge: Cindy, thank you so much for your time today. We look forward to hearing more from you at the Shared Services and Outsourcing Week in Orlando in 2012. [inlinead]

AOL Knows its Data – Do You?

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