Journey to Mastery

I am a retire Veteran from the United States Army, Served in Iraq for over 37 months in a spam of three tours, I was part of two humanitarian operations: Operation Katrina (Hurricane Katrina) and Operation Tomodachi (Tsunami relief efforts in Japan). Graduated from University of Maryland University College from an AA and a BS in Criminal Justice. Current student at Full Sail University pursuing a Business Intelligence Master of Science. Owner and Chief Financial and Operating Officer at the Walker Florez Consulting Group, Inc.

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During this month’s course, Advanced Search Engine Optimization Course, we were reintroduced and allowed to quickly capture the build on previous course content, also, the course expanded into strategic approaches for search engine optimization (SEO). Throughout the course, we learned to developed and incorporated organic search methods, add our organizations to specific and strategic directory listings, and to go further to learn paid placement tactics, all of which we then analyzed for their effectiveness in attaining search marketing goals.

The course explained in very detailed the use of new trends in search engine marketing and search engine optimization, which we explored through the use of our course curriculum and multiple case studies in our course material book and preferred reading assignments.

Additionally, Through the use of specific tools such as Spyfy.com, SEMrush, MOZ, to name a few, we were allowed to see firsthand the inherent complexities of the Internet as they are examined to impact the development of effective search engine optimization practices, for example, websites with abundant content, advanced technology, and more personalization capabilities.

Some of the key aspect learned throughout this course are the use of the various tools presented, to help us better understand how SEO works. There are two that stuck to me, those are Spyfu.com and MOZ Local.

Spyfu showed how our competitors are strategizing the use of keywords via their Recon Files. These files tell you everything that there is to know about a competitor in the SEO Universe as they call it.

MOZ Local allows you to understand how diverse and how consistent your website is throughout the internet. If paid, you can use MOZ Local to help you synchronized all of your information through a series of websites across the internet, which will increase your performance and visibility.

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During this month’s course, Advanced Internet Marketing Strategies, we were able to learn and addressed all of the marketing strategies that are particular to this extremely competitive digital arena. Within these strategies, we learn how to understand AIDAS, how to develop a Broad campaign, a target campaign, an intentional based campaign, and a newsletter sponsorship campaign.

During this course, the goal was to identify the many components of Internet marketing and to examine each one of these component’s unique marketing approach. This course allowed us as student to explored the following: affiliate marketing, email marketing, global Internet marketing, social media marketing, and search engine marketing. A thorough understanding of each one of these aspects is necessary to cultivate a successful Internet marketing campaign. Advanced topics were discussed within each type of marketing strategy, and companion case studies align with the course content.

Some of the most important aspects I have learned over the past four weeks, is the importance of setting the right measurement steps for the right audiences. The different types of personas make a difference when attempting to plan a marketing campaign. The goals are different and the strategies to be used are difference.

At the end of the course, I have put together a professional presentation for my own organization, The Walker Florez Consulting Group, Inc., which I now plan on presenting to the operational committee for review. If approved, this will be a direct impact and a real-life scenario on how Full Sail teaching methodology is the best. Thank you for reading this month’s journal.

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During this month’s class, New Media Marketing, I was able to learn how the organization I represent determines which new media approaches will allow them to accomplish its marketing goals and further its success. I was able to learn to necessary tools to analyze the ways in which my organizations identify and engage influencers, and ambassadors in their target market using mobile, social media, content marketing, online video, and location-based technologies.

The course was taught by Professor Clarke, he utilized his experience to guide me through the process of the entire course. When developing my influencers and ambassadors programs I was confused. This confusion came from the real life applications these programs have in real life, as in comparison to what the books tells us. I brought this up to professor Clarke, and express to him that the application that I had read from the books differ from what my organization does, since we work to contract with the government, and there is little to non marketing needed. After a conversation with him, I was able to understand how to develop the same marketing concepts, but instead, create them from the Past performance portfolios that we send to contracting officers in order to evaluate us.

Overall, the New Media Marketing class thought me how to further put m organization in the eyes of our consumer. Learning how to match the story telling portion of our strategy and match it with the right new media marketing solutions it increases the ability to make that emotional connection with our consumers.

Respectfully,

Al Florez

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Professor’s Fonseca Web Design and Usability Course, allows us as students to actively demonstrate our understanding of web design and user interface principles that will later on help us achieve our marketing goals for each of our organizations and/or our consumers. We were able through the use of assignments and discussion boards, to also analyze web standards, web design fundamentals, web interface and usability, and web design issues that influence search engine rankings. This course thought me two very specific niches when analyzing website data: website usability and findability. Findability allows me to use my background in Business Intelligence, and create a measurement tool, to be able to find what a consumer wants, and segment the consumers to better market to their needs and wants via the use of our websites. Usability is the tool that I would use to capture exactly how the consumer navigates through the website and through time, collect the proper data, to continue to be agile and prepare strategic modifications to retain the consumer’s interest into our products when visiting our website.

Overall, everything that I have learn in this course will be pivotable when creating a marketing plan for a customer, and at the end of this Master program. Having the right website plan, will allow me to put and publish in the world wide web, what the consumer wants in a very strategical way that the consumer and its clients will be happy with the final work.

Al Florez

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The Internet Consumer Behavior and Analysis class has been the most beneficial for me as an entrepreneur and business owner. It allowed me to explore consumer behavior that is specific to the Internet and analyzes methods that motivate consumers to purchase our very unique products and services. Being that we serve the Government, we have approached marketing from a very different avenue, not knowing that it was not the best approach to reach clients online. This course helped me view our mistakes, get feedback, and correct them, all in one month.

The emphasis of this course was to identify specific Internet marketing campaigns and gauge their success and/or failure in inspiring the consumer to purchase the product or service. One approach studied is personalized marketing; a valuable tactic which allows an Internet marketer to track specific consumer interests and make suggestions on future purchases. The creation of the consumer-generated marketing plan, immediately increase traffic to our website, this was by far the most help I had could ever got from an online course.

Finally, this course examines how to develop Internet marketing plans that incorporate a consumer behavioral analysis. This analysis, allowed me and my study company to incorporate, real-life scenarios, and consumer behaviors to understand, a full standing corporation’s consumer segment, in order to enhanced our selling methods online. Through the use of data-driven campaigns, we were able to reengineer the best solution to attract, and retain more customers to our websites, as well as use these customers to create content for us vis our newly generated consumer-generated marketing campaign.

Best course I have taken online in Full Sail thus far.

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During my time in the Digital Storytelling and Branding Course I have learned how to define who my corporation is as a brand, what we do as an organization and to value what we do is important. I have also learned to define a brand’s voice to ensure consistent and meaningful customer experiences at every brand touch point. During this course, one of the things I learn that I believe I will use the most, is how to use storytelling principles to strengthen a business and make deeper connections with their customers. The most fascinating exercise I conducted during this course was finding that special persona for our brand. Defining the persona and the persona’s traits and matching them with those of our organization, was a great way to learn more about the organization’s brand. Finally, the course allowed us to develop and articulate our own personal brand identities for real-world business use.

Respectfully,

Al Florez

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What I have learned in the Internet Marketing Fundamentals Course are the most important tools to analyze the growing influence of digital marketing, and how to harness the power of the Internet to help the organizations I work with, become a strategic force on the web. I have also learned to analyze the best strategic methods for success in the ever-changing Internet marketing industry.

One on the most important things learned through the online discussion boards, is the use of the online tools from the rest of our classmate’s experiences. The use of the online board was probable were I was able to gather the most information, from professionals, for professionals.

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The Business Intelligence Master of Science Program has provided me with an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of program curriculum and to learn, and will continue to learn, how to deliver our data warehouse and present our key findings to colleagues and project stakeholders via a Data-Informed Solution Plan. I have presented a final thesis document that summarizes my Capstone project, methodologies, key results, and recommendations for which, all Faculty gave me their insights as to what to improve. Now, I have to continue to apply all of the lessons as I move forward in my career and use all of these notes to become better than what the faculty made of us. In addition to presenting a functional data warehouse and executive dashboard, I learn methodologies to deliver a presentation that summarizes my projects, results, and recommendations through the effective use appropriate data visualization and infographics. Thank you to all of the faculty members, and to Full Sail for making these possible.

 It seems as if it’s over, but this is only the beginning of the rest of my life!

 Thank you.

 Al Florez

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Image from ipsos-retailperformance.com

The Business Intelligence Case Studies Course allowed me to synthesize as student by learning through case analysis and the practical application of business intelligence (BI) analytic processes to a range of business problems. Throughout the course, I was able to use the DuPont case studies to address a variety of real-world problems involving enterprise level business analysis. The course focus on the use of BI processes, tools, and techniques to generate viable solutions to complex problems in a variety of domains. This course will allow me to use what I’ve learned and apply it on my Capstone project by putting my focus on developing the creative problem solving and critical thinking skills to support the range of BI decision-making processes from identification and analysis of problems to the presentation of results.

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The Business Intelligence Leadership and Communication Skills Course has helped me refine my abilities to listen, ask questions, and explain complex processes, policies, and results to variety of audiences across an organization. I have mastered the how to match visualizations and infographics with text and motion graphics to create effective, informative, and engaging presentations in a range of media. Lessons covered a variety of operational topics including vendor selection, management reporting, and legal issues that affect business intelligence (BI) policy and implementation. Exercises emphasized skills necessary for successful BI professionals including listening, negotiation, and meeting management. This course will helped me in my work to finalize the presentation portion of my capstone project.

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The Data Visualization and Creative Reporting Course helped me sharp my abilities to present complex results to a wide range of audiences across an organization. It allowed me to learn about practical techniques and the latest tools for developing impactful data visualizations and infographics. The course addressed concepts and design considerations for dashboards, user interface, and web-based reporting and examined how each supports a variety of knowledge management requirements. Implementing what I learned in this course will allow me to properly use dashboards, including web-based and desktop widgets and stand-alone software applications. It will also help me explore current technical and user interface considerations of responsive web design as well as data-fusion techniques and the presentation of real-time, location based, and social network data.

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The Process Modeling and Analysis Course allow me as student to address how business intelligence systems are used to support the analysis and improvement of business processes. In addition to an exploration of business process modeling (BPM), process simulation modeling (PSIM), and enterprise risk modeling the course It allow me to examine a variety of statistical simulation and modeling concepts including model validation, sensitivity estimation, and Monte Carlo simulation. The course lessons cover AB testing and optimization through simulation, including the use of Bayesian statistics in simulations used to support optimization processes. Selected cases and assignments showed us how to explore practical application of business process analytics in solving real-world quality control, user experience, and process-improvement problems. We also explore the application of course concepts in decision support systems (DSS) and the selection of key performance indicators (KPIs), including the use of balanced scorecards to monitor organization performance. This course is the wrap u of all of what we have learned thus far in BI. Probably one of the most important courses thus far.

Respectfully,

Al Florez

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The Patterns and Recognition Course help me understand and examine advanced data-mining concepts and techniques used to identify meaningful statistical patterns and relationships in data. I was able to explore the use of algorithms in a variety of BI processes from basic pattern recognition to search engines and real-time analysis (RTA). Assignments focus on us analyzing and using case studies to emphasize the role of data mining in supporting effective organizational decision making. I also examine how algorithms are used to support social network analysis as well as speech and image recognition. I will apply Patterns and Recognition Course concepts using data-mining tools to examine live data sets that support development of my capstone project.

Al Florez

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Mastery Journal Reflection Assignment

The Data Mining Course has helped me examine how data mining tools, techniques, and intelligent processes are used to identify patterns in data that yield information, insight, and enterprise intelligence. I was allowed to explore data mining concepts and practical techniques and methodologies for extracting information from large data sets using algorithms (not the easiest of task by the way). Lessons taught by Professor Taylor cover a variety of data mining and machine-learning processes and concepts including clustering, association, classification, and outlier analysis. I will apply all of the learned course concepts as they use professional data mining tools on large data sets. This course has also addressed estimating the value of data mining insights and examine project management and reporting issues specific to data mining.

Al Florez.

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Month 5 – Journey to Mastery.

The Business Intelligence Analytics Course provided me with an overview of the fundamental concepts, tools, and techniques needed to be successful when extracting the meaningful information from an organization’s data, which in terms, it will support effective decision making. This overview not only met my expectations for the course, but were exceeded. The course allowed me to further develop as a Business Intelligence students by understanding the statistical and analytic techniques used in forecasting and predictive analysis.

The course made a special emphasis on probability and an overall introduction to the Bayesian Paradigm and Bayesian statistical methods was made. The course allowed me to learn topics in reference of statistical inference, decision making under uncertainty, predictive modeling, and modeling of random processes.

I will be able to employ what I learned from this course by putting applying a special emphasize on the role of business process analysis and critical thinking in the planning of BI projects and data warehouse projects. This will aid me when creating the capstone project.

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Month 4 - Journey to Mastery

The Business Intelligence Technologies Course met my expectations and exceeded them. It helped me grow as a student by understanding data management technologies, and processes that support successful business intelligence (BI) systems with an emphasis on the design, and creation of a data warehouse. I learned from this course’s lesson’s the practical planning and management of data warehouse projects including architecture and physical design. I learned the basics of extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes as well as the implementation and management of data warehouses.

From what I learned during this course, I will be able to apply it in my professional career upon graduation by applying common BI systems architecture and the operational dimensions of BI technology including database administration, data warehousing, and data mining. I will be able to examine the role of transactional databases and online transactional processing (OLTP) and explore common BI tasks including reporting, performance monitoring, and forecasting. 

Because we learned how technologies such as data warehouses, data cubes, data marts, and online analytic processing (OLAP) are used to access, analyze, and distribute organizational information, I will be able to apply all of the learned fundamentals and build case analysis and study for my capstone project.

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Management of Enterprise Data: Worth The Hard Work - XEN life. (2015, January 15). Retrieved November 20, 2015, from http://xenlife.com.au/management-enterprise-data-worth-hard-work/

Month 3 of My Mastery Journey

The Enterprise Data Management Course helped me understand and explore the “big picture” of enterprise data systems and sources, it took me through a holistic approach to knowledge management within organizations. This course introduced enterprise and management level information systems that supports business processes including enterprise resource planning (ERP), decision support systems (DSS), supply chain management (SCM), knowledge management systems (KMS), customer relationship management (CRM), and human resources information systems (HRIS).

I was able explore the impact of the Internet on traditional IT systems management with particular focus on the technical and policy impact personal smart devices and the unique security issues raised by mobile applications, social media, and cloud-based systems.

EDM also thought me the fundamentals of logical data models and database design. The assignments helped me focus on the communication and presentation of complex technical information to a range of nontechnical audiences.

EDM helped e research and made my mind for my Capstone business case, which I will use to develop a project plan, data warehouse, final report, and presentation to be delivered at the completion of my degree in Month 12.

So how would I apply what I learn?

As the owner of a full spectrum consultant company, the opening of a Business Intelligence department is in sights. Being able to use all of what I have learned here to develop my own BI/DW will be my short term goal, and to develop solutions for others towards the end of my degree plan in my long term goal.