Eleonora Nazander

Story about pursuing the passion for analytics, building career and discovering the world.

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3 secrets of becoming a confident person

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What kids can teach us about time management

Have you ever seen children playing restlessly and wondered where do they get such amount of energy? While we adults are usually pretty tired of work and might enjoy a slow walk in a park or just relaxing on a couch in leisure time, children are unstoppable in their desires to run around, scream and play.

What is the reason why we adults often feel too tired and unenthusiastic even about things we like? Do we lose energy when growing up? Or are our everyday tasks so exhaustive? Actually, I think the reason is in something else.

You surely know the feeling of having a lot to do: “This had to be done long ago, also this and that to do… So little time and I am already so tired…” Do you often have such thoughts? I do sometimes. And I was shocked to realize that it is actually not work itself, but worries that make me tired. Of course the tasks themselves also take up your energy, but stressing out is far more exhaustive.

So, what is the secret of kids’ liveliness? They are simply very good at doing one thing at a time. They don’t spill energy thinking about other tasks and worrying if they will manage them all. Just like a sand clock is able to process only one piece of sand at a time no matter how much is left. And that’s what we need to learn from kids.

Eleonora Nazander

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When KPIs fail

What gets measured, gets managed. This quote by management guru Peter Drucker because very famous all around the world. Measurement of outcomes of business processes is a prerequisite for control and improvement. Indeed, can you improve profitability without calculating what products are bringing most money and which are causing losses? Or can you make customers happier without measuring their satisfaction and analyzing factors behind it?

People who know me well are aware that I am quite passionate about business analytics. I believe that best decisions are based on data: it can be a break-even analysis to see how much we need to produce, a model to forecast future prices of raw materials or even an analysis what features the best candidate for a job needs to have (remember Moneyball movie?)

I was excited when recently I received a task to think about appropriate KPIs (key performance indicators) for IT organization. KPIs are a great tool to drive performance: Are we achieving our targets? Are we improving compared to previous year? Are we better than other teams? Are all our projects  bringing financial benefits? What gets measured, gets managed. But is it always so?

You probably remember there are two types of science: fundamental and applied. Only the applied science aims to create something practically useful and thus returns investments in it. But does it mean we can skip the fundamental science? Exactly same applies to the business world: there are some projects that are clearly bringing financial benefits. Other projects don't have any positive ROI projections. But they might be creating essential basis for future profitable projects.

So, can we (sometimes) manage without measuring?

Best regards,

Eleonora

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Cooking... data!

Last Wednesday I was organizing a team evening for IT colleagues from Stora Enso Helsinki office. During this evening, not only their cooking skills but also their creativity were put under test. The task was to make a meal… visualizing data from Stora Enso yearly reports!

Data visualization in not a new concept for most of us. Nowadays, many people have to deal with information is graphical format on daily basis: line chart, pie charts, bar charts and other types of diagrams. Data visualization allows information to be communicated more clearly and effectively. It makes data more accessible, understandable and usable.

Examples of traditional data visualization from Stora Enso 2013 report

Data visualization can also be completely mind-blowing. Josh Worth’s project If the Moon was Only 1 Pixel, for example, allows us to understand mammoth sizes and distances of the solar system much better: what would they be compared to 1-pixel moon?

In Where People Run project, Nathan Yau mapped data from the workout app RunKeeper on the city maps with darker lines indicating favored courses:

But data visualization doesn't have to be done only with conventional information technologies. You can also do it with… physical objects! The surface area of each of plate is proportionate to the food consumption in the region depicted on the plate by Nadeem Haidary.

And San Francisco-based Meshu is creating jewelry from... your location data.

 Believe it or not, but you can also play weather data on on a musical instrument or make a sculpture out of it! Check this TED talk.

So, why cannot food be a medium of data visualization? Would you like to know what my colleagues cooked? What data they visualized and in what ways?

To give you some examples, one team was visualizing gender distribution of Stora Enso employees by country in cocktail glasses:

Another team took figures about share of each division in company profits and presented them with spagetti bolognese. Each division was presented with food reminding its products. For example, white and fluffy pulp, often used in diapers, was presented with pasta ans bulky wood elements for constructions were presented with big loafs of bread:

Until next blog post, don't be afraid to think out of the box and try new creative solutions! 

Best regards, Eleonora

[eleonoranazander]

What are your limits?

I want to tell you a small story. This year I started running. Why? Mainly to keep fit and to give myself a reason to be proud of. Never before I had any serious sports hobbies. Moreover, at school I was so awkward I was always the last one to be selected to a volleyball team and was praying to be left on the bench. I was sure I am handicapped as an athlete and can keep up only with simple aerobics classes. I actually did some treadmill runs too usually stopping after 3km, which felt like pretty hard exercise already.

My first regular outdoor running attempts started last spring in Sao Paulo during my international assignment. I started with 3 km and soon proudly got closer to 5 tracking the progress with a running app for iphone.

In the evenings I could run only on a nice short jogging path around the house. It was surrounded by the fence, which made it very safe even after the dark. The only disadvantage was the numerous skyscrapers distorting GPS signal for my iphone app.

One day after finishing running my 5 km I noticed that the iphone app was showing a very distorted picture of the path I made due to poor GPS signal. I became curious and estimated the length of the jogging path from Google maps and multiplied it by the number of loops I made. The result was 7 km.

Have you ever been sure you are incapable of something only to accidentally discover how easy that is? So, what are our actual limits? And when do our minds set the limits much below than what they actually are? How many opportunities do we miss in life just because of being sure we will fail and not even trying?

Before the trainee program I never thought I am capable of leading people. I wasn't confident enough to dream big and was scared to take some exciting challenges. But now I believe it is really up to you who you become in life. If you dare to try, many things become possible whether it is career, sports or learning a foreign language.

Sincerely yours,

Determined-to-finally-learn-Finnish Eleonora

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My 3 months in Brazil

Time flies! Just a while ago I arrived to Sao Paulo for my trainee international assignment and it is already time to say goodbyes. Today is my last working day in Sao Paulo and I decided to make some reflections. So, what have life and work in Brazil been like?

I was scared to come to Brazil after hearing so many stories about its unsafety: even kids can surround and rob you sometimes… But I was lucky: the apartment was in a prestigious district very close to the office and I received a tremendous amount of advice from colleagues about where to go or not to go and what to do (Or was keeping us alive and entertained somehow linked to their yearly targets? :) )  I must say I was very touched by how caring my Sao Paulo colleagues were about two foreign girls who came to work with them for a while. The fact our stay in Brazil was so enjoyable was due to their friendliness, help and support.

Brazilian working style is more relax than what we are used to in Scandinavia: colleagues often become good friends and lunch breaks must be long enough for a good talk (typically about 1,5 hours including walking). Coffee breaks, small talks, integration events and monthly birthday cakes are an important part of office life too (This all is however compensated by much longer working days than in Finland). As my Finnish colleague pointed out, we have something to learn form Brazilians: you don’t have to be that stressed out when it is tough at work. And from my side, I believe I almost learned how to walk and eat slowly enjoying the moment.

One aspect of life in Brazil we noticed is a higher importance of hierarchy in society. To give you an example, to arrange a meeting with a more senior person, you often need to be introduced to him by a more senior colleague who might even need to join your meeting. To give some other examples, women and senior people have a privilege to exit the elevator first and some buildings have a separate entrance for “services”.

You might guess that the “trainee” status didn’t help much me and my Finnish colleague from GROW trainee program: we had to explain few times about our actual permanent specialist positions in the company. Neither did it turn out beneficial to be an analyst: what usually stands for a profession on analyzing data in Europe is the title of a junior employee in Brazil. If you like me are lucky to do analytics for living, I’d recommend you introducing yourself as “analytics specialist” in Latin America.

You probably want to hear something about World Cup? Brazilians are very passionate about football and games surely were the main topic of lunch discussions. I learnt pretty quickly who the main football stars are and which teams are stronger than others. But this you can expect when going to the country of football. What surprised me though were… sticker albums. I had a Lion King sticker album myself when I was 5 and you might have had one too. But could you imagine adults doing that? To tell you more, the office kitchen was sometimes a marketplace for exchanging the stickers during lunch and coffee brakes. You thought you were passionate about football?

So, did I have cultural shocks? I don’t think so! It feels like Brazilian culture, the way things work here and even the size of the city often remind the place I am from – St. Petersburg, Russia! Life in Helsinki sometimes seems more “exotic” than in Sao Paulo (Can you imagine a face of a megalopolis girl when she saw rabbits in the city center?) Should I be blogging about cultural shocks of my expat experience in Finland next time? :)

View from the office window

Regards,

Eleonora

[eleonoranazander]

Is building a house enough?

Having been on my international assignment in Brazil for already 2 months, I thought I learnt quite a lot about the life here. But this weekend proved this to be wrong. This weekend, I and my colleagues from Sao Paulo got our hands (and not only hands) dirty pretty literally: we went to a favela (the Brazilian word for slum) to build a house for a very poor family with 7 kids together with a NGO called TETO.

As you can see on the pictures above, in 2 days of hard physical work we were able to build a house. I must admit, the leadership of experienced volunteers from TETO played a key role in this achievement: as you can guess, house building has never been among my or my colleagues’ most usual occupations before this weekend.

My body still hurts after unusually hard physical work (“Finally, some proper work!” were the words of my Helsinki colleagues when I told them about the plans for that weekend). But it is mental fatigue, not the physical one that makes me feel so tired even 2 days later. Yes, now the family has a roof above. And some other families from this community will have proper houses instead of carton tents soon. But what does it change? A new house can reduce their current sufferings, but does it change anything in the long run?

As I mentioned, the family we met had 7 kids. The head of the family was a single 32-year-old mother. 6 kids were her children and the 7th, 1-year-old boy, was a son of her 15-year-old daughter. This wasn’t very out-of-the-ordinary situation in that community. Pretty different from our world were people think very long and try to gain sufficient wealth because having a child or maybe none at all, right?

So, is building a house enough to help those people? Or do we need to give them some tools to help themselves? Is it the responsibility of schools to motivate to study and find a proper job before starting a family? Or maybe the social system doesn’t work correctly and finishing school doesn’t provide better chances in life? Or maybe the environment you live in shapes your standards so much that you never try to thrive for a better life?

Do you have an answer? And what can WE do?

Regards, Eleonora

[eleonoranazander]

Film: Visit to Veracel mill and rain forest preserve

Last month, I and my trainee colleague Lumikki had a chance to visit Veracel. The mill is located on the west cost of Brazil near Porto Seguro - the place where Portuguese discovered Brazil, the oldest town in the country and a very popular holiday destination due to tropical climate and beautiful beaches. However, another factor determined the location of the mill: the region has large number of rains very favorable for the growth of eucalyptus.

Veracel is not only a mill and plantations. It is also a rain forest preserve aiming to preserve diversity of species by reviving rain forest, protecting animals from illegal hunting and rehabilitating hurt animals, for example, eagles. 

With this movie, I want you to share what we experienced in the rain forest and in the mill with you.

  You can find more information about Veracel and their wonderful work in this article or on Veracel website.

  Best regards,

Eleonora

[eleonoranazander]

You cannot learn leadership?

Since last September I’ve been taking part in a leadership trainee program in addition to my normal work of a business intelligence analyst at Stora Enso. 4 modules of the program are behind including getting to know senior leaders of the company, leadership training and learning how to do business in China at IMD Business School and a shared value project in China. And know, after just 3 week at home, I am away again. This time in Brazil where I am going to spend 3 months working on a challenging project in business controlling.

The trainee program has certainly brought a lot of bright impression: learning, meeting people, team work, traveling… But looking at what the experience has been so far, I must say it is very different from what my picture of “leadership training” was just a while ago. Having a bachelor’s degree in management, I’ve studied quite a lot about leadership: leadership styles, differences between leadership and management, motivational theories, etc. The conclusion I drew from these studies (probably, not exactly what my professors meant to teach!) was that you cannot learn leadership from text books: either you are born with these skills or you can to acquire them with experience.

What was I thinking about when applying for the trainee program? No, I didn’t expect any textbooks, but I supposed we would have role-plays about leadership and some small practice projects to manage. But the learning experience was quite different. So, what are the lessons future leaders need to learn?

Lesson 1. Ability to adapt. When living in your home country or in a foreign country with high quality of life and tolerance towards foreigners like in Finland, life might seem very easy and comfortable. Yes, you travel. But traveling in Europe or to other typical holiday destinations is very smooth and easy. You might think you are an experienced traveller and know a lot about foreign cultures. But do you? When the trainee program brought me to China, I was estaunished how challenging the experience was: different food, different communication style, different selling style, different attitudes to doing business, leadership, child-raising (to everything!), different traditions...

To be successful, you should be prepared to leave your comfort zone and adapt to new circumstances. And it is not only about cultures. It can be a new boss, new job, new anything!

Lesson 2. Teamwork. I learnt that sometimes what is best for the team can contradict your ego. Yes, you think you are right but you need the patience to listen to other team members. This can be challenging: some people are shy, there can be language barriers… But listening is necessary to learn from others, find the best solution and keep the team spirit high.

Teamwork is not easy. You might feel hurt when you or your idea is criticized or the piece of work you’ve done is not used in the final solution, but sometimes you just need to suppress your personal feelings and think only about the success of the team.

Lesson 3. Raise questions and challenge. I learnt that high power distance so usual in the culture I am coming from is evil. No matter how young and unexperienced you are, you should dare to ask bold questions and challenge the way things are because the newcomers are the ones able to see things with fresh eyes.

Lesson 4. You have to have fun at work. Not fun in the meaning of making jokes and browsing the web instead of working, but fun in the sense of the joy of having interesting challenging work, achieving goals, traveling and learning from other cultures and developing yourself. Yes, it might be challenging to find a new job, but it doesn’t mean you have to waist 33% of you day doing job you don’t enjoy. If new inspiring challenges don’t come to your table, you can always come up with them yourself: propose an idea for a new project, go to a professional conference, start a professional blog!

Those are some of my reflection on what leadership lessons I received in the trainee program. Do you know any other lessons every leader should learn? And can you actually learn to be a leader at all or this is a skill you have to be born with?

[eleonoranazander]

Eating in China

​I decided to dedicate a whole blog post to Chinese food for one simple reason: it deserves it. Some of the most incredible experiences I and other GROW trainees had in China last weeks are related to food.

First of all, it is the way you eat. Even if you learn how to hold chopsticks, it doesn't guarantee the food will go to your mouth: you still have to train the food. And this is not easy as food can be too large or too small and in most cases too slippery. That's why you have to be inventive to feed yourself ;)

One of the main difference between Chinese and western food is that in China you rarely can be sure what exactly you are eating. Such was the variety of meals and their unearthly shapes: lotus root, duck tongue, cow belly, sea cucumber, turtle... During our meals, you could often hear the question "Is this an animal?". And it is no joke. Sometimes, we kept wondering whether some dish is meat, bread or a mushroom and nobody knew the answer even after tasting the thing.

You can guess that eating in China has been especially challenging for the very picky vegetarian author of this blog. In a recent blog post, I described my first meal in China consisting of white rice and something I was able to identify as "grass". Now, almost 3 weeks later, I almost consider myself an expert in the types of Chinese "grass" and even have my favorites!

Of course, western food can be found in China too. One day, the trainees (and especially the Italian trainee) were pleased to find the beloved "Phi Sa" in lunch buffet.

There were many fun moments but the absolute star of our stay in China was Peking Duck. How proudly waiters were showing us the baked bird and how excited my meat-eating colleagues were about it. Some of them even took pictures with the bird. After showing us the duck, waiters invited us to watch how they would cut it. Yes, it wasn't just food, it was a duck show! First, the skin of the duck was served wrapped in tortillas with some vegetables. And then… But alas, "then" never happened! How eagerly my colleagues were waiting for the meat itself... But after waiting almost an hour for the duck's meat, we have been explained the meat was never going to be served! It was the skin that was the delicacy and so difficult to make, but the meat itself was too unspecial and cheap to be served to such distinguished guests. It was priceless to see the faces of my male meat-loving colleagues when they realized how wrong their expectations were!

Regards,

Eleonora

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Doing business in China

Module 3 of GROW trainee program took place in Shanghai on February 24-28th. This time, the 22 Stora Enso global trainees spent a week learning about doing business in China from IMD business school. The week was very intensive including lectures from university professors about Chinese economy, visits to companies, a non-for-profit organization, a university of traditional chinese medicine, a local government and, of course, Stora Enso Shanghai office.

One of the aspects of Chinese culture we learnt about during the week was that building personal relationships is a very important for doing business in this country. This includes ceremonies of welcoming guests that might seem very formal and pompous for a westerner and gift giving. Every company was welcoming us as if we were important business partners for them and make them a great honour with our visit. But in truth, they were making a favor to us by allowing us to learn how their companies do business in China.

Inspite of such welcoming attitude towards guests, Chinese companese can be very tough in business. As we learnt, one of fundamental principals of Chinese culture can be illustrated as a square inside a circle, which means you should be smooth with outsiders but have firm principles inside. Business leaders in China attach a tremendous amount of attention to innovations and even local governments in China vigorously compete with each other. And we as a company need to act very fast to stay competitive on this market of great opportunities.

One of the highlights of the week was a class of Tai Chi, which as we discovered required a lot of strength inspite of the slow and seemingly easy movements.

As one of our professsors pointed out after the class, he was very impressed with our Tai Chi outfitts (but unfortunately not yet with our movements).

Regards,

Eleonora

[eleonoranazander]

China. First impressions

Yesterday I arrived to Shanghai to take part in the module 3 of Stora Enso global trainee program. The training will start only on Monday, so, I had two free days to explore the city together with other trainees. Now, after I was able to connect to social media via corporate VPN, it is time for me to share the first impressions about China!

The first thing I found very surprising was that the Chinese were staring at me and my Finnish colleagues, pointing to us with fingers and even taking pictures of us. Some young girls even came to us and asked to take a picture of them with us. To my question why, they replied happily: “You are foreigners!”

Chinese food is popular all around the world. But unfortunately a vegetarian person might have hard times in China. In the first restaurant we visited there was no fish (which I can eat) and the only “meal” without meat reminded some boiled grass or leaves (I certainly don’t mean vegetables!). Since the choice was between staying hungry and taking the grass, I ordered the grass together with a bowl of plain rice, which tasted quite ok after being flavored with soya sauce.

Ordering a drink was even more tricky as they could understand only Coca-Cola and only after you repeat 3 times preferably with Chinese pronunciation :) But on the positive side, my first meal in China (grass +rice) costed only 1 euro (and was the cause of the best laughs I had in a while)!

Another discovery was that the Chinese wear breathing masks and they do it for a good reason: the air in Shanghai is so polluted that there is smog most of the time, which makes is hard to see the blue sky. 

The air pollution is the unfortunate side effect of the very rapid growth of Chinese economy since 1977. The economic growth was definitely very important for China as it allowed to bring millions people out of poverty and made China one of the strongest player of the international arena. However, the environment wasn’t a priority for Chinese government and companies, which led to the current problems.

According to China Daily I was reading yesterday, in Beijing the level of air pollution with the main causes being industrial production and coal burning went to the alarming “most polluted” level. In the north of China it even cause disruptions of the traffic. In order to solve the problem, the government is going to introduce fines and administrative punishments for local governments failing to decrease pollution problem. 

A part of the solution of the air problem we were able to see in Shanghai is the efforts to make the city greener with walls of flowers (Lack of space for the conventional flowerbeds, apparently!).

Regards,

Eleonora

[eleonoranazander]

How to change the world

It's been a while since my last blog post. It is definitely time to blog again and in this post I want to share with you what has been occupying my time lately: I am once again taking a free online course on Coursera (those wondering why I am doing it, check out my earlier blog post Rethinking education). This time the course is not about data science or statistics. The course has a stunning name "How to change the world" and very interesting video lectures.

I believe many people in their youth dream about a job that would make a real difference. Young people want to make a profound impact on the world and believe they can overcome any difficulties. But later in life, the burden of everyday problems make people forget about thinking big and accept mediocrity of their role. It might seem that an individual person cannot make any impact on solving global problems, that this is a role of governments and NGOs. But that's not true. Nothing will happen unless everyone accepts global problems as his own problems and starts making his small contributions to solving them.

The course "How to change the world" discusses some of the major global problems and what we as individuals can do about them. Take a look at the introductory video:

One of the first lectures of the course is on poverty. I created this infographic to demonstrate some ideas and stunning statistics on extreme poverty presented in the class.

Living in the developed countries, we don't realize how massive extreme poverty is: 1,25 billion people live on less than $1,25 a day and this is twice less than 20 years ago. Governments of developed countries and NGOs have been offering lots of humanitarian help to extremely poor people. This aid helped to relieve immediate sufferings of poor people, but unfortunately it has large negative effects as well. Humanitarian aid creates expectations of more aid. Poor countries become addicted to humanitarian aid instead of starting to produce the necessary products themselves and developing their economies. This is called "poverty trap" and to solve it we need to teach the poor how grow food and make products themselves: Don't give them fish. Give them a fishing rod.

Regards,

Eleonora

[eleonoranazander]

Finding a job

I spent most of my life in Russia, but 2,5 years ago moved to Finland to study and then find a job. It is often hard for a young person without work experience to find a job, but it is a much bigger challenge to find a job in a foreign country, especially if you don't speak the local language. Job hunting was a very painful experience for me, but ended as a success story (I was choosing from 3 good offers and received several more later). I decided to share the lessons I learnt and hope they will be helpful for other students as well.

Differentiate yourself. Why should they choose you among dozens or even hundreds of candidates? Yes, you have that master's degree, but hundreds of others have it too. What is your unique competitive advantage? It can be a passion for what you do or a bunch of online courses you took to improve your skills or maybe you have knowledge in both business and technology or that painful experience in telemarketing gave you especially good understanding of how to deal with customers. Find what is your unique advantage and make sure recruiters notice it.

Build your brand. I know you have CV. But that's not enough. In today's world of Internet technologies, you need to create an online presence. It can be LinkedIn, twitter, about.me,  a blog or your own website with a portfolio of works. Any of these tools will help you speak up about your talents and professional interests, which will make you more visible to potential employers. Also, don't neglect such elements of a personal brand as email signature and business cards.

Network. First time when I heard that your connections are more important than your grades, I couldn't believe it. But this is often true. Statistics says only 10% of people find jobs by filling out online applications. In order to find a job you need to meet and build connections with company representatives. How?

Go to all networking events related to your field (company visits for students, conferences, meetup.com)

Introduce yourself to people (scary, I know).

Tell them what you study, what you are interested in and what kind of job you are searching for.

Exchange business cards (Even if you are a student it is good to have your own business cards. They are cheap, easy to make and help you stand out from other students)

 Add your new contact in LinkedIn and follow up by an email thanking them for the pleasant conversation and asking about job opportunities.

Find a mentor. Many universities offer mentoring programs where students are paired with experienced professionals. A mentee shares his problems and concerns related to job search and his mentor helps to define right targets, realize strengths and weaknesses, compare companies and industries and sometimes even connects with right people. Besides very practical advice and connections, your mentor is also the person who supports you in hard moments, which can be priceless when searching for a job.

These are some of the lessons job hunting thought me. I hope they will be useful for those searching for jobs. Also, I recommend to the book The Startup of You written by the founder of LinkedIn, which has some good advice on defining a career strategy and networking.

After writing this blog post, I realized there is some more advice related to job hunting abroad, which I can give to international students and graduates, but this will be the topic for one of the following blog posts.

[eleonoranazander]

Leading when you are not a leader

Christmas and New Year are approaching. It is time to look back at 2013 and summarize what this year has brought to us.

The main event of the 2013 for me was leaving university and starting on my first real job at Stora Enso. I gained a lot of professional knowledge and also learnt about leadership in the GROW global trainee program. The trainee program has been a wonderful experience: meeting senior leaders of Stora Enso, learning about the company, global trends, finance, innovations thinking and leading change, profound discussions with the trainees…  However, there is one question I often asked myself when thinking about the trainee program: how can you learn to be a leader when you are not in a leadership position?

We trainees just started our professional careers and a lot of time will pass before we have a chance to become managers. And it is true for the majority of young professionals. So, how can you learn to be a leader when you are not in a formal position to manager people? Or maybe you should just wait?

The answer I found for myself with the help of this TED talk is that leadership doesn't have to be formal. You are a leader if you are not afraid to offer you ideas and take initiatives. You are a leader if you believe in something so much that you infect others with enthusiasm. You can lead by example (and this is something we trainees have been very good at: many employees followed suit of the trainees and started blogging in our intranet!)

One of Stora Enso's  values is "Lead". At least to me, it doesn't mean you should pursue leadership positions as your main goal, but that you should work in the best possible way and show an example to others. You can and should be a leader in everyday life.

[eleonoranazander]

What is business intelligence?

I have a mysterious title of a business intelligence analyst. So, what does it mean? Does it mean I am intelligent? Well, hopefully yes, but that not relevant now. Does it mean I work with business problems as opposed to technical ones? Not quite, I need to know both sides. 

Business intelligence is a combination of methods and tools that transform raw data into information useful for business decisions. It includes storing, processing, analyzing data and presenting it in a useful format (last two are my favorites).

Business intelligence helps to answer many business questions:

Business intelligence provides information useful for business decisions. And when business decisions are based on reliable information... they lead to profits! As the study by The Economist has shown, the extend to which companies utilize data is positively correlated with their financial performance:

To sum up, business intelligence provides businesses with information for quicker and easier business decisions. And as we could see, it is hard to overstate the value of good information:

I hope now you understand why I am excited about my work!

[eleonoranazander]

Rethinking education

Today I decided to write about one of my passions: free online education. It all started for me when in spring 2012 I noticed a facebook post by one of my friends with a link to Coursera. For me, it was love from the first sight. I was amazed to find out that top universities of the world provide online courses open to anyone for free and immediately subscribed to 3 courses.

1,5 years have passed since my first encounter with Coursera. I've finished 5 courses and watched video lectures from at least 4 more. So, did it pay off for the time spent? I believe yes. After giving it a big deal of thought, these are my reasons why online education creates value:

1) It gives a chance for better life for those who don't have possibilities to go to university. There so many people in our world who live in poverty but don't have a chance to get a good education and a better job. Very often the reason is money, but it can also be the location or time: often you need to quit your job and move to another location to obtain a better education. Few can do it. Just imagine a family with children who don't have any savings and very low income! Now you can take online courses from the top universities of the world for free when and where it is most suitable for you. (By the way, Stanford changes 43 950$ for one year of master's studies in engineering).

2) It allows you to discover your real passion. We are usually very young when we need to choose a profession and select a university program to enroll into. I was 17. At this age, it is very hard to know what you want to do in life but once you are on the way, it is almost impossible to change your career path. Among several reasons for that, you don't get to try other professions once you started studying one subject or started working. Online education gives an opportunity to try something completely new. For example, I took a course in machine learning, which was far more advanced and technical than the offerings of my business school. I realized this is exactly what I want to do in work.

3) It improves your chances to find a job. Obviously, employers don't value online courses as much as a real degree, but nevertheless, taking online courses can differentiate you from other candidates. The more knowledge is of course the better, but this is not the only thing I mean here. Taking online courses shows your drive. It shows you are so interested in your field that university courses were not enough and you decided to spend your free time to improve your skills even further. From my experience of searching for a job in a foreign country without knowing the local language, it is very important to find how to differentiate yourself and online courses can give you such an advantage. By the way, now it is possible to include your Coursera accomplishments to your Linkedin profile!

So, these are my thought about online education. Do you agree? Do you know any other way how free online education benefits the society?

I encourage you to check out what Coursera and other platforms have to offer (scroll over the picture below) and maybe you will find something you've always been curious about but never had a chance to try.