My challenge in Superhog is going to come with a lot more freedom and lot more responsibility than the previous positions I've held. The crown is heavy, and so it's both my time to shine and to not fuck up.
One of the habits that I value a lot, have almost never seen successfully applied in companies, and have seen successfully applied to some degree in Mercad~ao (thanks João) is writing things down. A lot. Everywhere. All the time. Organized repositories of text all over the place. Basically, every time you are about to open your mouth to say something, you should instead or also write it down.
I'll start on the eve of my arrival by writing down some thoughts on stuff I need to do.
- Social wise
- Make contacts: I need to have a couple of coffees with a lot of people:
* Global KPIs : https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/:x:/g/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/EU9p7oaSBGRFoYGlJkfsMqwBt6sCRfF-jd0_3zkUYJxV2Q?e=k7ad02
* Data used in Sales and Account management : https://guardhog.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Guardhoggroup/EZXCzc8ftM5JrOm43UpCh5QBrB05Rrq6MDJ7-j-B8pjHJQ?e=4o4JnG
* Data used in Finance : https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/:x:/g/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/ERZWA02zJlxAi8akJmzVz40BQ3sjwARt1EYUnP6Y4-sbZg?e=maj0dU
* Data used in Product : https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/:x:/g/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/Ed1Wt4-T-9FIodoJEkmYUzMB3VzalxzPTsiYcrQOm1ik1g?e=qZhW9Z
* Invoicing Process : https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMirYfDg=/
- Make current operations work properly now that we have resources (backfill). Andrew's opinion is they were understaffed for long and that explains why things are not working out smoothly.
- Integration with PMSs to white-label the solution and turn them into sales funnels
- Crazy R&D ideas, mostly around Guest-centric services
- How do you envision my team, who do I report to?
- Data is not a squad, it's cross functions
- Serves both Ben C and Matt, but with different styles
- We rely a lot on engineering and Ben R, so we need to tag along nicely and they need to keep us in mind.
Elaine leaves mid february.
Amanda joining and taking care of the financial processes and bookkeeping until a finance director joins in.
End of march is end of financial year. Next year books will be on Iplicity.
Actions
- Andrew is very concerned about the invoicing process and the choice of accounting tool and now I understand why. If any of those two, are not worked out properly, they will lead to a very nasty situation. I need to judge my role in those fast and get evereyone aligned.
---
Stuff we couldn't go through, let's discuss next meeting:
- Is the P&L somehow decentralized?
- How do you and Humphrey split responsibilities?
- Things I've liked so far
- Good attitudes, good spirit
- Product is clear
- Lots of room for improvement
- If the product is making money with the current simplicity, we can surely do better
- Systems are growing uncontrolled, this will bite us in the ass soon and will hurt people's work
- The huge proportion of new joiners is going to be a cultural challenge
- Data is in a bad shape, I don't have data
- What do you think about my plan?
- Couple of weeks listening in
- Ceremony to kickstart the team
- Team proposal
- Backlog
- Building out our infrastructure as well as working on hot things. Balance between immediate stuff and building for the future
- Is there something that concerns you? Anything you are scared of? Any issue that keeps you up at night?
- I'll be eager to grab a lunch or to hear more about both you and Humphrey. I care about the plans at the top, it's one of the main reasons I'm here and not at a big corp
## Meeting with Clay
Onboarding and PMSs
- Every host gets manual onboarding. This is a pain point
- Clay fully takes care of PMS integrations. The most relevant bit of this happens to be managing onboardings, since there isn't much trouble once the integration is done for each PMC.
- product management at SH https://www.notion.so/knowyourguest-superhog/Product-Management-at-Superhog-c8e6401f2e8e4383a9a9f4a7c5a3443b
- Mixpanel: invite sent. Note we’re working out a bug at the moment which is blocking us from judging our accurate usage and moving forward with upgrading to the paid version/using it properly!
- I'm worried about only having two cycles to play around + Elaine leaving. I dislike this being the first thing to jump to, but I think it will have to be so
- I'm afraid untangling this doesn't look like only a data issue and it's going to be complex dancing altogether
- Ben thinks there is indeed a high level of complexity, which is natural due to the way the bookings and money flows work and due to resolution process
- The issues with payment problems and manual retries are also part of the issue. The current dual payment providers situation is part of the problem.
- Ben has a very good acceptance of the fact that product changes in dashboard might be required to get this in good shape.
- I see a general pattern of shadow IT and short-comings in Dashboard being tackled with system+organization patches everywhere. This will bite us back eventually (is kind of already)
- [X] Basic set of cutlery to keep in our office https://www.amazon.es/BEWOS-cubiertos-cuberteria-inoxidable-Lavavajillas/dp/B0BZXZJ31Y/ref=sr_1_10?__mk_es_ES=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=13L3AVL2USBKQ&keywords=cuberteria&qid=1701420382&sprefix=cuberteria%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-10&th=1
- [X] A few locks for lockers to make life easier for new joiners: https://www.amazon.es/Combinacion-Diyife-Impermeable-Archivadores-Herramientas/dp/B08Y6D1Y38/ref=cs_sr_dp_n?__mk_es_ES=%EF%BF%BDM%EF%BF%BD%7D%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD&crid=8ESI3Q3APIBJ&keywords=candado%2Btaquilla&qid=1701419900&sprefix=candado%2Btaquilla%2Caps%2C104&sr=8-6&th=1
- [X] Share onboarding list with Ben C.
- [X] Open ticket for broken chair
- [X] Sit down with Lourdes?
- [X] Start the Data space in Notion
## Meeting with Ben R. and Ben C.
- I propose
- Notion for Data team homepage (not for heavy, internal technical docs)
- New project in devops, one board, as many repos as needed in there
- We go for space Notion
- We go for space Confluence
I include myself in Superhog devops
- try to follow naming convention for repos
- I can create repos and boards freely within the project
## Emergency PBI release call with Ben R. and Lawrence
- Loads of tables
- Views specific for reporting
- Good idea with decoupling
- Denormalized
- Direct transactional server queries. Load doesn't seem to be a problem for now.
- Not overwhelming
Server and database are parametrized in the workspaces and automatically picked up.
Are there any instructions to set up a local environment for the Superhog SQL database?
- [ ] Documentation on how to change and release PBI changes
- [ ] Documentation on the reporting views
- [ ] Documentation on setting up local environment of superhog SQL db
## Meeting with Lourdes
- What is your kingdom
- Resolutions
- Different for waiver and DPP
- Scope begins when the host raises an issue
- Teams and processes under your products
- Resolution Center on Dashboard, visibile by hosts. But big PMCs that come through integrations use emails or forms. So no that useful.
- Airtable used as backend to handle this, but everything is very manual
- Planning on managing processes through Hubspot.
- Elise is the manager, Chloe will step in when Elise leaves for maternity. About ~6 people in total.
- Systems and data
- Completely in the dark regarding metrics and analysing their processes.
- Current tools:
- Spreadsheets in Airtable
- Forms
- Dashboard Resolution Center
- There is some PBI report hidden somewhere, feed with manual data.
- [X] Sit down with Ana (once her scope is more clear and she's in control)
## Ben Cotte initial explorations
Ben sent me some of the materials he has been building around assessing data in superhog last week. I'm listing some of them there to make sure they don't fall through the cracks and I can come back to them when needed.
Links to the videos shared by Ben with different areas:
Global KPIs : https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/:x:/g/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/EU9p7oaSBGRFoYGlJkfsMqwBt6sCRfF-jd0_3zkUYJxV2Q?e=k7ad02
Data used in Sales and Account management : DataMgtReview - Sales & AM.xlsx
Data used in Finance : Data Meeting.xlsx
Data used in Product : DataMgtReview_Product.xlsx
Invoicing Process : https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMirYfDg=/
Ajunto igualmente el inicial draft hecho por Trust Keith, pero tendras que hablar con Louisa de legal para que te pase la ultima version (o que pida ella la ultima version)
A Data Flow map built by the external legal provider for GDPR purporses:
[Superhog - Data Flow.pdf](other%2FSuperhog%20-%20Data%20Flow.pdf)
- Unrealistic prioritization. Not all questions deserve to be answered
- Overly strict centralization in Data team: if someone owns the data, has the data, and knows what to do with the data, the Data team is there to review but doesn't need to act
- Get another data engineer and two data analysts in place. Senior people that know what they are doing, not the right place and time to develop junior guys