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superhog_personal_notes/log.md
Pablo Martin 325bd4e516 thingies
2024-01-19 17:16:39 +01:00

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2023-11-26

Tomorrow is my first day. Yay!

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:
      • Andrew and Humphrey
      • Ben Cotte
      • Ben Robinson
      • Nicky
      • Finance?
        • whoever any of the previous points at as a relevant person
  • Business wise
    • Get someone to sell Superhog to me as if was a property owner
    • Experience Superhog like guests do
    • Spend a day with the customer service team
    • Spend a day with whoever sells Superhog to property owners
    • Understand better our business model, revenue and cost structure
    • Get up to date with what are our yearly/long-term goals
  • IT wise
    • VPN/Helpdesk
    • Get someone to guide me through existing solutions
    • Understand what is our productivity stack
      • Teams?
      • Office?
      • Internal docs/wikis?
  • Data-team wise
    • Take control
      • Set an agenda with Humphrey and Andrew so that they see I'm on top of things
      • Clarify first goals
        • Get to know the business
        • Understand our IT situation
        • Understand what is already built, data wise
        • Set first goals
        • Size human needs, IT needs, discuss budget for both
        • Present long-term things that are important-but-not-urgent
  • Personal wise
    • Benefits? Health insurance?
    • Office parking?

Good habits that hopefully can be implemented:

  • Weekly/monthly data team newsletter
  • Data-literacy company training
  • Greenflag culture
  • Office hours
  • Funny data facts/trivias/bets
  • Technical blog

Mistakes from Lola that I want to avoid:

  • Repetitive, stupid ceremonies that everyone dislikes
  • Siloing and this-is-my-corner feelings. E2E ownership of stories
  • Distance with engineering team
  • Lack of involvement of product team
  • Lack of planned training for data staff

Some good inspiration for data team handbooks:

2023-11-27

People I've met today

  • Clay Boldt (Product Manager). Is he a relative to Andrew?
  • Mike Hayward(IT, what does he do? Lol, he's job title is "IT guy")

Things I've learned today:

  • We have six different legal entities
  • We have a customer support team in the Philippines
  • We have some devs in Egypt
  • We are soon opening offices in Australia and US, mainly for commercial purposes
  • There's a civil war on whether to use Teams or Slack for internal comms
  • Wednesday is the strong office day. Monday and Friday people are usually working remote.
  • Our money cows

Meeting with Ben

Products:

  • Risk management with two pillars

    • KYG (reduce risk)
      • With multiple levels of verification
      • Check with black lists
      • Check reality of
    • Damage Waivers/Protection (protect you from unavoidable risk)
      • Several options depending on who pays, how much it protects, etc.
      • If all goes wrong: resolution

  • Dashboard

    • Panel for both Superhog employees and hosts
    • Hosts can manage everything there (minority)
    • Also integrates with PMS (majority)
      • Some PMS have plugins that automatically integrate with Superhub
      • Guesty, Hospitable, Hostaway
      • Modular presence in booking lifecycle
      • Veriff for identity check
      • Payment partner up until now Acquired. Recently started out with Stripe to check if UX improves and less people drop out of the funnel
      • Product is not happy with current dashboard UX. New platform will be called KYG.
      • Triple funnel:
        • Guest experience funnel
        • Host commercial funnel
        • Resolution funnel
      • Wilbur is the name of the admin panel
      • Athena is a screening as a service to allow PMS like Athena

  • Business

    • Waiver is the top product: 52% of revenue
    • Revenue guest fee (user pays for screening) : 5% of revenue
    • SaaS fees (Host pays for screening): 34% of revenue

Ben's opinion on most critical stuff:

  • Improve the invoicing/finance reconciliation so that the Finance team works efficiently.

  • Scrum vs Deadlines. Culture clash? What's Ben Robinson take on it?

Some of the files Ben guided me through:

And that's it for the first day.

2023-11-28

  • Get access to slack

  • Get access to miro

  • Get access to Notion

  • Get access to productboard

  • Get access to Sage HR

  • Get access to Keeper Security

  • Set up profile pic

  • Send a hello email

  • Book time with Ben Robinson

  • Book with HR (Nicky)

  • Book time with Matt (Operations VP)

  • Lourdes, Louise, Clay

  • Elaine (Finance)

  • Leo (Sales)

  • Set up profile and other thingies in Sage HR

  • Learn what employee benefits do we have -> None

  • Get access to Confluence

  • Ask Nicky (and Ben Robinson?) about IT equipment policy

  • Get hold of company themed office templates

  • Time with the rest of the IT crew? -> Gus

  • Get access to Norskken house -> Should have news by 30/11

Meeting with Matt

  • What falls under your domain?

  • What's your story here?

  • What's in your agenda right now? What are you working on?

  • What would you ask of me? Letter to Santa

  • My vision on the data team

    • Help owners of data help themselves
    • Help build those things that go across systems and departments
    • Expect soon: Data Catalog, more discussions to include you in a backlog

  • What systems are your teams relying on the most

  • What data would you say you own

  • Joined in September 2023

  • Before: COO Largest property management company in the UK

  • Manage:

    • RevOps
    • Marketing
    • Sales
      • Account Executives
      • BDR
    • Customer Services
      • Account Management
      • Resolutions
      • Guest services
    • Business Systems
      • Systems across his own teams
      • Learning and Development to deliver onboarding and training for all teams

  • Doesn't look after

    • Tech
    • Product
    • Finance
    • Legal
    • HR

  • Challenges:

    • Lack of data management
    • Too many systems, too many databases
    • Lack of data to get his work done

Who to meet:

  • Alex (Business systems)
  • Lianne (Business systems)
  • Leo
  • Beth (Marketing lead)

img.png

Systems:

  • Hubspot
  • Dashboard? KYG?

Meeting with Nicky

  • Sage HR
    • Holiday requests get managed there
    • Bank holidays
    • Holidays can roll over until March of the next year
    • Birthday off
    • Weekly Timesheet must be filled
  • Additional IT equipment
    • Ask Nicky
  • Benefits?
    • Nothing at the moment
  • Where to check payslips?
    • Comes through email, sent by the company that takes care of payroll
  • Bonus: same yearly cycle for everyone, individual based, how does that work?
    • February/March it gets defined
    • April it gets paid

Meeting with Ben Robinson

  • About the teams

    • Structure of the engineering team
      • Going from one large team to squads
      • Got 1 squad up and running (PMS - Karim)
      • Dashboard squad
      • Ray (APIs)
      • Goal is to have 5 squads with 5 team leads
      • Infra? Each team
    • Main communication channels
    • Who to go to for what
      • Ben or Gus

  • Accesses

    • Azure Devops
    • Git
    • Confluence
    • VPN?
    • User for staging environments for "Dashboard" and "KYG"

  • IT support

    • All through Teams?
    • Difference between quick ticket and regular one?
    • IT equipment requests?
      • Nicky or Kayla
      • Perhaps

  • Productivity tools

    • Slack vs Teams
    • Confluence vs Notion
    • Devops vs Product Board
      • Originally it was only Teams and Devops
      • Shadow IT
    • Hope

  • Architecture overview

    • Explainer
      • Multiple applications, APIs and databases
      • Databases
        • 1 Main SQL database -> Core
        • 3 NoSQL cosmos databases
          • resolutions
          • athena
          • claims
      • Hubspot
        • CRM
        • Email campaigns
        • Discussions on single source of truth against
    • Accounting tool
      • Current tool is Zero
      • Ben is with me, not too many things on that tool
    • PowerBI
      • There are some dashboards with data models
      • There's a few SQL models
      • Mostly owned by Alex Anderson
    • Documentation
      • Ben sends my way
    • VPN? Will you give me keys for cloud account? Infrastructure? Who can I reach out to for infra requests?
      • All azure
      • Ben and Gus are taking care of infra across all squads
      • Devops on the head hunting list
    • Your opinion: technical debt
    • Current engineering culture
    • Your point of view
    • Ways of working
      • scrum, 2 weeks

  • Accesses

    • Devops
    • Confluence
    • DMZ
    • PowerBI

  • Docs

  • Set up some time with Ben and Gus

2023-11-29

  • Get access to Azure Devops

Meeting with Elaine

  • Who's who
    • Who to contact when in need
  • Main processes
  • Which systems
  • The terrible invoicing processes

Everything is manual Data is terrible Invoicing

Invoicing

  • 1st day of the month excel reports from Ben

  • PMS are charged for their services

    • listing fee and booking fee, Ben pulls it from Dashboard
    • pricing structure isn't great: structure in the dashboard doesn't work well for billing and accounting
    • Then calculate waivers
    • credit note
    • Pay the hosts
    • Can't trust dashboard or powerbi, need to reconcicle with financial statements
    • Lots of manual payments through Stripe because payments fail
    • Several VATs, depends on customer country
    • Several currencies

  • Jamie Dison

  • Rely on master spreadsheets

  • Pull data from

    • PowerBI
    • Zero

  • Dashboard

  • Data is not correct

  • Lack of currency conversion

  • Also pulls data from Hubspot

  • Why does PowerBI not match financial reports?

Accounting alternatives:

  • Oracle Netsuite
  • Sage Intact
  • Iplicit

Actions

  • Book some time after new years eve to go through the accounting process
  • Go through Ben Cotte's documentation
  • Say hi to Jamie
  • Request any other docs that I should check
  • Put it on my list to judge iplicit as an accounting solution with my data lenses on

Meeting with Andrew

  • General direction. 2024 company goals. What's the philosophy? Growth? Quality?
    • 3 main goal lines
      • 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.
      • Grow
        • Through direct selling (business as usual)
        • 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
    • Engineering culture seems great
    • Data is in a bad shape, I don't have data
  • Things that concern me
    • "Quick", "all out" attitude. Are we gonna spend too much time in the red part of the rev
      • Threat 1: Scaling
      • Threat 2: Add complexities through new products
    • 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
  • Goals:
    • Hopefully we get it fully automated. 100%.
  • 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.

Around 27 integrations currently Most importants: Guesty, Rentals United, Hostfully, Lodgify, Hostaway PMCs

Tradeoff between building on PMS that have a lot of clients, and PMSs that have a lot of clients with Superhog

Functions of a PMS:

  • Shared calendar for listings across all channels
  • Integrated revenue
  • Integrated communications between customer service and clients

Payment step: screening, waiver, damage protection plan

ALL BOOKINGS GET A SCREENING, NO MATTER WHAT SERVICES THE PMC HAS HIRED WITH US

Who's your tech lead? Kareem, Egypt team. Good vibes. How do you feel about your engineering team? All good, no complaints.

Documentation or videos? Would be good for you https://www.notion.so/knowyourguest-superhog/Onboarding-Simple-Step-By-Step-4c128d32313e4d22aceb6bceedfdde20

2023-11-30

  • How to book rooms?
  • Get access to staging environment for backoffice app
  • Receive access to hubspot from Alex A.
  • Get access to these maps img.png
  • Book some time with Alex Anderson (Business Systems)
  • Book some time with Lianne Foster (Business Systems)

Meeting with Alex Anderson

  • Overview of your scope

    • He comes from marketing, is now in operations
    • Goal
      • Make processes as efficient and replicable as possible. Get things to scale
      • Sits a lot on product talk
      • Revops
        • Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Account Management

  • Alex vs Lianne

    • On the same level, they split on departments
    • Alex more on tech and systems, Lianne more on business teams

  • Current systems and processes being used

    • Could you get me access to check them out?

  • Reports/Spreadsheets/PBIs/?

    • In-hubspot dashboards
    • Exports into CSV and doing some wizardry and upload in PowerBI

  • Current pain points

    • No disaster incoming
    • Resolutions is extremely in the dark

  • Can you somehow give me access to Hubspot? No touchy touchy

  • Where do you organize documentations

    • Notion for the most part
    • Work in progress

Meeting with Lou Dowds

  • What is your kingdom?
    • Right now: Dashboard Squad, Guest Journey (will have a dedicated PM soon)
    • Everyone in Superhog is using the admin panel for different purposes
    • Also KYG-lite, which will eventually also lead to KYG-pro, but it still doesn't exist
  • Tell me about the business processes underlying your products
  • How does success look like for your products?
    • Confusing conversation
  • What systems are currently part of that?
    • she reads only hubspot reports, like NPS
    • Mostly dashboard
    • Mix Panel
  • What data are you using currently?
  • What metrics do you have currently vs what metrics would you like to have?
  • Is there anything you would hope from me/data team?
    • Have operational data in PowerBI to better understand product
  • Any fires we need to put out
    • Finance Invoicing
    • Manual payment re-tries through hubspot

Documentation:

  • Product Map
  • Mix Panel

% of resolutions over bookings? No clue

Things shared by Lou after the meeting:

Meeting with Ben C

  • A few notes on what I've seen so far (see list in Andrew meeting notes)
  • My first impressions on what we should build
    • There is a need for:
      • Business as usual operational metrics
      • Analytical capabilities in exploratory endeavors within product
      • Business overview / Top management reporting
    • But, what should get priority?
  • My opinion on the invoicing nightmare
    • 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)

My vision on first deliverables:

  • Plan on how to organize data team

  • A proposal on growing the team, people wise

  • Data Catalog and Systems map

  • A backlog with first projects

  • Receive from Ben videos on

  • Product weekly

  • Miercoles catchup de producto

  • Tech dailies

2023-12-01

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.
  • Tech team
    • Adam
    • Tetiana
    • More people on the way
  • Santa Claus
  • Any fires?
    • Duct tape, but things are working.

She has BI background.

  • PBI
  • Analyst profile
  • SQL

She led Analytics Products in Aircall.

Keep me in the loop. Collaboration for Data Sources and Data Catalog. PBI report. Can I access Airtable?

2023-12-04

  • Start a Data Board in devops and stop using this for non-personal tasks
  • Start the Data space in Confluence
  • Fix the amazon order, goddamn it
  • 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:

Some links: Global KPIs : https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/❌/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

Meeting with Lianne

  • What is your kingdom

  • People, processes, systems, data

  • Any terrible painpoints atm?

  • How do you split responsibilities with Alex?

  • Lead customer service (Philippines)

  • Also did some Account Management

  • Matt poached her for Business Systems

  • "I love documenting things"

  • "Alex is more the leader"

  • Customer Service (Guest) + Account Management (Hosts) + Sales + Resolutions (eventually)

  • Working on chatbot for screening process

Meeting with Ben R. and Gus

Meeting with Leo

  • Your story
    • Employee 1 or 2 of Superhog
    • Meet Humphrey at OneFineStay
    • Takes care of Sales, Business Development and MKT (Beth)
  • What is your kingdom
  • People, processes, systems, data
    • Sales channels?
      • Integrations
        • Cool both because it brings business and also because it brings brand awareness
      • BDR
        • Social media (Instagram influencers)
        • Cold calls
      • Email marketing
      • Old school
    • Uses Hubspot
    • Uses PBI
  • Santa Claus letter and any fires to put out?
    • Sales numbers by individuals
    • Automate bonuses
    • P&L for the Account
    • Customers Segments
    • Partnerships sit in PowerBI
    • Account Manager upselling performance
    • Customer NPS

Customer

65% of customers have less than 5 listings -> Check this https://app.hubspot.com/reports-dashboard/6892479/view/9575596

Small fish

  • I get how the long tail is nice
  • I really like Clay's domain because of how simple it is

"We are very good at selling"

2023-12-05

Dashboard tour meeting

  • Dashboard
    • Listings tab: shows listings
    • Verifications tab shows all verifications.
    • Emails tab: PMCs can customize the communication templates to style them with their own branding and details.
    • Resolutions tab: well, for resolutions
    • Account tab: the details of the PMC account can be modified here.
  • Verification Journey
    • PMCs can generate verification requests manually and send them to the guest through any kind of communication channel
    • The page is "flexible": the steps the guest goes through will be different depending on what features
    • Once the guest provides details, he exists in our database
  • KYG Lite
    • Light version of the dashboard
    • Unpaid service to catch small fish
    • Right now, only available for Hostfully PMCs
  • Direct API integrations
    • DACK, Enso-connect, OTA (Online Travel Agency)
  • E-deposit
    • Uses Athena API
    • Currently only live with Guesty PMS
    • No customer contact, direct service without signup
  • Internal Admin Dashboard (Wilbur)
    • For Superhog employees
    • Can be used to set the Account Settings for any of our customer accounts
  • Guest dashboard
    • Will be discontinued

Is the backend of KYG-lite 100% the same as Dashboard? Same backend yes. Difference between Athena/e-deposit vs Direct API integration? Is Accounts the only relevant tab on Wilbur?

  • Couple of useful reports
  • Resolution admins view

READ THE PRODUCT MAP and the Superhog features Do I have access to KYG-lite?

2023-12-07

Express meeting with Matt

Map customer journey

  • Sharing board
  • Sharing with Product team

2023-12-11

Product Weekly

2023-12-12

  • Say hi to Amanda

Meeting with Ben C. around Product Ownership in Data

My briefing to him:

The Data Team is going to be a slightly different squad with a few members capable of doing technical work and building stuff. As all squads, is going to have a limited capacity and an infinite demand. Hence, like any other team, we will have to build a backlog, groom it, and prioritize it.

Because of this, I strongly believe that Data requires Product Management and its mindset. I’ve seen many companies fail at this, providing PO to most squads but not to Data “because it’s different”.

Nevertheless, I think Data it’s truly different. I think Product Management looks a bit different for Data than it will for the other tech squads for the different product domains. This is because of things like:

  • In my experience, building data products like dashboards or one-shot, adhoc analysis is very different than building “regular” software products. There are commonalities, but also quite a few differences.
  • There is a lot of foundational work that is necessary, yet doesn’t really fit nicely into one single product (like grunt work in the guts of a Datawarehouse, which is necessary to support many different reports for many different areas).
  • The cross-functional nature of the team means that it has many different clients with different needs. This is challenging from a product management POV because you are fighting a multiheaded hydra.
  • Data is less free than many other tech teams because it depends a lot on existing systems and teams to build it’s own stuff. We build on top of other’s work, and so have to manage these dependency relationships.

Those where some thoughts. All of this leads me to ask myself:

  • Should there be a dedicated PM for Data? Is this an impossible task because it’s simply too much for a single brain?
  • Should instead all PMs be able to add stories to Data’s backlog? What about needs that go across domains/teams? And about areas that don’t have a PM (like Finance)?
  • Perhaps Data should have multiple backlogs? Or perhaps it’s an overkill?
  • Should I simply act as the Data PM for now? How sustainable will that be?

I’m asking myself these questions because:

  1. Well, it’s an important topic, it should be well thought and I think your take on it is vital.
  2. If there are headcount implications, we need to agree on them and get things rolling. Whatever we decide, I would like to bring to the Data Kickoff meeting on the 14th.

Ben:

  • Internal Data team manages internal work independently
  • Important need for a roadmap
  • Product Board: make a data roadmap there
  • Data Analyst with a strong product view acting as a product owner
  • Begin with 3 and add more by justifying with a roadmap

Meeting with Andrew about headcount

My notes:

Hi Andrew,

On the Data kick-off meeting for the 14th, I would like to present some plans in terms of what the data team should look like, people wise. I think it would be unwise to wait until then to show my cards, because hopefully that meeting is more about aligning visions that about discussing a lot. So, I would like to share my current thoughts to see how they align with yours and with overall budget/headcount constraints and plans.

@Ben Cotte, @Ben Robinson also looping you in for transparency, feel free to chime in.

My thoughts:

  • I think there is a lot of Data work to get done (which is great news because it’s a lot of good coming for the company).
  • I’m obviously not gonna get much done on my own. I see backlog for a nice 4 heads (including myself). I would look for another Data Engineer and a couple of Data Analysts. o The additional Data Engineer would be more on the strong code, modelling, infra side of things. This is important because we have a lot to build in this area, and because solely relying on me is a terrible idea for many reasons. o The Data Analysts would be sitting closer to Product/RevOps/Finance/etc, working on top of. o Nevertheless, there is some degree of overlap between the skillset and capabilities of both profiles, and I would like to get people with a good multi-hat attitude for these early stages. o I would also be in favour of going for experienced profiles at this point. I don’t think this is a good time for someone to learn on the job. More junior profiles might provide better value/cost when the team is more mature and things have settled a bit.
  • BTW, I’m aware there was an open search for an experienced analyst but, from the lack of news, I’ve assumed that’s not progressing or at least not close to completion?
  • Besides this, I see the need for some extra work to be done in Product (somehow closer to Ben C.) and Infrastructure (somehow closer to Ben R.) The lines here are fuzzy. This doesn’t need to necessarily be part of the Data Team strictly speaking, but the Data Team will need some of this. I’m planning on discussing with both Ben’s next week to align.

So, converging, @Andrew Boldt:

  • Does this make sense to you?
  • Is going out and hiring 3 extra people now aligned with what you are planning/willing to invest in Data?

Please, feel free to provide feedback and tear it to the ground if necessary. We can sit and talk whenever if needed. I would like to have some, even if it’s rough, we have agreed on for Thursday.

  • Thursday plan

Senior Data Analyst (the brains: sitting closer to the business) Let's adjust the third position depending on what we find for the Senior Data Analyst

For the meeting: Matt Ben Ben Andrew Humphrey is just flying around Leo goes off the hook

Surprise meeting with Iplicit

We meet with Tim Coles.

My points:

  • API seems rather limited. Are there any other export systems? Couldn't find anything in the documentation.
  • Integration plugins with any data sync tools like Fivetran, Airbyte, etc.

Reason of the meeting: what would the implementation project look like:

  1. Contract signed, no resources assigned until that happens
  2. Kickoff (couple hours)
  3. Solution Design Meeting (a few hours)
    • they help us determine how to configure Iplicit
    • Someone to handle integration
    • PID -> Document with the outcome
  4. Sandbox environment
    • Start moving data
  5. Training and testing phase
    • Training over Teams
  6. Go live
  7. A bit of extra support from their side afterwards
  • Can I have some material on Data Migration
  • Do we keep sandbox environment?

Andrew expects me to take care of this Data migration.

Andrew: "We will import data to Iplicity on a monthly basis"

Some thoughts:

  • Exporting data out of Iplicit doesn't seem very important. We are going to end up doing the billing and charging logic outside of the system and then dump it in through the API, so it will be out anyways.

Meeting with Beth

  • Marketing website
  • New strategy atm
  • More aligned with Account Management and other RevOps

Email marketing Hubspot

  • I don't have a full picture of customer lifecycle

  • See details on active user in Dashboard

  • Integration between

  • Number of guests that we screen, screen funneling

  • CLV

Her Santa Claus list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xpaEaDvOO69gxsSNYpYT8z0yFzF3iuIe/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=104451810415666214282&rtpof=true&sd=true

2023-12-13

  • Get a locker
  • Get a lock for my locker 760

Meeting with Amanda

  • How are you going to organize work in the finance team? Should I go to you or Elaine?
    • Situation is up in the air
  • Invoicing process
    • I'm here to help with the data side of things
  • Besides, I have an interest in Stripe and Acquired, Data wise
  • Can I steal Jamie freely, should I channel it through you?

14th Presentation Notes

Goals

  • Project that I'm in control
  • Impress with my calm and thoughtful planning
  • Secure my headcount
  • Secure my rights over other teams
  • Ensure my vision is shared by the TMT

Script

  • Agenda
    • What I've seen
    • What I propose
    • Next actions
    • Discuss, debate and agree
  • Past few weeks
    • I've been doing my little tour
    • I've started working on cataloguing our data and data products
  • Diagnostics
    • General vibe: we are in a sweet moment. The child is turning into a man, and we are starting to see some cracks in his clothing (Hulk picture)
    • Concerns
      • Operations issues: non-standardized process, hard to measure, hard to improve on
      • Product issues: common-sense is the only driver, no analytical approach. No mature pricing strategy.
      • Sales: nose driven methodology. Lack of basic data to drive marketing and sales (CLV, segments, analytics on channels, sales agents performance metrics, etc)
      • Finance: invoicing.
      • Technology: lack of data infra. People are integrating data with blood, sweat and tears.
    • Good stuff
      • Product works
      • Good tech culture, mature engineering team
      • Human capital is looking great to me
      • Strong bet on product management feels promising
      • Sales is nose driven, but it seems to be a very good nose given the results
    • Do you think I've missed any important points? Any disagreements
  • Data Team vision
    • Responsibilities
      • Supervise data across the org: catalogue and document all relevant items
      • Build and own infrastructure to service needs that don't fall nicely within anyone's domain: DWH, integration of external data sources, etc.
      • Build stable data products: reports, dashboards, APIs, etc
      • Provide brainpower for highly complex analysis
      • Build data literacy across the company
      • Not:
        • Own every little reporting need and become a blocker
        • Act as a release valve to product short-comings
        • Overcome bad process and system designs with miracles
    • What does success look like
      • Data is easily accessible for those who need it
      • We have capacity to build data products with speed and quality
      • Production systems run with good uptime
      • We have the foundations to attempt more sophisticated projects (ML/AI, advanced statistical and optimization models, etc)
    • Powers
      • Be involved early when needed
      • Impose certain standards on data owners in terms of documentation and practices
      • Enforce agreements with upstream dependency owners (Robinson, don't break my columns please)
    • Other parts of my philosophy
      • We have a backlog, limited capacity and thus we need to prioritize, like any other team
      • Not every question deserves being answered
      • I'll be annoying on my dependencies
    • Tell me if my vision fits what you expect of my team
  • Plans
    • Short-term (weeks)
      • First batch of cataloguing and documenting
      • Take control of important reports
        • PBI
        • Hubspot
        • Global KPIs
        • etc.
      • Assist in the invoicing issue from the data side of things
      • Get into important loops to provide the data point of view
        • Product design
        • Standardization of operational processes
        • Company software decisions: stripe vs acquired, new accounting software, etc.
      • Perform a first approach at grooming a data products backlog
      • Start hiring
    • Mid-term (months)
      • Build new data products to cover different areas
      • Build data infrastructure: DWH, integration solutions, better reporting tools
      • Data trainings outside the data team
    • Future
      • Maintain and scale
      • Advanced Data Products: ML&AI
      • I don't know what else, I don't like looking that forward unless strictly necessary. Life's just too messy.
    • Hiring
      • Another data engineer
      • 2 Data Analysts
      • Seniority. No place for people who don't know what they are doing at this stage. I would rather have a few experienced hands than an army of newbies.
    • Some timings and next actions
      • Hiring
      • Timebox data cataloguing and documenting
      • Controling existing reports
      • Timebox
      • First round of grooming with the different areas to build up backlog

Product Catchup Meeting

Survey - What platform are we using? Hubspot, although the team is tempted about Typeform. They think exporting data from Hubspot is going to be challenging. The Airbyte conenctor seems to support it though.

  • Ask team for job descriptions

2023-12-14

  • Order RAM from PC Componentes

2023-12-15

  • Ask Mike for troubleshooting Teams calls issue

2023-12-18

  • Add RAM invoice to Xero expenses to get it reimbursed
  • Review Data Analyst job description and make my short-list

Product weekly

  • Any clarity on Stripe vs Acquired? None.
  • Are Hubspot Forms being used right now? Yes.
  • What is this Culture index thing? Some peculiar psychological survey. I'm very skeptical on it.

This week:

  • Hubspot
  • Core
  • Finance

Hubspot meeting with Lianne and Alex

Everything is in the Confluence page.

Meeting with Ana

  • Superhog API (current ugly page will be deprecated)
  • Athena
    • API Whitelabel, Superhog without the dashboard
      • How do you change account settings? How do you see bookings? How do you change configs? How does the customer (Host) interact?
    • Will it have a different backend?

She's very confused and not happy with the current set up of the unit. The note feels gloomy.

2023-12-20

Product catchup

  • Finishing the first batch of cataloguing (finance will have to wait)
  • Drafting the architecture of the DWH but Robinson is hard to catch
  • Helping out with the hiring

Meeting with Ben

he creates a new subscription for me Follow conventions He has a plan to move over to a more serious We create a subscription for data

2023-12-21

  • Are there any shared folders in Keeper Security where I should be added?

    • Yes, a dev folder

  • Big official "This is what we will do" Data meeting in 14th December

  • Get access to the Data Meeting excel from Ben Cotte

  • Review the data exploration efforts made by Cotte

  • Push for consensus in Data Analyst job desc

    • Discuss with: Pere Rumbo, Olga Vons, Nacho Moreno, Borja Burriel, Alejandro Suarez, Rodrigo Baranda
    • Get feedback from Abol and Jaume

Mixpanel demo

  • Snippets of mixpanel code go into our codebase
  • Mixpanel charges us per event
  • We can check the list of events
  • User view

Mixpanel governance

  • Goals:

    • Reminder: I don't want to own everything, but I want to help make everything accessible
    • Help you make Mixpanel data/insights accessible company wide
    • Not annoy you
    • Not die myself

  • Dangerous due to complexity (Sword)

  • We can integrate Mixpanel data into DWH

  • Self-contained vs company wide

    • Audience factor
    • Need for other systems factor

  • Cataloguing responsibility

  • Suggestion: Schedule clean ups periodically

  • Careful with PII, informal POV

Session with Robinson

  • Go through access management for users in the workspaces

    • Power BI user access group
      • Office 365 managed by Ben Robinson, distribution list (active directory)
      • Should be enough to see the apps
      • Can I get access to at least see the size
      • We can send emails powerbiuser@superhog.com
    • I can add people to manage access to the workspace
      • This is where you add
    • Apps to control access
      • They are just bundles of PBI reports, we can fine control what goes there
    • Research sensitivity labels for PII
    • Licensing
      • People get PBI Pro, about 8GBP per user and month

  • Discussions on not building on top of Core directly anymore

  • Go through cycle of modifying a report

    • Steps

      • Go to sharepoint Tech team
      • Pick one of the 5 reports
      • Backup through folders
      • Download locally
      • Work things out
        • Pay attention to parameters: live/staging

    • Team sync, LOCK approach?

      • Yes

    • Move to Data team sharepoint

    • Home IP whitelist for Pablo, confirm office

    • Reporting

      • Only Alex and Eng Team creating reports
      • Consumers:
        • Send a PBI

2023-12-22

Pricing call with Ben

Alt text

Duda en pricing

Alt text

Contribucion estrategica, no he prestado atencion porque lo operativo corre mas pricas

Personalizacion en funciones del cliente

Engineering tiene que bailar junto a esto

2023-12-27

2024-01-02

Meeting with Alex

  • His request

    • We didn't discuss Intercom: chatbot for the guest verification journey. Data gets sent to Hubspot as a ticket.
      • Name
      • Email
      • Problem description
      • Has a field that helps clearly tell apart the source of the ticket in Hubspot
    • We want to know
      • Exactly how many people started a Verficiation journey in the UI
      • How many people activated the chatbot
      • How many people ended up having to open a ticket to request for help in Hubspot
    • North star
      • Set this up properly with Mixpanel so we can track the funnel super nicely.
    • I'll try to come up with these numbers

  • Tour around Hubspot reports

    • Alex takes care of creating the reports
    • Usually use the Custom Report Builder
    • Pick up a main object and afterwards select other entities to be joined
    • Metabase report style, or just PBI with a closed semantic model

  • Most important/used reports at the moment

    • Dedicated dashboard for the different departments
    • 1 day
      • Marketing
      • Guest services
      • Finance
        • Used to export stuff for invoicing
    • Weekly
      • Sales
      • Sales call
      • Account Management
      • Onboarding
    • Account Management (Dashboard)
      • Upcoming renewals
      • List of onboarding-pending accounts
      • Accounts without assigned account manager
      • Hesitations (complaints from customers)
      • Ticketing stats
    • Marketing Dashboard
      • Deal origin details

  • Discuss weird property fields in Hubspot data

    • He will look into those
    • Important: we can't change the name of existing properties

PBI Emergency

Jamie shows me that a PBI report is broken. It's the Client Pay Away Information one in the Payments section.

Once you open it, the main table is gone and an error appears in it saying:

Something's wrong with one or more fields: (VerificationPayment) ListingFriendlyName, (VerificationPayment) ListingAddressLine1, (VerificationPayment) BookingCheckout, (VerificationPayment) BookingCheckin

I agree with them that I will try to pullout the data of the table manually first and send it over so they become unblocked since they need this ASAP. Afterwards, I'll fix the report.

Exporting the data

The table is using the following columns from the following Semantic Model entities:

Entity Column
Host BillingCountryName
Host DealId
Host Email
Host Name
Payee BillingCountryName
Payee Email
Payee Name
VerificationPayment DepositWithheld
VerificationPayment FailedAttemptCount
VerificationPayment IsPayAway
VerificationPayment OrderId
VerificationPayment PayAwayGrossAmount
VerificationPayment PayAwayMinimumComission
VerificationPayment PayAwayPercentage
VerificationPayment PayeeCurrencyIso
VerificationPayment PayeeGrossAmount
VerificationPayment PaymentDate
VerificationPayment PaymentDueDate
VerificationPayment PaymentProvider
VerificationPayment PaymentRef
VerificationPayment RefundDate
VerificationPayment RefundDueDate
VerificationPayment RefundRef
VerificationPayment RetryCount
VerificationPayment Status
VerificationPayment SuperhogGrossAmount
VerificationPayment SuperhognetAmount
VerificationPayment SuperhogVatAmount
VerificationPayment SuperhogVatRate
VerificationPayment Type

The relationship between the entities is as follows:

  • VerificationPayment N - 1 Host (on HostUser)
  • VerficiationPayment N - 1 Payee (on PayeeUserId)

There are no significant transformations in the PBI queries.

I composed the following query to replicate what the table is building:

/****** Script for SelectTopNRows command from SSMS  ******/
SELECT 
 Host.BillingCountryName,
 Host.DealId,
 Host.Email,
 Host.Name,
 Payee.BillingCountryName,
 Payee.Email,
 Payee.Name,
 VerPay.DepositWithheld,
 VerPay.FailedAttemptCount,
 VerPay.IsPayAway,
 VerPay.OrderId,
 VerPay.PayAwayGrossAmount,
 VerPay.PayAwayMinimumCommission,
 VerPay.PayAwayPercentage,
 VerPay.PayeeCurrencyIso,
 VerPay.PayeeGrossAmount,
 VerPay.PaymentDate,
 VerPay.PaymentDueDate,
 VerPay.PaymentProvider,
 VerPay.PaymentRef,
 VerPay.RefundDate,
 VerPay.RefundDueDate,
 VerPay.RefundRef,
 VerPay.RetryCount,
 VerPay.Status,
 VerPay.SuperhogGrossAmount,
 VerPay.SuperhognetAmount,
 VerPay.SuperhogVatAmount,
 VerPay.SuperhogVatRate,
 VerPay.Type
FROM [report].[VerificationPayment] VerPay
LEFT JOIN [report].[User] Host ON VerPay.HostUser = Host.Id
LEFT JOIN [report].[User] Payee ON VerPay.PayeeUserId = Payee.Id
WHERE VerPay.PaymentDate > '2023-11-25' -- Jamie requested payments after 25th November

And exported the data and sent it over to Jamie.

Jamie then asked for more columns (specially, the broken ones):

Hi Pablo - sorry, is it possible to have a report pulled with the columns that PowerBI is saying 'needs fixing'. So, adding columns for ListingFriendlyName, ListingAddressLine1, BookingCheckout and BookingCheckin for each of those payment.

I extend the query and it turns into the following:

SELECT
 Host.BillingCountryName,
 Host.DealId,
 Host.Email,
 Host.Name,
 Payee.BillingCountryName,
 Payee.Email,
 Payee.Name,
 VerPay.DepositWithheld,
 VerPay.FailedAttemptCount,
 VerPay.IsPayAway,
 VerPay.OrderId,
 VerPay.PayAwayGrossAmount,
 VerPay.PayAwayMinimumCommission,
 VerPay.PayAwayPercentage,
 VerPay.PayeeCurrencyIso,
 VerPay.PayeeGrossAmount,
 VerPay.PaymentDate,
 VerPay.PaymentDueDate,
 VerPay.PaymentProvider,
 VerPay.PaymentRef,
 VerPay.RefundDate,
 VerPay.RefundDueDate,
 VerPay.RefundRef,
 VerPay.RetryCount,
 VerPay.Status,
 VerPay.SuperhogGrossAmount,
 VerPay.SuperhognetAmount,
 VerPay.SuperhogVatAmount,
 VerPay.SuperhogVatRate,
 VerPay.Type,
 Booking.CheckIn AS BookingCheckin,
 Booking.CheckOut AS BookingCheckOut,
 Acc.AddressLine1 AS ListingAddressLine1,
 Acc.FriendlyName AS ListingFriendlyName
FROM [report].[VerificationPayment] VerPay
LEFT JOIN [report].[User] Host ON VerPay.HostUser = Host.Id
LEFT JOIN [report].[User] Payee ON VerPay.PayeeUserId = Payee.Id
LEFT JOIN [dbo].[VerificationRequest] VerReq ON VerPay.VerificationRequestId = VerReq.Id
LEFT JOIN dbo.Booking Booking ON VerPay.VerificationRequestId = Booking.VerificationRequestId
LEFT JOIN dbo.Accommodation Acc ON Booking.AccommodationId = Acc.AccommodationId
WHERE VerPay.PaymentDate > '2023-11-25' -- Adjust with the right start date

And send it again to Jamie.

Fixing the report

The first thing that comes to mind is: is the report broken in staging? I'll go check that out. -> Yes it is.

So, either it has been broken since the last time someone released something, or something in the underlying data model has broken.

I'm gonna check it the PBI refreshes have worked fine lately in PRD. -> They have

Apparently the visual (a table) is complaining about the following four fields not being available in the model. The fields are:

  • Listing Friendly Name
  • Listing Address Line 1
  • Booking Checkin
  • Booking Checkout

I had this quick conversation with Ben R.:

Pablo Martin 1:26 PM Hi Ben, I have a little fire (broken PBI report). I was hoping you might have a couple of quick answers for a couple of quick questions that might save me some time 1:26 The broken report is the Payments > Client Pay Away Information. The main table is complaining about some missing fields 1:27 these are the fields 1:27 image.png

image.png

1:28 Do they ring a bell? Could they be related to that little release we looked at last month together with Lawrence? If we don't have more context or ideas, I will assume these are safe to remove and call it day. If someone comes in asking for them again, then we put the detective hat on and work on it. 1:28 thanks

Ben Robinson 1:32 PM They were broken some time ago and have been needed to be fixed. Those fields were added into the view a while back as a temp but never persisted in source control so got wiped out. They no longer exist in the view. Solution one remove them from the model and re publish the report without them. Solution two add in the listing and booking views into the exisitng model and map them - this is what we tried quickly but due to the relationship it was not playing ball and we had to abandon due to time 1:32 Happy to walk you through it though.

Pablo Martin 1:38 PM Thanks Ben. Then I think I'll go the route of simply removing them for now. Solution two add in the listing and booking views into the existing model and map them Do you recall how need this for what? I'm wondering on whether to proactively do this or simply let it go to sleep unless someone brings it up.

Ben Robinson 1:42 PM Alex is aware of it and there was a need for the fields quite a important one but they are working around the issue atm. All down to reconciliation and waiver payments i believe.

Pablo Martin 2:28 PM 👍 thanks

So I'll go ahead, remove them, and then wait for whoever needs them to bring this back to my attention.

Here’s a rough sketch of the changes lifecycle, from start to release:

  • Prep
    • Ensure no one else is working on the reports and announce you are going to do it.
    • Make a copy of the existing state of the report files, and back it up with the date.
  • Build and test
    • Make the changes you need on the reports on your laptop.
    • Once changes are ready, publish the report to the staging workspace.
    • Make all the necessary checks in staging to ensure your changes are working as intended and nothing else broke. This is specially important if you have modified a semantic model that feeds multiple reports.
  • Deploy
    • Once you feel confident that all is good, publish the report again to production.
    • Again, make all the necessary checks in production to ensure your changes are working fine.
  • Clean up
    • Announce that you are not working on the reporting suite anymore.
    • Make an announcement to the relevant audience about the changes so that people can start using them.

2023-01-03

  • Hiring
    • Chase candidates
    • Pere Rumbo, Olga Vons, Nacho Moreno, Borja Burriel, Alejandro Suarez, Rodrigo Baranda
  • Ask on hiring front update
  • Fix PBI report by removing columns
  • Catalogue stuff
    • Preparing for Louise
    • Preparing for Alex
  • Schedule sessions with Ben
  • Book time with Ben Cotte

Product catchup

  • We're brushing things on the catalogue
  • Small win on connecting dots across Alex <> Louise
  • I've been working on Azure
  • Finance
    • I'm not happy with how things are going
  • Hiring
    • Ben, what's missing?
    • Ask Nicky for Indeed link
  • Mac issues VPN

meeting with Ben Robinson

  • Excel spreadsheet automated export with Power Shell

  • I need to run this script

    • C#
    • Code gets the relevant customers´
    • Then a lot of queries
    • And then put that in Excel spreadsheets

Robinson can run it from his laptop because he has punched a hole in the firewall that lets him connect stragith to Core

  • superhog-invoicing-console-app repo

Meeting with Andrew

  • He wanted to know how to move forward. He approves of my approach.
  • He wants for it to be well-known that we at Data are up and available to help out Finance strongly

2023-01-05

  • Have a coffee with Jamie
  • Prepare kickoff of the untangling
    • Send pre-alignment email
    • Send invites
    • Find 30min with Amanda
  • Book more time for untangling

2023-01-08

Product weekly

  • Mac issues VPN are now solved
  • First go at the catalogue is finished, I'll make a quick announcment
  • Azure
    • I have Robinson's approval
    • Close to finishing up in dev
  • Finance
    • I'm not happy with how things are going
    • Now I am happy
    • 4-6 weeks effort starting today
    • Also iplicit
  • Hiring
    • I tried with my contacts but got no interest so far

Iplicit kickoff meeting

We meet with Kieran May from their side. Project manager from their side. He was an accountant.

Solution design meeting on 17/01. Deep dive in Accounting processes. Full blown detail. Sales processes, purchase processes, financial transactions, bank accounts, etc.

PID Document starts today.

After we create sandbox <- Used for training and also for technical testing. Will also need static master data, we will get templates for loading that.

Workshops. We design and parametrize, work through how we use the tool. Also chance to modify final configs.

User base training with the end users.

Then, UAT before we go live, final sign off.

Production environment gets copied over from UAT. Configs get copied over, but actual books and transactions get deleted so Production stands clean.

After go live, we have support calls still with the implementation team.

After that, we go into support mode.

Entities Guardhog technologies (UK) (has VAT, quarterly, standard not cash-based, GBP is base currency) (accounts@guardhog.com) used for a lot of purchases | |- Superhog Limited (UK) (has VAT, quarterly, standard not cash-based, has multiple currencies (USD, GBP, EUR, AUD, USD, AED, ZAR)) (accounts@superhog.com) used to get all sales | | |- Three subsidiaries (US, Spain (has VAT), Australian) | |- Guardhog Limited (UK)

We need to come up with codes for the legal entities. US is not using Xero because it's WIP, no running books. All entities except Spain close yearly on 31st March. Monthly reporting. About 14ish bank accounts.

The whole payslip accounting stuff, we might need to do a template for the Spanish ones.

Offices

  • UK, Stockbridge
  • ES, Barcelona
  • Everyone else is remote

Do we have codes for legal entities?

  • Do we have somewhere to check timeline/milestone/status?
  • Are we only starting on April 1st live? Yep.
  • Do we keep the sandbox env forever? - We definitely keep it for a bit. It costs money, so we should judge if it's worth keeping it forever.
  • Currency conversion we need to agree on exchange rates -> Iplicit comes with currency data, we should look into how to load it in the DWH and use that for all reporting so we have a unified vision on exchange rates.

2024-01-09

Call with Humphrey

  • Most important stuff
    • Invoicing needs fixing and finance needs to be brain-available
    • Resolutions needs to stop being a dark, obscure corner
    • Lots of improvement operations wise to be more efficient
    • Marketing needs data to look at hosts like users (LTV, CAC, active users)
    • Pricing can be a massive profit lever if we reach the maturity of insurance companies, we need to aim for it

2024-01-10

Product catchup

  • Azure
    • WIP
  • Finance
    • WIP, expected a million stories coming out of this
  • Hiring
    • I tried with my contacts but got no interest so far

2024-01-11

  • Ensure sync of all data git repos in DevOps so that Robinson can move them to the new data project Invoicing Reformation
  • Discuss plan with Amanda
    • Have her onboard and provide give responsiblity feeling
  • Send big email
    • Give it a name and let people know that we will work on this
    • Send kick-off invite
    • Schedule more sessions
    • Prepare Notion page with rough plan and status tracking
    • Prepare presentation for kickoff
    • Start creating gaps in Notion to fill during sessions

2024-01-15

Product catchup

  • Azure

    • WIP

  • PBI is now in version control

  • Booking bugs

    • Top visual has always been wrong
    • Missing dates in master table

  • Finance

    • WIP, expected a million stories coming out of this

  • Resolutions centre

    • New app?
    • What's the backend?

2024-01-18

  • Documenting sessions with Ben
    • List integrations
    • Control PowerBI
    • Discuss architecture proposal
    • Difference between pricing in Hubspot and pricing in Dashboard
    • PBI
      • Review access management
      • Review change management for dashboards and semantic layers

Stripe session #1

  • Dashboard summary: sometimes it's a bit delayed by one or two days. If you need 100% up to date, go to exports.

  • We should explore the payments transactions exports, they look interesting.

  • Multiple accounts reporting? Not possible natively, perhaps with plugins.

  • Sigma: direct SQL reports on the UI. Seems it's not active in our accounts. Gets charged depending on how many payments are coming into the wallet.

Direct debits, perhaps finance could use this with lower fees?

Now

Architecture

  • Document dev ramblings

Invoicing Reformation