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superhog_personal_notes/log.md
Pablo Martin d58e4b1f9f Stuffy stuff
2023-12-14 13:56:58 +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:
- https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/business-technology/data-team/
# 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:
* 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=/
And that's it for the first day.
# 2023-11-28
- [X] Get access to slack
- [X] Get access to miro
- [X] Get access to Notion
- [X] Get access to productboard
- [X] Get access to Sage HR
- [X] Get access to Keeper Security
- [X] Set up profile pic
- [X] Send a hello email
- [X] Book time with Ben Robinson
- [X] Book with HR (Nicky)
- [X] Book time with Matt (Operations VP)
- [X] Lourdes, Louise, Clay
- [X] Elaine (Finance)
- [X] Leo (Sales)
- [X] Set up profile and other thingies in Sage HR
- [X] Learn what employee benefits do we have -> None
- [X] Get access to Confluence
- [X] Ask Nicky (and Ben Robinson?) about IT equipment policy
- [X] Get hold of company themed office templates
- [X] Time with the rest of the IT crew? -> Gus
- [X] 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](images/revops_people_map.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
- [X] 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
- [X] Say hi to Jamie
- [X] 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
- [X] How to book rooms?
- [X] Get access to staging environment for backoffice app
- [X] Receive access to hubspot from Alex A.
- [X] Get access to these maps
![img.png](images/norskken_3rd_floor_map.png)
- [X] Book some time with Alex Anderson (Business Systems)
- [X] 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:
- Products map: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMptTSNY=/
- 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!
- Tracking plan: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1is51GMOQ9OLu-a8Qer9dO1agubmmoLlh1eOG06l8qN8/edit#gid=1484002407
- KYG planning: https://www.figma.com/file/yk9ya1xzpyrbWkYE4ZtQdN/KYG-Planning?type=whiteboard&t=ViaF9ybd014L6ajn-0
- User insight hub: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMphxQwY=/?share_link_id=656862783808
- Product tour video incoming soon!
## 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
- This I'll buy myself
- [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.
- 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
- [X] Start a Data Board in devops and stop using this for non-personal tasks
- [X] Start the Data space in Confluence
- [X] Fix the amazon order, goddamn it
- [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:
- Finance: https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/_layouts/15/stream.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fben%5Fcotte%5Fsuperhog%5Fcom%2FDocuments%2FRecordings%2FFinance%20Data%20Management%20%2D%20Process%20Review%2D20230922%5F121347%2DMeeting%20Recording%2Emp4&nav=eyJyZWZlcnJhbEluZm8iOnsicmVmZXJyYWxBcHAiOiJTdHJlYW1XZWJBcHAiLCJyZWZlcnJhbFZpZXciOiJTaGFyZURpYWxvZy1FbWFpbCIsInJlZmVycmFsQXBwUGxhdGZvcm0iOiJXZWIiLCJyZWZlcnJhbE1vZGUiOiJ2aWV3In19&ct=1701696068316&or=Outlook%2DBody&cid=4A15D22A%2D870B%2D4E12%2D9A29%2D19648AA36BDF&fromShare=true&ga=1&referrer=StreamWebApp%2EWeb&referrerScenario=AddressBarCopied%2Eview
- Customer Service: https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/_layouts/15/stream.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fben%5Fcotte%5Fsuperhog%5Fcom%2FDocuments%2FRecordings%2FGuest%20X%20%26%20Cust%20Service%20Data%20Management%20%2D%20Process%20Review%2D20230927%5F150141%2DMeeting%20Recording%2Emp4&nav=eyJyZWZlcnJhbEluZm8iOnsicmVmZXJyYWxBcHAiOiJTdHJlYW1XZWJBcHAiLCJyZWZlcnJhbFZpZXciOiJTaGFyZURpYWxvZy1FbWFpbCIsInJlZmVycmFsQXBwUGxhdGZvcm0iOiJXZWIiLCJyZWZlcnJhbE1vZGUiOiJ2aWV3In19&ct=1701696093109&or=Outlook%2DBody&cid=ABC35F5F%2DA0BB%2D4CD6%2DA1F7%2D4FE2CBC338FF&fromShare=true&ga=1&referrer=StreamWebApp%2EWeb&referrerScenario=AddressBarCopied%2Eview
- Resolutions: https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/_layouts/15/stream.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fben%5Fcotte%5Fsuperhog%5Fcom%2FDocuments%2FRecordings%2FGuest%20X%20%26%20Cust%20Service%20Data%20Management%20%2D%20Process%20Review%2D20230927%5F150141%2DMeeting%20Recording%2Emp4&nav=eyJyZWZlcnJhbEluZm8iOnsicmVmZXJyYWxBcHAiOiJTdHJlYW1XZWJBcHAiLCJyZWZlcnJhbFZpZXciOiJTaGFyZURpYWxvZy1FbWFpbCIsInJlZmVycmFsQXBwUGxhdGZvcm0iOiJXZWIiLCJyZWZlcnJhbE1vZGUiOiJ2aWV3In19&ct=1701696093109&or=Outlook%2DBody&cid=ABC35F5F%2DA0BB%2D4CD6%2DA1F7%2D4FE2CBC338FF&fromShare=true&ga=1&referrer=StreamWebApp%2EWeb&referrerScenario=AddressBarCopied%2Eview
- Marketing: https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/_layouts/15/stream.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fben%5Fcotte%5Fsuperhog%5Fcom%2FDocuments%2FRecordings%2FMarketing%20Data%20Related%20Process%20Review%2D20231004%5F170129%2DMeeting%20Recording%2Emp4&nav=eyJyZWZlcnJhbEluZm8iOnsicmVmZXJyYWxBcHAiOiJTdHJlYW1XZWJBcHAiLCJyZWZlcnJhbFZpZXciOiJTaGFyZURpYWxvZy1FbWFpbCIsInJlZmVycmFsQXBwUGxhdGZvcm0iOiJXZWIiLCJyZWZlcnJhbE1vZGUiOiJ2aWV3In19&ct=1701696097107&or=Outlook%2DBody&cid=843D68E4%2D0305%2D4B3D%2DA1F5%2D2A0B2ABB83AE&fromShare=true&ga=1&referrer=StreamWebApp%2EWeb&referrerScenario=AddressBarCopied%2Eview
Some links:
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)
## 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
- Hi Gus
- Infra
- VPN?
- Jumpbox for SSH tunneling is in the open, or how should I access it?
- Password for confluence encrypted contents? (https://guardhog.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DEVELOPMEN/pages/7438343/SQL+Server+Access)
- Are there any Keeper collections I should be in?
- Docs
- Is the Development Space pretty much the only relevant corner in Confluence, or did I miss something?
- Yes
- Are there any more docs than the access details in Confluence?
-
- Data models anywhere?
- Any docs on the reporting layer in the core database?
- Any docs on Dashboard architecture?
- Any documentation on the PowerBI reports?
- Invoicing nightmare
- No one is really
- Current integration between power BI and databases
- My view on PowerBI for 2024
- Get VPN?
- https://guardhog.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DEVELOPMEN/pages/92831745/How+To+Configure+the+Azure+VPN+Client+to+talk+to+the+SQL+Server+Jump+Box
- Be added to Keeper Dev Folder
- Development Space is the only relevant Space
- Things are not really documented, we will have to go through everything.
## 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
- [X] Pick up Amazon package
- [X] Buy milk bottle for Superhog: https://www.ikea.com/es/es/p/korken-bote-tipo-botella-tapa-vidrio-incoloro-50541374/
- [X] Announce lockers
- [X] Manage to read from CORE
- Instructions:
- VPN https://guardhog.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DEVELOPMEN/pages/92831745/How+To%3A+Configure+the+Azure+VPN+Client+to+talk+to+the+SQL+Server+Jump+Box
- DB https://guardhog.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DEVELOPMEN/pages/93159433/How+To%3A+Connect+to+SQL+Server+via+the+Jump+Box
- I'm stuck at the RDP permissions
- I also need authorization to read the credentials
## Product Weekly
- Lourdes
- She will be doing interviews with resolutions and account management
- Will Airtable live long enough that it needs to be documented?
- Louise
- Get invited to check Mixpanel afeter Louise fixes existing issues
- Me
- Last week
- Finished my first round
- Started Data Catalogue, Confluence, etc.
- This week
- TMT and Data kickoff
- Get hands-on with Robinson, Hubspot, Finance
- Keep building Data Catalogue
- Questions
- Lourdes, Airtable docs, is it worth it? Yep.
- Do we have a job description?
- Veriff integration?
- Share link Notion and Confluence
- https://www.notion.so/knowyourguest-superhog/Data-Homepage-0ac0a2e52a8940c7ba4f31e5ffcc33e8?pvs=4
- https://guardhog.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/Data/overview?homepageId=152731908
# 2023-12-12
- [X] 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
- [X] Get a locker
- [X] 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.
- [X] Ask team for job descriptions
# 2023-12-14
- [X] Order RAM from PC Componentes
# Now
- [ ] Add RAM invoice to Xero expenses to get it reimbursed
- [ ] Ask IT for data-team@superhog.com mail
- [ ] Place this in Backlog: https://superhogteam.slack.com/archives/C06A52YUDM1/p1702557374922989
- Documenting sessions with Ben
- List integrations
- Document
- Control PowerBI
- Discuss architecture proposal
- Documenting Hubspot
- Document
- Research exports for shor-term problem solving
- [ ] Deep dive into invoicing process
- [X] Provide a heads-up into it to the wise men table
- [ ] What's next?
- Early stages Data Infra
- [X] Start a repo
- [X] Set up a MSSQL and Postgres instance, load data in both and query team
- [X] Add an Airbyte to the cocktail
- [WIP] Perform sync between MSSQL and Postgres and document findings
- [ ] Perform sync between Hubspot and Postgres and document findings
- [ ] Start building data source pages in Notion
- [ ] Add Product Map link to Dashboard entry
- [ ] Ask Alex and Lianne to add docs on the Notion page
- [ ] Ask Lourdes to fill in details for Airtable
- [ ] Make page for Stripe and double check details with Jamie and Ben Robinson
- [ ] Book some time with Jamie to check on Stripe and Acquired
- Equipment
- [ ] Second screen -> No use
- [ ] Keyboard
- [ ] Second RAM card -> https://www.neobyte.es/memoria-crucial-16gb-ddr4-sodimm-3200-ct16g4sfra3a-8487.html, https://www.pccomponentes.com/corsair-vengeance-so-dimm-ddr4-3200mhz-pc4-25600-32gb-2x16gb-cl22
- [ ] Additional charger
- [ ] USB-C hub
- [ ] Shelves, organizers, stationery and other office goodies
- Bookcase for private office https://www.ikea.com/es/es/p/billy-libreria-blanco-00263850/ x 1
- Organizers for private office https://www.ikea.com/es/es/p/tjena-organizador-escritorio-blanco-60395452/ x 4
- Organizers for private office https://www.ikea.com/es/es/p/vattenkar-estante-escritorio-blanco-20541568/ x 4
- Post-its, pens, pencils, a couple boxes of white A4, scissors, tape, etc
- [ ] Try to write a stupid Markdown page in notion through Python
## Onboarding and Data Kickstart
- [ ] Are there any shared folders in Keeper Security where I should be added?
- [ ] Yes, a dev folder
- [ ] Get access to staging environment for KYG-lite platform
- [ ] Read any docs shared by Alex A.
- [ ] Prepare quiz for 15th Dec. Theme must be sent before December 8th
- [ ] Sit down with an account manager to go through the Onboarding process
- [ ] Sit down with Sales agent
- [ ] Sit down with resolution agent
- [ ] Sit down with Guest Customer Service agent
- [ ] Get my hands on some docs on the resolution process
- [ ] Luisa Legal (has contact with Trust Keys) to get data map
- [ ] Big official "This is what we will do" Data meeting in 14th December
- [X] Get access to the Data Meeting excel from Ben Cotte
- [ ] Review the data exploration efforts made by Cotte
## dbt course
- Just continue where I left.
Reference in a new issue View git blame Copy permalink