Business analytics
1) Discuss your objectives for pursuing this degree. Why do you want to obtain a Master of Science in Business Analytics from NYU Stern at this point in your career [Should not exceed 750 words]?
Cases of business failure had become a thing of past until one of my largest local area company failed terribly. For quite some time, the failure of this company remained a surprise to many, was it because of corruption? No! Embezzlement of funds? No! And indeed there were good reasons for not associating this company with some of these common causes of business failure. It’s management of course! The impacts of this failure were so severe that more than one thousand employees lost their jobs. It was indeed a bitter pill to swallow for the whole country. However, it was realized later that the management had not taken caution of the changing technology in the industry. The company had remained operating in the old way which could not withstand the severe competition by the other companies in the industry which had embraced the new technology in their fields of operation. I could not wait to witness such incidences in future threaten businesses in my country. I decided to enroll for a master’s degree in Business Analytics which would enable me to keep businesses in pace with technological changes from time to time by using data analysis technology.
After my four years in NYU stern, I was ready and equipped to venture into the market and fulfill my dream of helping my country business people. I started my professional career in the marketing department at Coca-Cola Company in Thailand. As one of the most valuable brands in the world, we had all resources to plan and execute our marketing campaigns. It almost felt like a case study from my marketing class became a reality: access to the best marketing tools, hiring only the top creative agencies, recruiting Thai celebrities as brand ambassadors, the prime-time spot in the TV, you name it. This was a great experience, and I’m thankful to have had the opportunity of learning and understanding how globally established brands grow their brand value even further.
However, my experience in Coca-Cola seemed more of not what I wanted to achieve, this is because I knew that the luxury situation of having unlimited resources only applied to those big and established companies. I wanted to learn how small local businesses handle their marketing efforts. I sought conversations with local business owners and quickly understood: they struggle. They don’t have the budget to run traditional media campaigns, and they lack the knowledge of digital marketing. What started as a curiosity became my passion: I wanted to help small and medium businesses to grow. I therefore joined google where I could get a chance to interact with SMEs.
In Google, I worked with top three hundred SMEs in Thailand. I learned that for them that “every dollar counts.” I was hired to help these businesses to grow more than 70% YoY despite very limited resources. My goal was to advise business owners to make smarter decisions in media investment. That was when I needed to analyze every data we had to make sure we maximize our return on ads spend. Data analytics became the most powerful weapon in planning and optimizing.
At this stage of career, I moved to focus only on top 50 largest businesses. My career goal is to be a Thailand Country Head in 5-7 years. I think it’s the right time to step up and look ahead to how we can 10 X Thailand growths at the country level. At Google, we live and breathe Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). We wanted to transform business through these technologies. However, it needed to go hand-in-hand with market readiness. At a very first step, we need to make businesses more familiar with the concept of big data and data analysis and get them apply analytics to their data to get significant value. I would like to acquire this skill get useful insights, and capability to transform insightful information to immediate decisions.