Susan Walsh - The Classification Guru

The Classification Guru Ltd

I love improving the quality of procurement spend data, giving teams clarity so they can make better business decisions and cost savings.

Why not let me take the pain out of laborious data issues and make your life easier?

Whether it's a small or large data set, the accuracy can be improved by identifying classification errors, conflicts or gaps. I can provide a data verification service to efficiently find and correct these in a fraction of the time it would take you or a team member.

And a crucial part of having accurate data is also working with a comprehensive taxonomy, something that can be easily overlooked. I can provide a taxonomy development service to ensure you have all the vital areas covered for the greatest visibility - job done!

If you struggle with the time, resources or willingness to tackle your data, why not get in touch to see how I can make your life easier.

Founder/MD (Mistress of Data)

I love improving the quality of procurement spend data, giving teams clarity so they can make better business decisions and cost savings.

Why not let me take the pain out of laborious data issues and make your life easier?

Whether it's a small or large data set, the accuracy can be improved by identifying classification errors, conflicts or gaps.  I can provide a data verification service to efficiently find and correct these in a fraction of the time it would take you or a team member.

And a crucial part of having accurate data is also working with a comprehensive taxonomy, something that can be easily overlooked.  I can provide a taxonomy development service to ensure you have all the vital areas covered for the greatest visibility - job done!

If you struggle with the time, resources or willingness to tackle your data, why not get in touch to see how I can make your life easier.

Founder

Data Collaboration Alliance

I am a member of the Advisory Committee at the Data Collaboration Alliance, a nonprofit organization that’s dedicated to establishing CONTROL as the basis for meaningful Data Ownership and global Collaborative Intelligence. Our approach of eliminating data silos and copy-based data integration is similar to how societies already protect the value of their currency, identities, and intellectual property - and it works for data, too. My fellow advisors include the Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation and the ex-CIO of Dropbox. I'm also a contributor to the Data Collaboration Community which offers open datasets, free tools, and free training in the data-centric skills of the future. Visit: https://www.datacollaboration.org/community

Advisory Committee / Instructor

Facet Publishing

Dirty data is a problem that costs businesses thousands, if not millions, every year. In organisations large and small across the globe you will hear talk of data quality issues. What you will rarely hear about is the consequences or how to fix it.

Between the Spreadsheets: Classifying and Fixing Dirty Data draws on classification expert Susan Walsh's decade of experience in data classification to present a fool-proof method for cleaning and classifying your data. The book covers everything from the very basics of data classification to normalisation, taxonomies and presents the author's proven COAT methodology, helping ensure an organisation's data is Consistent, Organised, Accurate and Trustworthy. A series of data horror stories outlines what can go wrong in managing data, and if it does, how it can be fixed.

After reading this book, regardless of your level of experience, not only will you be able to work with your data more efficiently, but you will also understand the impact the work you do with it has, and how it affects the rest of the organisation.

Written in an engaging and highly practical manner, Between the Spreadsheets gives readers of all levels a deep understanding of the dangers of dirty data and the confidence and skills to work more efficiently and effectively with it.

Author - Between the Spreadsheets

CONSTELLIA LIMITED

Connecting Professional Services Procurement people to the Consultancy Procurement Council

Membership Manager

Simfoni

+ Lead spend analytics project delivery across Europe & Middle East
+ Project Implementation​
+ Delivery of product demos
+ Development and delivery of training for Analytics team
+ Product development support
+ Spend analytics
+ Taxonomy development​

Senior Analytics Project Lead - Europe & Middle East

Highways England

Project Support Officer

Philips

Data Verification

+	Administration of product database
+	Working with cross functional teams to resolve issues
+	Develop and deliver training for business hubs to improve processes

Data Product Researcher

Coupa Software

+	Project managing multiple projects simultaneously ensuring all were delivered within time and on budget
+	Management of a team of 14 QA staff
+	Developed and implemented training plan and best practice documents
+	Recruit and train new staff
+	Ensuring consistent quality of work  produced by team

QA Manager

Spend360

+	QA, classification and review of data
+	Excellent attention to detail
+	Managing workload to tight deadlines

Data Services -QA

Fixer of dirty data ★ Spend data classification, supplier normalisation, and taxonomies ★ DataIQ100 x 2 ★DataIQ Data Champion 2022★ Author "Between the Spreadsheets" ★ Creator of COAT ★ TEDx - say NO to NO ★ DataVenger

Are you struggling to get reliable insights from your data?  Do you have duplicates, multiple versions of the same supplier or customer, and multiple date and address formats?  And is it saved in multiple different systems?

The Classification Guru can help.

If you’re in procurement, do you find it hard to see how much you are really spending with one supplier, and on what?  Have you got free text descriptions which mean you have multiple versions of the same item, often misspelt and not against the correct GL or categorisation? How can you make the best negotiations with your suppliers, the biggest cost savings, or manage your supplier list if you don’t have the correct information?

Or if you work in sales or marketing, is your CRM full of junk data, poorly formatted and even missing information, and maybe saved in multiple different systems?  Your team could be wasting time contacting redundant leads, or worse you could be sending out expensive print out to the same address twice, or addresses that don’t even exist.

We bring clarity and accuracy to data and help teams work more effectively and efficiently, finding cost savings through spend and time management, supporting better, more informed business decisions, delivering a strong ROI and delivering back to your organisation faster and more cost-effectively than using large consultancies or spend analytics providers.

While most people dread having to classify or cleanse data, my team and I love it! We are hugely passionate about providing clients with accurate and meaningful data, and because I have been doing this for a decade, I can do this much faster and more accurately than people who might look at their data infrequently.

We can help prevent costly mistakes from happening.

There are many solutions available to automate data classification, but these are never 100% accurate. I've developed a method that my team use to efficiently and accurately classify, cleanse and verify data to minimise the errors in the same amount of time.

When working with large volumes of data it's hard to spot these errors even if you know what you're looking for and especially in Excel, let alone if you don't. With my team and I’s knowledge, experience and tools we can do this for you, freeing up your internal resources.

Fix your dirty data now - www.theclassificationguru.com

HubSpot

Senior Data Engineer for Master Data Management (MDM) for HubSpot’s GTM Data & Systems team. Developer of MDM solutions to provide a centralized single source of truth for CRM and Product data from internal sources and various third party vendors.

Senior Data Engineer

Wind River

Lead data engineering and data warehouse development for the CFO’s BI Analytics team using Snowflake, Fivetran, dbt Cloud, Looker, and GitHub.

* Implemented new architecture incorporating dbt, Looker, and Git best practices.
* Developed dbt and Looker CI/CD processes using GitHub actions, dbt Slim CI, and Snowflake zero-copy clones  to test PRs for best practices (dbt Project Evaluator, Looker style guide), code quality (SQLFluff, YAML-lint), data integrity (DataFold), and dashboard content integrity (Spectacles).
* Led a team in the dbt Coalesce Hackathon to identify, tag, and mask personally identifiable information (PII) using dbt and Python.
* Technical mentor for a team of 7 analytics engineers, including weekly one-on-ones and code reviews.
* Scrum-master for bi-weekly dbt and Looker releases using Jira and GitHub.

Principal Analytics Engineer

Paro.ai

Snowflake data warehouse design for Looker and PowerBI analytics; Data integration using Snowflake, Airflow, dbt-Cloud, and Python Lambda functions. Managed offshore team of 3 data and analytics engineers.

* Planned and released the roll-out of a Modern Data Stack for Paro (Snowflake DWH, dbt, Airflow, Looker); replacing a legacy DWH (Postgres w/ Cron jobs).
* Created Client-360, Expert-360, eCommerce, Marketing, and Revenue Data Marts in Snowflake/Looker reporting to integrate internal platform data with Salesforce, Hubspot, Heap, Qualtrics, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads data in Snowflake.
* Developed several custom Fivetran Connectors to integrate data using Fivetran and Lambda Functions for API data from BambooHR, Gong Calls, ElasticPath, Hotjar Surveys, GetStream Chat, Courier, and other external cloud APIs.
* Leveraged dbt to model data for input into several AI/ML algorithms (optimal pricing, matching clients to experts, mapping of services to experts and projects); and shared AI/ML output data to the Snowflake DWH for analytics.

Staff Data Architect

1091 Pictures

Data integration (Python, AWS Step Functions, Lambda), data warehouse and data lake architecture and design, BI analytics with Tableau, and AWS DevOps in the streaming media and film industry.

* Created Tableau datasets and dashboards used by executives, accounting, and sales
* Developed ETL to integrate streaming store platforms (YouTube, Amazon Prime, iTunes, etc.) into data warehouse using SQL and Python Lambda functions.

Bytecode IO, Inc

Consultant working with small to medium sized technology companies to deliver business intelligence analytics, DevOps managed services, and data integration (ETL). Lead data architect/engineer for many projects in several industries: Finance/Bitcoin, Insurance, Energy, eCommerce (Fashion and Home Goods), Medical Services, Hotels/Hospitality, Cannabis, Entertainment, Software, and Marketing/SEO.

* Looker BI Certified with 23 Jumpstarts and 7 Rapid Deployments to enable and train new Looker clients.
* Led a 6-person team to win the Looker JOIN 2019 Hackathon against 220 people on 30+ teams, creating the Looker-on-Looker metadata platform. Technical lead for Looker JOIN 2020 Hackathon that took 2nd place.
* Data integration hand-on experience with multiple projects using: Stitch/Singer.io, Fivetran, Tray.io, Pipegears.io, Integromat, Rivery.io.
* Python data pipeline dev for Singer.io/Stitch and Fivetran. Created the following API integrations (taps): Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Search Console, Intercom, Helpscout, ActiveCampaign, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Snapchat Ads, Pinterest Ads, Xandr/AppNexus, Mixpanel, Twilio, Looker.
* Developed a COVID-19 tap with Talend/Stitch to provide free, cleansed, and open source access to leading COVID-19 data sources for medical professionals.
* Database and DWH modeling, configuration, queries, and integration: Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL, DynamoDB.
* AWS Services: EC2, Lambda, Redshift, RDS, DynamoDB, S3, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, CloudWatch.
* Extensive digital advertising API experience creating ads, segments, and audiences on Facebook and Xandr/AppNexus with AWS Lambda functions and Python.

GreatVines

Responsible for data integration and data warehouse/analytics design for GreatVines, a cloud-based SaaS platform. GreatVines provides mobile/web apps for tracking CRM activities and order-entry to 60+ suppliers/distributors in the beer, wine, and spirits industry.

* 3rd employee in a small tech start-up that grew to 30 employees.
* Managed a team 3 on-shore and 3 off-shore data/analytics engineers.
* Developed elastic/scalable Amazon AWS data integration platform using Pentaho Data Integration (open-source ETL), Lambda (Python), EC2, RDS (MySQL and PostgreSQL), and Redshift to consolidate and distribute client ERP data and 3rd party account and sales data into Salesforce and GoodData BI data stores.
* Implemented real-time web-services (using REST, SOAP, JSON, triggers, webhooks) to connect client ERP systems and Salesforce to share accounts, products, and sales order data.
* Developed ETL and data models for quarterly releases of our Salesforce Force.com package and embedded GoodData BI/analytics data warehouse (PostgreSQL and Vertica back-end).

Director of Data and Analytics

adidas

Responsible for managing a team of 5-6 data analysts and engineers; gathering business requirements; developing data models, data flow diagrams, and data quality rules; implementing databases and data integration to consolidate and distribute data; and architecting data management and governance strategies.

* Implemented SAP MDM (Master Data Management) to consolidate and distribute Product, Material, Supplier, Customer data to many global IT systems.
* Developed data management principles and standards for master data governance, data modeling, and data quality reporting.

Data Architect and Manager

Responsible for developing, sourcing, and distributing reference data and master data for manufacturing and supply chain applications, operational data stores, and reporting data warehouses.

* Developed data models and ETL to consolidate and distribute reporting dimensions for data warehouses.

Data Analyst

KLA-Tencor

San Jose, CA: Systems analyst and reporting manager for the Manufacturing Operations Group of a semiconductor equipment manufacturer.

Business Systems Analyst

United States Army

Project manager of engineering construction projects in Bosnia, Germany, and Seattle, Washington.  Logistics planner for international training exercises in support of NATO.

Engineer Officer

A cloud data analytics, architecture, and integration expert and leader with a passion for delivering business insights from disparate data sources. Looking for a challenging, fast-paced, collaborative environment that rewards innovation.

Specialties: Analytics/BI (dbt, Looker, Snowflake, Fivetran, GitHub), Salesforce, SaaS (Force.com), data pipelines (dbt, Stitch, Singer.io, Fivetran, Python), data models, web services (REST/Graph APIs, webhooks), SQL, databases (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle), Amazon AWS (Lambda, Redshift, Athena, RDS, S3), GCP, scripting (Python), CI/CD (GitHub actions, SQLFluff, YAML-Lint), MDM (master data management), data quality and governance.

Industry experience: accounting/finance, media/film, technology consulting, consumer goods (beverage, wine/spirits, apparel/footwear, computers/hardware), high-tech/semiconductor, military/government.

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Susan Walsh - The Classification Guru

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