How Experiential Learning Can Help You Develop Transferable Skills

Experiential learning is a form of education that involves learning by doing. It is based on the idea that people learn best when they are actively engaged in a meaningful task that reflects real-world situations and challenges. Experiential learning can take many forms, such as internships, projects, simulations, games, field trips, service-learning, and more.

One of the benefits of experiential learning is that it can help you develop transferable skills. These are skills that can be applied from one job to another, regardless of the industry or sector. Transferable skills are highly valued by employers because they demonstrate your ability to adapt, learn, and solve problems in different contexts.

Some examples of transferable skills are:

•  Communication: The ability to express yourself clearly and effectively in oral and written forms, as well as listen and respond to others.

•  Collaboration: The ability to work well with others, respect diverse perspectives, and contribute to a common goal.

•  Creativity: The ability to generate new and original ideas, solutions, or products.

•  Critical thinking: The ability to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information from various sources and perspectives.

•  Data literacy: The ability to understand, interpret, and use data to make informed decisions.

•  Digital literacy: The ability to use technology tools and platforms to access, create, and share information.

•  Leadership: The ability to inspire, motivate, and influence others to achieve a shared vision or objective.

•  Project management: The ability to plan, organize, execute, monitor, and evaluate a project from start to finish.

•  Self-management: The ability to manage your own time, energy, emotions, and goals.

How can experiential learning help you develop these skills? By providing you with opportunities to:

•  Apply your theoretical knowledge to practical situations

•  Experiment with different approaches and methods

•  Reflect on your actions and outcomes

•  Receive feedback from peers, mentors, or experts

•  Learn from your successes and failures

•  Transfer your learning to new contexts or challenges

To make the most of experiential learning, you need to be intentional about your goals, actions, and reflections. You also need to document your learning process and outcomes in a portfolio. A portfolio is a collection of materials that can showcase your skills, achievements, and growth to potential employers. It can include:

•  Terms and their definitions from previous modules

•  Deliverables such as reports, presentations, prototypes, or artifacts

•  Evidence of feedback such as comments, ratings, or testimonials

•  Reflections on your learning such as journals, blogs, or videos

•  Metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure your impact or progress

A portfolio can help you demonstrate your transferable skills in a concrete and compelling way. It can also help you avoid vanity metrics that are not indicative of your actual performance or value. For example, instead of stating how many followers you have on social media, you can show how you increased engagement or conversions through your content strategy.

Experiential learning is a powerful way to learn new skills and improve existing ones. It can also help you develop transferable skills that can make you more employable and adaptable in the changing world of work. By engaging in experiential learning activities and creating a portfolio of your work, you can showcase your potential and stand out from the crowd

The Ultimate Metric for BI Professionals: How to Find and Use Your North Star Metric

Summary: A north star metric is a crucial metric that reflects the core value of a business and guides its long-term growth. In this post, you will learn what a north star metric is, why it is important, how to choose one, and some examples from different industries.

What is a north star metric?

As a business intelligence (BI) professional, you know how important it is to choose the right metrics to measure the success of your projects. But how do you measure the success of your whole business or team over time? That's where a north star metric comes in.

A north star metric is a single metric that reflects the core measurable value of your business's product or service. It is intended to represent your business's mission and vision, and to drive your business forward. That's why it's called a north star metric– like the north star can be used to navigate the wilderness, this metric can be used to navigate your business decisions and lead you to growth.

Why do you need a north star metric?

Having a north star metric as the guiding light for your whole business is useful in three primary ways:

•  Cross-team alignment: Different teams have different specialties and focuses that help your business function. They aren't always working on the same projects or with the same metrics, which can make it difficult to align across the whole business. A north star metric allows all of the teams to have a consistent goal to focus on, even as they work on different things.

•  Tracking growth: It can be difficult to understand and track the growth of your whole organization over time without understanding the driving metrics that determine growth. A north star metric provides a long-term measurable data point that stakeholders can focus on when discussing overall performance and growth in your business.

•  Focusing values: A north star metric is primarily a guiding principle for your business– it determines what is important to you and your stakeholders. This means that choosing the right metric to guide your business can help keep your values in check– whether that's customer loyalty, number of users completing a core action, or user engagement.

How do you choose a north star metric?

Because north star metrics are so key to your business's ongoing success, choosing the right metric is a foundational part of your BI strategy. The north star metric has to measure the most essential part or mission of your business. And because every business is different, every business's north star metric is going to be unique. In order to determine what the most useful north star metric might be, there are a few questions you can ask:

•  What is essential to this business's processes?

•  What are the most important KPIs being measured?

•  Out of those KPIs, what captures all of the necessary information about this business?

•  How can the other metrics be structured around that primary metric?

What are some examples of north star metrics?

Because more businesses have begun using north star metrics to guide their BI strategies, there are a lot of examples of north star metrics in different industries:

•  Travel:

•  Number of trips booked

•  Number of referrals

•  Average trip duration

•  Entertainment:

•  Number of monthly active users

•  Number of songs played

•  Average listening time per session

•  Health and fitness:

•  Number of workouts completed

•  Number of calories burned

•  Workout satisfaction score

•  Banking:

•  Number of accounts opened

•  Total deposits made

•  Customer retention rate

These are just a few examples– there are a lot of potential north star metrics for businesses to choose from across a variety of industries, from education to gaming!

Key takeaways

As a BI professional, one of your responsibilities will be to empower stakeholders to make BI decisions that will promote growth and success over the long term. North star metrics are a great way to measure and guide your business into the future because they allow you to actually measure the success of your whole business, align teams with a single goal, and keep your business's values at the forefront of their strategy.

How to Boost Your E-commerce Sales by Reducing Cart Abandonment

Have you ever checked out an online store and added something to your cart, but then backed out of buying it? Maybe you were shopping for a new camera, a fitness tracker, or a gift for a loved one. But then you changed your mind because you found a better deal elsewhere, or you realized that you didn't really need it, or you got distracted by something else. When that happens, the online store has what's called an abandoned cart. According to e-commerce platform Shopify, online merchants lose 20 billion dollars a year in sales revenue because of cart abandonment. This is a huge challenge, but it's one that business intelligence professionals are very good at tackling. In this post, we'll show you exactly how they do that.

How BI Professionals Use Data to Understand Customer Behavior

BI professionals can use data to track where a customer came from, whether it was a Google search, an email link, or a social media post. Then they can visualize the journey the shopper took when visiting the website. They're even able to pinpoint exactly where that customer left and try to figure out why. For example, a BI professional might create a tool to monitor how attractive and relevant the website's product images are. If the team finds that they are too low-quality or outdated, the company can update them to better showcase the features and benefits of their products and persuade the customer to buy. The attractiveness and relevance of the website's product images is an example of a metric. A metric is a single quantifiable data point that is used to evaluate performance.

How BI Professionals Use KPIs to Track Progress Towards Goals

In BI, some of the most important metrics are KPIs, which are quantifiable values closely linked to business strategy that track progress towards a goal. Many people confuse KPIs and metrics, but they are different things. The basic point to keep in mind is that metrics support KPIs and in turn, KPIs support overall business objectives. It's also helpful to understand that KPIs are strategic, whereas metrics are tactical. Going back to our abandoned cart example, strong KPIs might be the number of visitors who complete a purchase, customer retention, or average order value. Think of it this way: A strategy is a plan for achieving a goal or arriving at a desired future state. It involves making and carrying out plans to reach what you're trying to accomplish. A tactic is how you get there. It's a method used to enable an accomplishment, including actions, events, and activities. Tactics take place along the way as part of your strategy to reach your final objective. Like stepping stones between each milestone. Reach enough milestones and you'll reach your goal.

How BI Professionals Use Monitoring Tools to Enable Data-Driven Decisions

Understanding business objectives and what is needed in order to achieve them is the first step in BI monitoring. BI monitoring involves building and using hardware and software tools to easily and rapidly analyze data and enable stakeholders to make impactful business decisions. Let's say our e-commerce merchant sets a goal to decrease cart abandonment by 10% in six months. The BI professional would create a tool that monitors product images in order to help achieve that KPI. Rapid monitoring means that the people using BI tools are receiving live or close to live data. In this way, key decision makers know right away if there's a sudden drop in the number of visitors who complete a purchase, or if they run out of stock on a popular item, or if customers are leaving negative reviews or feedback. Knowing right away means that the company can fix whatever the problem may be as quickly as possible. This is one of the main ways in which BI professionals add real value to their organizations.