My Story : From Standardized Tests to Power BI Wizard

Quick Summary :

Its been a wild ride ??! I started my business intelligence/data analytics journey in high school while studying for the SAT, then did some Excel VBA programming during my college internship, did some MS Access data cleaning and data translation at GE Appliances, and now I have a full time job as a Business Intelligence Manager. I created my own job within a medium sized company to do Business Intelligence work! Its been a fascinating journey and here are the steps I took to get to my current position.

Step 1 : Conquering the SAT Math section :

I remember in high school, I was advised to study for the SAT/ACT ?? and I also read several articles about how, the two tests were designed so that you had to have the knowledge already and that you couldn't really study for the tests. I took a class on preparing for the ACT and then I bought two of those really thick books with example problems. I put together a plan to work on the practice questions a little bit each week and finish both books by the scheduled test date. My conclusion, human brains have an amazing ability to find patterns in data (all the practice questions), and I ended up getting an 800 on the SAT Math section and a 36 on the ACT reading section. I was hooked, finding patterns in data was proving useful in my life.

Step 2 : Automotive Radiated Emissions with CSV and VBA :

The next phase of my data career occurred when I was doing a college internship at Delphi Electronics (now APTIV). I was working in semi-anechoic chambers and taking data from engine controllers ?? that were giving off radiated emissions. The data was output in large CSV files with hundreds of data points. I worked with VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), to automate the graphing of the data so that we could see the thresholds for the emissions on a chart automatically, instead of having to reformat the data in Excel. Using VBA to take CSV data and automatically graph the data and make sense of the data was an awesome experience. I felt like I was on top of the world and wanted to continue my data journey.

Step 3 : Turning dirty data into profits :

After some time at Delphi, I then moved on to an assignment at GE Appliances. GE Appliance Park ??in Louisville, KY was a massive industrial park with 6 massive production buildings. It was so big that I think they had their own zip code. I was in charge of the $50 million buy for our Appliance division. Our division used contract manufacturers and pricing for purchased parts came from each CM in massive Excel spreadsheets with extremely dirty data. Part of my job was to take the Excel sheets, clean all of the data so that all the part numbers and manufacturer names would all match up. I then imported the data into an MS Access database. Now here is where things got really crazy. GE was pulling in pricing data from all of their divisions, combining the data in this database, and then were able to slice and dice the data to show how much they were paying for each part and if there was pricing differences across their divisions, they could claim the savings instantly from their suppliers because they had the data to back it up.

Step 4 : Becoming an Intrapreneur and an Entrepreneur.

Part A - A new situation

Fast forward ? a few years : I worked for Delphi again, then moved to Meredith, New Hampshire to work at EFI-Vutek (on super wide format printers), then back to Automotive with Johnson Controls which brought me to Holland, MI. After a couple years at JCI, I moved again to a medium sized manufacturing company (think lots of welders and lasers cutting large sheets of steel). My current employer is fascinating, they are growing like crazy, but have the classic issue of having data in multiple disconnected locations.

Part B - The Intrapreneur

I started as a Project Manager, moved to a Director of Project Management Role, and then saw an opportunity?? to fix some of the data issues at my employer. I proposed that I analyze their DFM data, which were stored in Excel spreadsheets that were emailed to the engineer working on the project. I initially just combined the spreadsheets in Excel, categorized the data, and then used Pivot Charts to demo my findings to my management. They loved the insights and eventually expanded my role analyzing data for all departments at the company. After the DFM project was such a success I started studying Microsoft's Power BI tool, and signed up for Avi Singh's Learn Power BI program. I attended a Microsoft Business Applications summit and then, since my work was providing so much value to the company, I was able to hire two interns to help build up our capabilities. We quickly expanded our departments offerings, and now help other groups build workflow automation (MS Flows), build data input solutions (MS PowerApps), build integrated data storage solutions (Sharepoint Lists), and build visualizations/reports of the data (MS Power BI).

Part C - The Entrepreneur

Now I am working on a new parallel phase of my adventure! I have discovered that I am really passionate about Business Intelligence, I really enjoy teaching others about BI, and I just love it when the light-bulb ?? goes off and I can see the excitement in others people's eyes when they realize the power and value of Power BI and Business Intelligence. I started a side hustle, called it SolisMatica LLC (https://solismatica.com/), and my goal now is to introduce people to Power BI and help them get over the learning curve and start using Power BI. I also created an official Power BI local user group in Holland, MI (https://www.pbiusergroup.com/holland), to help others in my area get started with Power BI. I also am a member of the Lakeshore Makers group and creating my own company is such an awesome learning and creating/making experience. Contact me here if you have Power BI questions or are interested in a free 30 minute consultation call (I'll listen to your data problems and see if I can envision a solution) : https://solismatica.com/contact/

Part D - Support Network

Starting a new business and learning something new can be so mentally demanding and scary. This journey has been tough but I have found that you don't have to do this alone. There is a whole network of people out there that will support you though a journey like this...here is a shout out and thank you to my sources for support and courage:

1) Avi Singh at https://www.learnpowerbi.com/ : Avi has helped me quickly learn Power BI and has also helped coach me through some of my fears and has built up my confidence. Through Avi's Pro+ and Real Power BI program I met two of my heros, Diego Lopez Marquez, a Udemy PowerBI teacher who is starting is own online learning program https://automatizamitrabajo.com and Grace Teoh, the founder of Lightdotlab, https://www.lightdotlab.com/interactive-power-bi-dashboard.

2) Mattew Gira at https://founderco.org/ : Matt started up Founderco earlier this year and Founderco has provided me with a network/connect to other founders in the Holland, MI area. I met Andrew Hoekstra through this network, Andrew is an AI engineer but has started a ballet company as a side hustle, https://www.deosballet.com. I also met Russell Fyfe, the CTO of NextDoorPhotos https://nextdoorphotos.com/ and Stephen Wilbur who is a HOPE College Student who founded ParkShark and has now pivoted to work on Business Intelligence part time while finishing up his degree.