Igloohome

 

 

 

 

 

Business Analyst Intern                                                                                             January 2014 – May 2014

• Completed root-cause analysis for a business solution to the problem of attracting customers.
• Analyzed and identified relevant website information to engage potential customers.
• Implemented Google Analytics, a contact form linked to MailChimp, and tracking pixels for measurement of marketing campaign response on website.

Company Background:

Igloohome is a startup from Singapore that offers short-term vacation rental hosts (Airbnb, Roomorama, Homeaway etc.) a new way to manage their guests. The startup does that via smart home solutions that offer hosts convenience, safety and savings, and help them scale their business in a more cost effective manner.

Igloohome’s smart host solutions enable:

• Automatic provisioning of guest access
• Reduced operating and utility costs
• Improved guest experience
• Increased security
• Remote control and monitoring
• Guest analytics

My Role:

As a business analyst (BA) at Igloohome, working with a group of dedicated entrepreneurs, I had to utilize my entrepreneurial mindset. From the start of my internship, I was always inquisitive and a keen learner, asking the management team many questions to understand the industry and our company. This is an important role of a BA in order to listen actively to a problem and translate it into a solution that creates real value for the company. Initially, the role of a Business Analyst was not a role the founders’ thought was needed to create added value for their company, as the role of a Marketing Researcher would. However, after a short week they realized the BA position is more suitable for their business requirements and myself.

During the first week of my internship, the four founders and the two interns, including myself, gathered into a boardroom to try to determine what will be the startup’s target market location. We sketched a map of the world to help visually aid in the decision of who will be responsible for conducting target market identification of which country. Following my interest, I selected the U.K. I spent the next month reaching out to home-sharing hosts via websites such as Airbnb, Homeaway, and Roomorama to educate them on Igloohome’s valuable offers. Our overall goal was to convert these hosts into potential customers that will sign up onto our website’s newsletter. Whichever country or state had the highest conversion rate was the one we were planning to target first.

Unfortunately, the responses were not as positive as anticipated. I took a step backwards and tried to figure out what was the root cause behind this low conversion rate. There could have been many different causes, and obviously was not easy since many variables were involved. Then I thought to myself, what is the medium that these potential customers must go through in order for us to increase this conversion rate? The answer became clear to me – Igloohome’s website needed to be completely revamped and needed to be more compelling to the potential customers we were trying to convert.

I began to be more inquisitive, asking the management team several questions to understand the structure of the former website, and what they really desired in their website. I came to the realization that the former site was built on a very structured, limiting platform, called Wix. I knew I had to take the stance and propose migrating to a new development platform if they wanted to attract real customers, market effectively, and create analytical metrics for the company. Through eliciting, I discovered that their desire in the future is for the website to also act as an e-commerce solution for the startup to distribute their products worldwide when it is ready for launch.

After some research, I recommended that the company migrates to a platform called WordPress, utilizing Mail Chimp to manage email marketing for the new potential customers that are attracted to the website. I also recommended using Google Analytics to track metrics, such as pages visited, retention rates, visitor’s location, gender, and other useful information. These metrics will allow Igloohome to get a better understanding of where their potential customers are really coming from. WordPress is also suitable to satisfy their e-commerce intentions in the future. The startup admitted that this was exactly what they were seeking and were excited for me to get to work on this project.

After some research, I recommended that the company migrates to a platform called WordPress, utilizing Mail Chimp to manage email marketing for the new potential customers that are attracted to the website. I also recommended using Google Analytics to track metrics, such as pages visited, retention rates, visitor’s location, gender, and other useful information. These metrics will allow Igloohome to get a better understanding of where their potential customers are really coming from. WordPress is also suitable to satisfy their e-commerce intentions in the future. The startup admitted that this was exactly what they were seeking and were excited for me to get to work on this project.

I now knew what had to get done, and began creating milestones and deadlines for myself to complete this project successfully and on-schedule. At the start of the development phase, I figured it would not be such a thought-provoking project, since I had previous WordPress experience creating a personal WordPress site as part of a class project. Little did I know, this personal site only touched on a few minor elements of WordPress, and that creating an actual, value-added website took much more advance knowledge. I took it upon myself to learn WordPress through online training videos and the guidance of some of my experienced peers. I refused to give up, even though countless hurdles came along the way. This self-training process exercised my tenacity and task ownership.

I was responsible to work along with the company’s more recent design and software development interns to create a “site-map” for the website. This site-map outlined every aspect of the website. I utilized my expertise of identifying the right data and information that was then designed by the graphic intern. After finalizing the site-map, I began the development of the website on an individual basis. This team and individual work dynamic truly developed my ability to work effectively in both team and individual settings.

In essence, developing the website was not an easy task as there were many obstacles to overcome. These obstacles included issues with the chosen template, compatibility issues with some plug-ins, and the learning curve obstacle of teaching myself WordPress along the way. However, I was able to overcome these issues and closed the project with success, creating real, tangible value to the promising startup. My main contributions were helping design the site-map, implementing Google Analytics, a contact form linked to Mail Chimp, and tracking pixels for measurement of marketing campaign response. This project truly exercised and developed my sense of ownership of my assigned responsibilities, tenacity, and team and individual working skills.

 

Takeaways:

My main takeaways from this rewarding project-based internship include:

• Always seek to identify the root-cause of a problem in order to provide a true value-added, tangible solution.
• It is important to have a strong sense of responsibility and ownership of your tasks.
• It is important to ensure you are always meeting the assigned deadlines.
• Provide regular updates to project stakeholders.
• Be upfront about challenges you are facing throughout the project – honesty is always the best policy.
• The ability to work effectively both in teams and individually under little or no supervision is the key to success.
• Anyone can teach himself or herself any skill no matter the obstacles – it is all about the passion and determination you put into learning it.