Editor’s Note
We sat down with Matt to delve into his role, his journey, and the things that makes his experience at Terakeet unique.
Q: What did you do before coming to Terakeet?
I’ve basically been in data analytics my whole career. I’ve worked in the sports and entertainment industry, the mortgage industry, and the experiential marketing industry. So, all across the board when it comes to industries but always data analytics.
Q: What initially drew you to Terakeet?
The culture was the most interesting thing. All throughout my interview process, the team and all the people I was meeting seemed like they loved everything about the company and appeared to be brilliant. Now that I work here, I’ve confirmed they are brilliant people.
The investment in the data infrastructure also stood out. It seemed like a company that cares about making data-driven decisions, which cannot be said for every other company. Knowing that the company was going to care about the work that I did — and the opportunity for growth — was very attractive.
Q: Can you describe your typical workday and your workspace setup?
I typically work a standard 9 to 5. On Fridays, I take advantage of our flexible hours, working 7:30 to 3:30, as long as my work is done. I do flex time occasionally other days of the week but not consistently.
I have an office in my house, which is kind of an office/guest room, so my desk is crammed in the corner. I have my laptop and three external monitors set up in a semicircle. It’s probably overkill, but I like to have one for Slack and one for my email, and then I work on the other two.
Q: What types of projects do you work on as a BI analyst?
The main project I’ve been working on so far has been client reporting standardization. We have many clients and many reports, which take our account teams quite a bit of time to put together. Frankly, it’s asking them to do things that aren’t part of their job descriptions, like pulling data and manipulating it in Google Sheets.
I’ve been working to automate that process as much as possible, while also cleaning up the visuals to make the look and feel consistent from client to client. Basically, I’m trying to allow our client teams to focus on what’s really important — what they’re doing for the client — and get them out of manual data pulling. My goal is to make life easier.
Q: What’s the biggest upside of working at Terakeet in your role specifically?
There are lots of upsides, but the biggest is probably the people I work with. The data science, data engineering, and BI teams are full of spectacular people. They challenge me every day, and I learn from them every single day.
You don’t want to be the smartest person in the room. I wanted to be challenged, learn new skills, technologies, and coding languages. Having the opportunity to learn from some of the best minds in the business has been influential on me.
Q: What are some common pain points for a BI analyst in the industry? How does Terakeet minimize those?
A common pain point is that other companies don’t invest in their data infrastructure. I’ve worked at places with only three employees total working on this kind of stuff. The fact that Terakeet spends money on it, has a fully built-out data engineering team, a data science team, and a BI team — and that we can all interact together — is definitely a game-changer. If you don’t have that infrastructure, you’re basically flying blind because you don’t know what your data is telling you.
Another big pain point among BI analysts is the adoption and use of BI reports. It’s frustrating when you build reports and dashboards that don’t get used. That’s the most important thing we do — we build these things to make a difference.
Terakeet’s culture minimizes these pain points through constant support. My manager, Jennifer, always has my back. Even when we face adoption challenges, we don’t give up. The culture here is to continue to work things out and figure out the disconnect as we ask, “What can we do to increase adoption?”
It’s never, “Okay, you don’t like it, we’ll walk away.” It’s always, “What don’t you like about it? What can we do to fix it and make this better and more useful for you and the client?” That attitude of never giving up on something and working through problems has been nice to see.
Q: What is it that you enjoy the most about your role?
The opportunity to make a tangible difference. It’s easy to see the change that my role has because I’m producing something the company is using. For example, prior to me building this solution, they were using X amount of hours; now they are using Y.
It’s not like I’m presenting some report out to the universe and not ever having an idea if it made a difference.
Q: How do your skills and expertise contribute to Terakeet’s goals?
Terakeet has blessed me with the ability to improve and grow my own skills. I’ve used a bunch of data visualization tools: Power BI, Tableau, Looker, and others. But coming here, we started implementing Sigma as a data visualization tool, which I was not familiar with. Terakeet enabled me to spend time to learn this brand new tool and use my prior knowledge of other tools to increase my knowledge as well as upskill the rest of the team.
Within six months, not only did I learn it myself but I created a training video to teach other employees how to use it in hopes of increasing adoption.
The first product I’ve been working on also directly impacts the company. It helps people save time that these reports would have taken. We want to be agile and on the cutting edge of the industry as a company, not spending so much time manually pulling data to create reports.
Q: How has your area of the company changed during your time here?
The department has changed — it used to consist of separate groups: data engineering and data science and business intelligence. We’ve merged, so now we are one all-encompassing data team. This has been really beneficial for us to collaborate more easily. In business intelligence, you rely on what data engineering can give you from a data table standpoint. It’s opened up lines of communication so they can provide me with exactly what I need, and I can turn that into a nice-looking dashboard.
Q: What demands the most of your time and energy in your role?
It’s actually the soft skill part of my job. While I’m comfortable with data visualization tools, Snowflake, and SQL, what takes the most time is working with stakeholders and building rapport with them to increase adoption.
Soft skills are 50% of the job. We lay out stakeholder presentation plans, walk through the reasons we’re building reports a certain way, and constantly ask for feedback. Feedback is everything in business intelligence. What takes the most time is ensuring our work directly meets a need through collaboration, rather than just going rogue and building something that we think makes the most sense.
Q: Have there been any surprises or unexpected hurdles since you started?
Yes, being an innovative company, things change quickly. Even in my six months here, the scope of the main product I’ve worked on has changed probably three or four times. You need to be nimble and agile enough to adapt.
Q: How do challenging circumstances positively impact your work experience or output?
When challenges arise, how you handle them, both personally and as a company, greatly impacts the result. Here, it’s been a constant culture of support and empowerment, which has reinforced my confidence. I have the opportunity to take risks and be innovative with the company’s support, whether I make a mistake or I’m perfect.
Q: What’s the biggest opportunity for growth and development at Terakeet?
The biggest opportunity for growth and development is the people I work with. They are brilliant and willing to teach you something new. For example, a data engineer recently held a Data Build Tool (DBT) workshop, taking hours out of his day to teach the broader data team how to use it, even though it wasn’t required.
This desire to upskill the entire department and company and people’s willingness to teach — things I had hoped for when I was considering a career move here — have been proven multiple times. I greatly appreciate that culture of continuous learning.
Q: How has working here impacted your personal and professional life?
The ability to work from home full-time has been a game-changer. Being able to typically log out at 5 p.m. and instantly be present for my two young children without a long commute is huge. I also love the attitude of “when you’re off, you’re off.”
Professionally, it’s the constant learning. Before Terakeet, I felt my resume had stagnated. Now I feel like I can add three to four skills and applications to it. This is exactly what I wanted: to continuously improve and see my career progressing.
Q: What are you most proud of accomplishing so far?
I’m most proud of the relationships I’ve already built. I’ve been here for six months, and it feels like I’ve been here for five years. The data team is friendly and collaborative. Data engineers have always supported my professional needs and been willing to help, like with the DBT training. The professional development here has been amazing in a short amount of time. From day one, I felt empowered to upskill myself, which has been instrumental in my career.
Q: Which of Terakeet’s core values do you connect with the most?
I would say Grit. We certainly have an attitude of working through challenges rather than cutting bait. Everyone wants to get it right. We don’t want the easiest solution; we want the correct solution, which really stands out as the core of Grit. Everyone wants what’s best for the company and is willing to work to get it, no matter how challenging.
Q: If you were to offer one final piece of advice to an aspiring business intelligence analyst considering Terakeet, what would it be?
You always want to look for a culture of continuous learning. You want to be at a place where you’re going to make an impact with your reports or dashboards, or whatever your output is. At Terakeet, we certainly have that, and more so, the ability to see the proof of the impact we’re making. In general, I would just rave about the culture, both within the tech team and the company at large and the hunger for data-driven decision-making.
Every company says they’re hungry for data-driven decisions, but not everyone backs it up and actually executes on that. In my six months here, Terakeet has absolutely proven to be a data-hungry organization that will use the business intelligence provided to them.
