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

Merrill Albert Data Consulting

Data Advisor.
•	Advisory, coaching, consulting, and fractional CDO services to companies in all aspects of data management to build the data management foundation that enables analytics and artificial intelligence
•	Author, trainer, webinar presenter, podcast speaker, and content creator to help people and companies better understand and explain data management
•	Published Crimes Against Data, a book of stories of people abusing and misusing data, through Technics Publications and Amazon
•	Creator of #CrimesAgainstData
•	Clients:  Salt River Project, Veritux, Advanced Management Services (AMS)

Data Advisor

Technics Publications

Crimes Against Data - 101 true crime stories of people abusing and misusing data

Author - Crimes Against Data

Trellance

Data Management Practice Lead.

•	Authored e-book to help companies establish their own data management practices
•	Created all content to deliver data management services in the marketplace
•	Developed new service offerings for data governance, analytics, data quality, metadata, data privacy, and data architecture
•	Conducted client training seminars and public webinars on data principles to improve data understanding
•	Developed data governance, data management, and analytics thoughtware for brand attention
•	Authored thought leadership to bring awareness to data management

Consultant with a focus on data, helping clients better manage their data to derive value from it.

•	Partnered with clients in a learn-by-doing approach to develop their own data management practices
•	Delivered data governance and data management solutions for clients to improve data
•	Developed and operationalized data governance organizations at clients to make them self-sufficient
•	Evaluated client data management practices through data management maturity and gap assessments
•	Developed data management project roadmaps for strategic planning

AVP, Data Management Consulting

Data Advisor.

•	Advisory and consulting services to companies in all aspects of data (data strategy, data governance, data management, MDM, metadata, data quality, data standards, data architecture, data modelling, processes)
•	Brought data governance to a company simultaneously across 3 data domains (customer, product, and location) for 3 data management capabilities (MDM, data quality, and metadata)
•	Overall Program Manager, including oversight of all program deliverables
•	Guided staff through introducing good data governance and data management practices into the company
•	Analyzed data governance practices and recommended improvements
•	Developed process taxonomy, templates, and training
•	Clients:  Wawa, Delta Airlines, M&T Bank, Puget Sound Energy

International Institute for Analytics

Member of the Expert Network.

•	Counseled companies in the area of data management and the intersection of data management with analytics
•	Developed content based on expertise in the data management area

https://iianalytics.com/about/expert-network/merrill-albert

Data Management Expert

Head of North American data, Coordinator of global data interactions, and Advisor to European data management practices.

•	Led operations of a cloud-based data warehouse, customer master, product master, Data Stewards, data sharing, and appropriate use of the data
•	Developed the data strategy roadmap
•	Transformed an IT-led data program to business-led
•	Designed and implemented data management to place decision rights over data in the appropriate hands
•	Led teams to implement a new data management program, including a new data architecture, data warehouse, MDM, and enhanced Information Governance, supporting stakeholders as varied as executives, sales reps, researchers, and Data Scientists
•	Implemented MDM for a customer master to reconcile data from multiple sources and developed Data Steward business rules and processes for queue resolution, resolving a significant number of data issues
•	Led compliance to data privacy, security, industry regulations, and legal restrictions for data nationally and globally
•	Resolved compliant use of data through tracking data lineage
•	Key team member negotiating multi-year multi-million dollar outsourcing projects to bring analytics capabilities and technical support to UCB
•	Introduced data governance by structuring and implementing a data governance organization comprised of business staff with the support of technology, totaling 50 individuals
•	Supported $15 million per year of purchased data
•	Defined and implemented data quality rules and processes to be proactive in resolving data quality issues from over 30 sources
•	Established data operations processes and reports to proactively identify issues and monitor performance
•	Guided team through the process of transparency in documentation of policies, processes, definitions, business rules, data flows, and data lineage

Associate Director, Information Management, Data Governance

Deloitte

Consultant with a focus on data, helping clients govern their data and strategically use data management.

•	Led the design and implementation of data governance frameworks to transform the business
•	Led the creation and support of an international data governance user group
•	Team Lead to design master data management strategies, policies, standards, processes, job aids, and accelerators
•	Mastered data domains of customer, vendor, employee, product, location, and chart of accounts
•	Led the development of document management strategies and metadata strategies
•	Developed taxonomies, analytics lineage, and financial data lineage
•	Analyzed needs of analytics and developed an organization to govern analytics integrated with the organization’s existing data governance program
•	Designed data architectures and enterprise data models to manage data more effectively across applications
•	Designed ETL and managed daily progress of development and testing
•	Led requirements gathering sessions and documented gaps with existing programs
•	Developed a metadata strategy and conducted interviews to collect metadata on 100 applications planned for retirement
•	Mentored staff in good data practices and eminence building
•	Developed training courses and user manuals
•	Conducted training sessions, including writing extensive documentation of data model standards and techniques
•	Recognized eminence across the globe in good data practices as a published author of whitepapers and points of view
•	Clients:  Life Technologies, Mettler Toledo, USDA, Land O’ Lakes, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Merck, Sun Products, Target, The Walt Disney Company, QBE, Bell Helicopter, Bank of America, TIAA-CREF, Tennessee Valley Authority, Health Care Service Corporation, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, FDIC, The Limited, Sara Lee, HealthSouth, Sun Trust Mortgage, Kaiser Permanente

Manager

Daugherty Business Solutions

Consultant with a focus on data, helping clients better utilize their data assets.

•	Led Data Team members in good data architecture principles
•	Developed conceptual, logical, and physical data models using CASE tools, followed by implementation in Oracle
•	Designed data marts for finance systems using star and snowflake design patterns in ERwin, followed by implementation in SQL Server with reports in Business Objects
•	Analyzed Finance department needs to fulfill requirements of the business intelligence project
•	Designed strategy and performed analysis on integrations and conversions between systems in acquisitions
•	Performed business analysis and data mining for redevelopment of an in-house supply chain management system
•	Wrote training documents and mentored staff: CASE tools, data modelling, and quality assurance testing
•	Clients:  Bell South, General Electric, Washington Mutual

Senior Consultant

Defender of data.  Data crimefighter.  I prevent #CrimesAgainstData.

I am a lifelong data person with a combination of industry and consulting experience.  I know both theory and how to apply it.  I've lived data problems and know how to solve them.  I believe in understanding the business needs to solve the problem, keeping a tool-agnostic view.  I'm passionate about companies having the right high quality data, used compliantly, to make appropriate and timely decisions.  I help companies better manage their data to drive value from it.

•	Top data role in the organization (Chief Data Officer functions), governing all company data to facilitate business value
•	Data Governor, Head of Data, Data Governance Officer, Data Evangelist
•	Expert in designing and operationalizing data governance organizations, promoting collaboration between the business and IT
•	Created new consulting service offerings in data governance, analytics, data quality, metadata, data privacy, and data architecture
•	Designed and developed strategies for data management, data governance, MDM, data quality, and metadata
•	Delivered data management consulting services, specializing in data governance, to clients across all industries
•	Implemented MDM solutions for multiple data domains, including regular maintenance operations
•	Partnered with clients in a learn-by-doing approach to develop their own data management practices
•	Data leader blending practical and theoretical knowledge in strategy and tactical implementation
•	Coach, mentor, manager, webinar presenter, podcast guest, and author, including a data management book on Amazon

merrillalbert.wordpress.com

Specialties: Information management and enterprise data management
Data strategy
Data governance
Data architecture
Data modelling
Master data management
Metadata management
Data standards
Change management
Data quality management
Data cleansing
ETL
Data analytics
Business process improvement

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