Rich Lanza's guest appearances

Rich Lanza

APNow

Jeff Bezos

Gareth Jones

Peter Taylor

Tom Flynn

Tiana Laurence

Julia Child

Kelly Paxton

Rebecca Howard

Bill Jelen

Eyal Feldman

Stewart Griffiths

Mary Schaeffer

Teri Cook

Steve Mercatante

Jim Frazier

OwlTail

Grant Thornton’s Managing Director of Innovation joins AP Now’s Mary Schaeffer again on the AP Now podcast. This time, the topic is Letter Analytics, a concept Lanza helped pioneer. He shares some fascinating real-life examples and offers tips on how listeners can get started using this themselves. Disclaimer: This episode is not filled with technical mumbo jumbo but will provide anyone listening with some ideas they can use to get started in Excel! Lanza notes that while most data analytics focuses on numerical data, this is leaving the lion’s share of data unanalyzed. And there’s gold sitting in that unanalyzed portion. Once he’s explained the concept in simple English (really), it will leave you wanting to dig in and get started on your own data – and he explains how. He offers some examples using some Excel functions available to everyone. He shares the story of how one organization uncovered an ongoing fraud by analyzing the data in the email accounts of several employees. With this data, the company was able to determine that five employees were involved in an ongoing fraud and brought them in for questioning. Two immediately folded, providing the company with the ammunition it needed to stop the fraud and take further action. It’s real-life proof that letter analytics works. Host: Mary Schaeffer (https://www.ap-now.com/) Guest: Rich Lanza (https://www.grantthornton.com/) Sponsor: Stampli (https://www.stampli.com/apnow/) Credit: Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Grant Thornton’s Managing Director of Innovation joins AP Now’s Mary Schaeffer again on the AP Now podcast. This time, the topic is Letter Analytics, a concept Lanza helped pioneer. He shares some fascinating real-life examples and offers tips on how listeners can get started using this themselves. Disclaimer: This episode is not filled with technical mumbo jumbo but will provide anyone listening with some ideas they can use to get started in Excel! Lanza notes that while most data analytics focuses on numerical data, this is leaving the lion’s share of data unanalyzed. And there’s gold sitting in that unanalyzed portion. Once he’s explained the concept in simple English (really), it will leave you wanting to dig in and get started on your own data – and he explains how. He offers some examples using some Excel functions available to everyone. He shares the story of how one organization uncovered an ongoing fraud by analyzing the data in the email accounts of several employees. With this data, the company was able to determine that five employees were involved in an ongoing fraud and brought them in for questioning. Two immediately folded, providing the company with the ammunition it needed to stop the fraud and take further action. It’s real-life proof that letter analytics works. Host: Mary Schaeffer (<a href="https://www.ap-now.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.ap-now.com/</a>) Guest: Rich Lanza (<a href="https://www.grantthornton.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.grantthornton.com/</a>) Sponsor: Stampli (<a href="https://www.stampli.com/apnow/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.stampli.com/apnow/</a>) Credit: Music: <a href="https://www.purple-planet.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.purple-planet.com</a>

AP Now Episode 20:  Mary Schaeffer with Rich Lanza Letter Analytics

Grant Thornton’s Managing Director of Innovation joins AP Now’s Mary Schaeffer on this episode of the AP Now podcast. The topic for this discussion is metrics, and more specifically, common misconceptions about metrics and data analytics.  He shares with the audience a little of how he ended up as a Managing Director of Innovation. His story starts with his fascination with computers harking back to the days when a tape drive was used to get the information into the computer itself. Obviously, his tools are much more sophisticated today. That being said, as you will note in this conversation, Excel will still play a pivotal role for many. He then identifies what he considers to be the three biggest obstacles most organizations have when it comes to getting their employees to use data analytics. Many people have a basic fear of trying to use analytics so they throw up their hands and don’t start. He discusses how it is not critical that someone be a programmer in order to create insightful routines for data analytics. In fact, he notes he is not a programmer, but a CPA. Nor is it necessary to be a big data expert. The podcast closes with a discussion over which is the biggest roadblock to meaningful use of analytics: People or Technology. He comes down firmly on the side of People and discusses why this is and how to overcome it. Host: Mary Schaeffer (https://www.ap-now.com/) Guest: Rich Lanza (https://www.grantthornton.com/) Sponsor: Stampli (https://www.stampli.com/apnow/) Credit: Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Grant Thornton’s Managing Director of Innovation joins AP Now’s Mary Schaeffer on this episode of the AP Now podcast. The topic for this discussion is metrics, and more specifically, common misconceptions about metrics and data analytics.  He shares with the audience a little of how he ended up as a Managing Director of Innovation. His story starts with his fascination with computers harking back to the days when a tape drive was used to get the information into the computer itself. Obviously, his tools are much more sophisticated today. That being said, as you will note in this conversation, Excel will still play a pivotal role for many. He then identifies what he considers to be the three biggest obstacles most organizations have when it comes to getting their employees to use data analytics. Many people have a basic fear of trying to use analytics so they throw up their hands and don’t start. He discusses how it is not critical that someone be a programmer in order to create insightful routines for data analytics. In fact, he notes he is not a programmer, but a CPA. Nor is it necessary to be a big data expert. The podcast closes with a discussion over which is the biggest roadblock to meaningful use of analytics: People or Technology. He comes down firmly on the side of People and discusses why this is and how to overcome it. Host: Mary Schaeffer (<a href="https://www.ap-now.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.ap-now.com/</a>) Guest: Rich Lanza (<a href="https://www.grantthornton.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.grantthornton.com/</a>) Sponsor: Stampli (<a href="https://www.stampli.com/apnow/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.stampli.com/apnow/</a>) Credit: Music: <a href="https://www.purple-planet.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.purple-planet.com</a>

AP Now Episode 17: Mary Schaeffer with Rich Lanza on Misconceptions about Metrics