Meet the associates: Anmol Sunsoa, Tableau Consultant

What attracted you to Tecknuovo?

I heard about Tecknuovo from someone I’d worked with previously. One of the team approached me about a role centred around my area of subject matter expertise: Tableau. I was interested in the role, and also to understand Tecknuovo’s unique offering in the tech consultancy space.

What is your role?

My role is Tableau Consultant. I’m leading a team that’s implementing a Tableau solution at one of Tecknuovo’s telecoms customers. It will let them view and action data from across the company on a bespoke reporting platform.I’m advising the customer on best practice, strategy and development of the product. And as with any role like this, I’m also on hand for firefighting duties!

What is Tableau and what does it do?

Tableau is a Business Intelligence data visualisation tool. It lets companies convey, interpret, and get value from their data on demand. It’s low-threshold and easy to use as it takes the same syntax as many Microsoft products. And it’s no-code accessible: users can use the visualisation features by simply dragging things across the screen.

This means that companies’ teams — technical or not — can instantly convert masses of live data into understandable and actionable insights. In the case of my ongoing project with Tecknuovo, Tableau is helping us build a bespoke reporting platform that pulls the customer’s data from disparate systems across the organisation to produce intelligence on live customer activity.

What does the typical week/day look like?

I’ll usually start my day by sorting out access and ad hoc requests. Following that, I’ll head up strategy meetings where I advise team members and stakeholders on best practice and methodology. I also hold daily individual calls with the team to support and collaborate wherever possible. It’s paramount to find out from each team member where we are on the project, what’s moving, and what isn’t — swapping conversations to discover where we can help each other. Working with this type of hive mentality means that we can always pick up each other’s work should we need to.

Why is working at Tecknuovo different from other consultancies?

Having consulted for 11 years, I can truly say that the Tecknuovo experience is a different one. During my last stint at a large, multinational consultancy, I ended up spending extended periods sitting on the bench. There were occasional events I could attend to network and upskill, but there was none of the family-style community you get at Tecknuovo.

At Tecknuovo, I enjoy that you can ping people from different projects as and when — collaborating across Slack Channels, dipping into any level of person or project community. You can have conversations that aren’t anything to do with the day-to-day of your project, picking up new insights and perspectives from across projects and uses of technology.

In most consultancies, you would never have the chance to have these kinds of conversations.

What’s something we wouldn’t find on your LinkedIn?

I’m a brilliant visual artist— I love to present and express myself with art. I’m always drawing and doing crafts with my daughter, which is actually how I got into visualisation.

How did you get into tech?

I used to be all about arts, and consistently got bad grades in science. I went to college armed with my art portfolio, only to discover that the art class was full. Stuck for what to do, I joined the class all my friends were taking — a data science class. This is where it all began. I went from intermediate level to advanced, and then on to study Microbiology at university. From there, my journey continued to HND computing, and later on to visualisation.

How do you engage with fellow members of the tech community?

I’m passionate about mentoring and helping others advance on their journeys. I have a LinkedIn group called Tableau 360 . With over 100 members and 4000+ followers, it’s a world-wide community whose members help each other learn and shape their capabilities within Tableau.

I recently used the group to help someone who urgently needed a placement after theirs fell through.

I also mentor Business Intelligence juniors, that being anyone 16 and below who wants to get into the field. Data is the future, and I’m passionate about bettering the next generation’s data literacy.

What’s the best part of the job?

I’m a job satisfaction person, so when I have a task — collaborative or individual — I’ll stick on it until I find the solution. In my early days of coding, I used to write formulas on the inside of the shower. Being driven, and a bit crazy about what I do, is what lets me succeed in what I do today. Every day is what’s driven me to do what I do today.

What are you excited about in future?

In terms of Tecknuovo, I’m excited about bridging the gap for data consultancy. We have a talented squad of people who can go in and design an end-to-end layer, and then build a BI tool on top of that as well — not a lot of consultancies can do that.

Tecknuovo are creating the next generation of data experts who will be able to sustain the skills gap in that area. Creating the next generation of people who are going to be comfortable and sustainable.

In terms of data visualisation, I’m excited about developments of a tool called Looker Studio.

What’s the most exciting development in your field in the past few years?

In the data realm, Artificial Intelligence is by far the most exciting!