Guest Lecture - Data analysis in the L'Oréal group
In this week’s seminar in business management course hosted by IBMBA, an alumnus of NSYSU, Mr. Dervis Wang came back to school. It is an honour to have Dervis again, this time he shares data analysis in the L'Oréal group with over 50 students in the classroom with the practical example of Dervis's work at L'Oréal as a data analyst.
To start the sharing, Dervis shares some common questions asked about working at the L'Oréal group. An interesting fact that is males may be easier to get into the L'Oréal group because most of the staff in the L'Oréal group are female and the human resource department tries to work on the gender balance. Since L'Oréal is a multinational company, many of students thought that English skill is very important. Surprisingly enough, English skills are not that important for working at L'Oréal Taiwan. He explains that the work in Taiwan is mainly with the local seller so Chinese skills may be more important. However, English skill is still needed. Whenever have a meeting with colleagues from various countries, English is the default language. It is good that you have good English skills, but do not be afraid to apply to an international company if your English is not perfect. In order to have an interactive sharing section, Dervis prepare some give away for students to encourage participation and to speak up. Of course, these are the product from the L'Oréal group.
After that, Dervis provides basic analyses driven by the data on the L'Oréal group. The first step of starting a business is to understand the market. Dervis shares the way to understand to market and to use data analysis. The L'Oréal group always uses data analysis to know more about the market. Not only for product and trends, but they also have data analysis on the company which they going to acquire.
From the data, the skincare product category having all most half of the cosmetic market share. Based on this fact, Dervis and the data analyst suggest product development team focus on developing products related to skincare.
Dervis also shows us some insight into the COVID-19 pandemic. The only growing division under the pandemic is the active cosmetics division. Which include international skincare brands recommended by healthcare professionals and distributed in healthcare outlets worldwide, including, pharmacies, drugstores, medi-spa, and e-retailers. Hairdressers and hair-related products belong to the professional cosmetics division and have remarkable results. Because of it, the L'Oréal group acquire new hair-related product brands in 2021.
Dervis introduces much information related to data analysis to us. Apart from different models and their usage, also data collect behind the whole model. Students benefit from more data analysis and have a clear image of how to understand the data. Dervis explains that L'Oréal will run a data analysis before they acquire a new brand. The data analysis does not only include the sales data. They try to adopt data in many-sided, in order to calculate a more all-round result. Collect and analyze data from multiple parties before making a decision. By quantifying the daily detail, have a clearer picture of the current situation. To make those internal data to gain clear insights that will become my benefit. So have risk mitigation on different strategies and make strategic decisions. Understand the weaknesses or potential risks which may not be easily identified during daily operation.
In the group competition section, students have a chance to work on a co-brand product push project. With the real-life data provided, students are asked to prepare a marketing plan. There will be serval round to make different actions. In a changing market, students are trained to make decisions from the data and keep updating with their moves in each round. With the tool google excel, Dervis shows data calculation techniques and provides real-time results. Students benefit from the activities and found data analysis can be interesting.
Last but not the least, Dervis shares information about how to apply to the L'Oréal group. Show his support and appreciation to the company and also to the students. Students are encouraged to ask for his opinion and suggestions in the future.
