Sustaining robust data governance guidelines and ensuring that your staff feels comfortable leveraging data within your systems is a challenge for even the most sophisticated of organizations. A Fortune 500 company with an expansive asset portfolio, Discover Financial Services (DFS) sought expert guidance to help onboard new employees so they could effectively navigate the company’s systems and data tools.
Discover engaged Data Society to design a customized two-week onboarding data boot camp that was in line with the mission and objectives of the organization. The result was a well-received and relevant program that Data Society delivered in a virtual classroom during the pandemic lockdown and a broad data science training strategy that met the varied needs of the new DFS workforce.
Discover Financial Services (DFS) has developed a robust data ecosystem unique to their needs and objectives which has helped them maintain their top standing in the financial industry. However, as the organization has continued to grow, leaders at DFS identified a knowledge gap between new employees and existing staff that made it difficult for the new hires to fulfill their tasks effectively. Discover selected Data Society to design a training roadmap for incoming analysts to understand the organization's data environment and have a command of R programming fundamentals and its applications to financial services. Data Society developed a custom technical onboarding training for all new employees to equip them for success in their many functions across the organization.
DFS onboards analysts with a range of backgrounds: recent graduates to seasoned financial data scientists. With a variety of skills to shepherd into the organization, the L&D department has the unique challenge of ensuring that new hires, regardless of background, can operate and succeed within their business functions.
DFS, like any other large organization, operates within a nuanced set of tools and procedures: data catalogs, governance, processes, and methods to analyze portfolios, risks, credit, and loans. New employees need to understand all of these techniques. Even seasoned analysts require an understanding of the specific data landscape in which they will operate; this takes thoughtful onboarding, which Data Society was able to provide.
DFS's 2020 strategy includes a mission to become increasingly data-informed as a business. Data Society worked with DFS to create a tailored 40-hour data science training program for employees using R, SQL, and Snowflake, aimed at upskilling employees and working to fulfill the data-centered vision.
DFS has been working to modernize its methods. While it's tempting to stick to the tried and true legacy software, free open-source tools like R programming have been paving the way to more affordable and sustainable modeling environments that enhance analysts’ powerful capabilities and give company leaders more impactful insights on how to drive the organization forward.
Pre-assessments allowed students with specific needs to enroll as part of the course; Data Society selected learning objectives relevant to student functions. That same survey established each student's current skill level and set a benchmark to measure against in a post-course skills evaluation. The result of the first cohort was a statistically significant 28% improvement in technical knowledge and demonstrable progress towards the pre-set learning objectives defined in the early engagement.
Data Society and DFS will continue to deliver the onboarding program and explore more advanced pathways for learners to acquire abilities in advanced forecasting, machine learning, and deep learning. This partnership will also provide banking analysts with the latest financial data science resources to help DFS stay competitive and agile in a demanding financial industry.
