Last week, we finished working on our first client project – finding fraud from our client’s transaction data.
It was our first ever real project. It came with a lot of learnings and challenges. I was lucky enough to be in a supportive team and a responsible project lead who helped us throughout the project. The task was to detect fraud activities among the transactions. We need to build Alteryx workflows based on the risk score. There were three primary sections the clients wanted to focus on — vendors, transactions, and employees. It seemed simple at first, but it became complex as we started working on it.
In this blog I’d like to share some tips that might be useful for future client projects.
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Don’t be afraid to ask questions
Better to ask as many questions as possible before the presentation. Especially the authenticity of the data. Clients know their data well, if they spot that the data is wrong during the presentation, you will lose the client very quickly. I order to avoid that, we need to check the accuracy of the data with the client before the final presentation.
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Spend a decent amount of time getting to know the data
Taking a bit of time at the beginning without pressuring yourself is only going to help you as you ease into a new project. A major issue we were facing with this project is that they have more than 6 relevant tables of data to digest and as they were extracted from SAP system, the naming is very unintuitive, and it takes a lot of time for us to get our heads around the data.
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Set a deadline
It is difficult to get an estimation of the time you are going to spend on the piece of work. This is especially challenging when you are inexperienced. Therefore, it is important to set a deadline when you start working. It is tempting to tweak your piece of work to the last minute, but you must remember that your clients are waiting for you to finish. I have learned it the hard way and still trying to improve upon this.
Last week’s client project week was a good week for learning, there is a lot of things I can improve on for the future client projects, and it was a good experience as during the project I found that all the team members were engaged, productive and I think all of us had some fun too.
Author: Zoe Lu
Zoe is a graduate of the University of Queensland, majoring in professional accounting and applied finance, she always strives to learn and enjoys applying her skills to manage any challenge. She moved from Brisbane to Melbourne three years ago and she believes that all change is good change. When Zoe is not creating dashboards, you will see her at Pilates or enjoying the good restaurants around Melbourne with her family and friends. If you ever get a chance to eat hot pot with her, she will share the recipe for her delicious secret dipping sauce.