Nokia brought Cormac Walsh to Finland

Cormac Walsh, Head of Analytics, works at Fonecta Enterprise Solutions with analytics. He tells how he ended up to his current job and what he finds fascinating about it.

Tell briefly about your professional background.

I am Head of Analytics at Fonecta Enterprise Solutions. I am from Dublin, Ireland. I’m a good old Irish boy. I have been working in IT development/management/consulting for 19 years, across banking, government, Telco and marketing. For the last 10 years I have been focusing on the intelligent and profitable use of data in enterprises, mainly in the marketing interface.

What you do for living?

Fonecta Enterprise Solutions is one of Finland’s largest digital marketers, however we specialize in the accurate targeting of marketing messages. I run the team that collects, correlates, analyses and measures data. Our analysis ranges from hard number crunching with very large datasets, to web and site analysis. In both cases we can profile and understand behavior and motivation.

In real terms what we do is to reduce wasteful messaging, we let our clients get straight to the point, with the right people.

Can you describe your usual workday?

I work very hands-on with the team. Our work is from mathematical and analysis capability development, customer and pre-sales consultancy, solution creation and delivery. I love to work with the team in all respects of our output.

How you ended up to your current job?

Business analytics at our level, is a small community!

How you ended up living in Finland?

Nokia! I joined Nokia as a consultant in 1998, when I was working for Hewlett Packard Consulting, based in Amsterdam. I was working internationally for HP and Nokia was a major client of ours in the mid and late 1990’s. So I came to Helsinki very frequently, and I liked it so much I moved here!

How would you describe Finnish working culture compared to your own?

Finnish working culture is very informal, and organizations are usually quite flat. Top management are approachable and tend to have a good understanding of all layers, this is a great attribute. I am a very strong believer that a leader should be there as much as possible, act as a guide and a role model.

Irish working culture is difficult for me to comment on, as I have not worked there since 1998!

What you like the most at your work?

Communication, for sure. I really love explaining complex concepts in understandable terms, and seeing the results. I like the challenge: If you can’t explain it, you don’t understand it!

You work with analytics. What is fascinating about analytics?

It has the ability to explain trends and predict the future (if you have enough data). Also, the mathematical aspect is fantastic, it’s fun to use sometimes abstract concepts, and see them produce real world results, that everyone can enjoy; think about predicting ice-cream sales, who does not like ice-cream!

What was your childhood dream job?

My dad was an engineer and a university lecturer, so I grew up with this stuff, but I wanted to be a carpenter! So now I work in analytics and as a hobby I make lots of things out of wood. I really love working with wood.

Would you chance something about your career?

I would not change anything, as moving to Finland gave me my family.