How to Burn 296,827 Calories Using One Model

2019 Goals:

With it being the dawn of a new year, a lot of us are setting goals for ourselves. This year, I set two goals:

1. To write and publish a blog post
2. To run a marathon

As the father of two young children, I'm always looking for ways to maximize time management.  As I ran on the treadmill recently, a bizarre idea came to me in between thoughts of "why do I do this to myself?" and "this sucks".

I might be able to accomplish the first goal and get a start on the second at the same time.  See, on my very first run 6 years ago, I brought my phone and tracked the run using a fitness tracker app.  Since then, I never quit running and I never stopped tracking every single run using the same app.

I have literally burned 296,827 calories building this data set...

...and this data deserves better than living in an app on my phone.  As a Data Engineer, I feel ashamed to have been treating my exciting (to me) and certainly hard-earned data this way.

What if I loaded the data into One Model and performed some analysis on it?  If it worked, it would provide an excellent use case for just how flexible One Model is.  It would also give me a leg up (running pun intended) on marathon training.

One Model is flexible!

One Model is a People Analytics platform.  That said, it's REALLY flexible and very well positioned as the definition of "People Data" becomes more broad.  The companies we work with are becoming increasingly creative in the types of data they're loading.  And they're increasing their ROI by doing so.  One Model is NOT a black box that you load HRIS and/or ATS data into that then spits out some generic reports or dashboards.  The flexible technology platform coupled with a team of people with a massive amount of experience working with People Data is a big part of what differentiates One Model from other options.

Would One Model be flexible enough to allow for analyzing running data in it?

Yes.

Not only was it flexible enough, but the data was loaded, modeled, and visualized without using any database tools.

Everything you're about to see was done through the One Model front end.  One Model has invested substantially over the past year in building a data scripting framework and it's accessible within the UI.  This is a really exciting feature that customers will increasingly be able to utilize in the coming year.

Years ago, as a customer of a People Analytics provider, I would have given my right arm for something like this. That said, as a One Model customer you also get access to a team of experts to model your data for you.

What did I take away and what should you take away from this?

Along with gaining a better understanding of my running, this exercise has gotten me more excited about running.  Is "excited about running" even a thing?  I plan to start capturing and analyzing more complete running data in 2019 with the use of a smart watch.  I'll also be posting runs more consistently on social media (Strava).  It'll be interesting to watch the changes as I train for a marathon.  Aside from running though, it has given me some fresh perspective on what's possible in One Model.  This will surely carry over into the work I do on a daily basis. 

Hopefully you can take something away from it as well.  If you're already using One Model you might want to think about whether you have other data sources that can be tied to your more traditional People Data.  If you're not using One Model yet but have an interesting use case related to People Analytics, One Model might be just the ticket for you.

Without further ado, here's my running data in One Model:

"Cool - this is all really exciting. How can I get started?"

Did the above excite you? Could One Model help you with your New Year's resolution?

I can't guarantee it'll help you burn any calories, but you could be up and running with your own predictive analytics during Q1 of 2019. 

One Model's Trailblazer quick-start program allows you to get started with predictive analytics now.  Want to learn more?

About One Model

One Model provides a data management platform and comprehensive suite of people analytics directly from various HR technology platforms to measure all aspects of the employee lifecycle. Use our out-of-the-box integrations, metrics, analytics, and dashboards, or create your own as you need to. We provide a full platform for delivering more information, measurement, and accountability from your team.