24 Hours With... WE data lead Siddharth

24 Hours With… spotlights the working day of some of the most interesting people in Mumbrella Asia’s world. Today, we hear about a day in the life of Siddharth Sankhe, insight and analytics lead, Southeast Asia and India, WE Communications

8:00am: The alarm goes off. I prefer to sleep late and wake up a bit late and not the other way round. First thing I do is check my e-mails for anything that requires immediate attention. Today there is nothing that needs me to respond immediately so it is time for some morning yoga sirsasana.

9:00am: Time to leave the house. It is better to leave anytime post 9 as the traffic subsides and I can get to work in 15-20 mins. I called for a Grab taxi and it has arrived in no time. My loyalty towards Grab or Uber depends on my most recent experience; probably a challenge that every brands in the services sector faces to maintain loyalty at each interaction.

9:05am: Pleasantly surprised to see that even though I called for the basic economy Grab, a BMW arrives in my lobby. Earphones on, looks like a good start of the day.

9:10am: We are on the CTE expressway as it is the fastest route to the office and I see a car stop in front of us right in the middle of the expressway, my Grab driver is confused whether to shift lane or brake but there’s not much time and Boom! I was sitting at the back and fell forward into the passenger seat upon impact. Not such a good start of the day but at least I have a story to tell when I get to work.

Everyone’s fine, no damage except for the two cars. We’re are back on the road.

9:25am: At the office! I have my breakfast in office, a couple of slices of bread with butter or Nutella or both. As I make my breakfast, I greet my team and other colleagues, quickly sharing the morning incident.

9:30am: A small team huddle to see if everything is running smooth on all accounts and if anyone needs additional support. This is one of the two huddles, the other one happens post noon when the India team walks into office as I manage that region too.

11:00am: Matthew Lackie, EVP, APAC shares the regional business and strategy plan with the entire office. Interesting things to look out for the coming year with some great additions in terms of offerings and talent.

12:00pm: Lunch with our in-house digital manager to discuss some of the ongoing projects and how we can bring in more collaboration within these two departments i.e. insight and analytics, and digital. Good conversation and so was the scallop and crayfish baked rice.

1:30pm: Back to the desk and checking some deliverables recently finished by the team. Everything looks good. I have a quick call with my manager, Henry Wood on capacity planning, new products and partnerships.

2:30pm: A weekly call with my Southeast Asia and India team on managing work load and identifying issues in any ongoing projects. We have a huge analytics reporting task for a campaign ahead of us in July and we need to start planning for that. I have to brief two newly joined direct reports on a client, their campaign and the expectations for the task. I believe it will be a good exposure for both of them to work on this specific task as it’s a good starting point.

4:00pm: I have a meeting with our data visualisation partners to negotiate on pricing and scope for a new offering that we are building with them. Data visualisation has always been a core component of deliverables at WE Insights and Analytics. The first slide I saw at WE when I joined said “Simply put, we make data simple, beautiful and compelling” and I believe that data visualisation talks to all three of those components.

7:00pm: WE Communications was recently recognised as one of Asia’s Best Places to Work and we believe that it’s not just the current but also the ex-employees who got us this accolade. Hence drinks are on the house for the team and WE alumni. It will be great to meet up with old colleagues to celebrate this occasion. The invite says 7pm to 9pm but I know for sure it won’t stop at 9.

8:00pm: I get my daily notification saying “Go swim, Sid”. Probably not a good idea to leave the drinks mid-way, that’d be rude. Notification ignored, back to drinking.

10:30pm: Suddenly realised that it wasn’t a Friday and tomorrow looks action-packed with multiple meetings and some key deliverables that need to be dealt with. Time to get back home and shower.

11:30pm: Quickly catching up on my social media channels and responding to pending WhatsApp messages from the day.

12:00 am: The laptop is out of my bag, I open two browsers, one plays Netflix (re-run of Better call Saul, a spin-off prequel of Breaking Bad) and the other browser is for random searches about things to do, places to travel, trends, blogs, health etc. Today I am researching on Sipadan, the only oceanic island in Malaysia which is also referred to as diver’s paradise in Asia. I plan to get my diving certification done from here over the National Day weekend in August.