How to Train your Magic Creature without any additional investment

Dithanon Khrutmuang
Jul 10
4 min read

Updated: Sep 4

You may have heard that the hero in the story needs to bring a Magical Creature to conquer enemies or obstacles and ultimately win.

The same goes for businesses. Businesses are waiting for something that will turn the company into a strong Magical Creature, allowing everyone, both the owner and the team, to win along with the business.

So we need to train businesses like Train Magical Creatures. But the problem is that each business is different. Making the right decision to train the company to go in the right direction requires Data.

Thankfully, modern platforms such as AWS and Snowflake empower entrepreneurs to harness the potential of data, enabling businesses like ours to achieve their objectives through measurable and precise strategies. I refer to this concept as "Business Play."

How to Train your Magic Creature without any additional investmentDithnon

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How to Turn My Business into a Camel.
The effect of Train Magical Creature
Learn more in our full Case Study
Reference

Let's start training your Magical Creature via Business Play.

My own business example, Ozone by Bankhaokho is a hotel business located in Thailand.

Me (Dithanon Khrutmuang) and Khin Thandar Kyaw jointly analyzed a business problem on how to increase ROI (Return on Investment) in my business. If I had used the old school business decision-making method before our world had ML (Machine Learning) technology, I would have made decisions without considering the data, which could have caused damage to the business.

Pic 1 : A model of a person riding a dinosaur, which represents old school business

Coming back to my business, I realized that switching from riding dinosaurs to riding camels would have a positive impact on every aspect of my business, including Profitability, Customer Satisfaction and Business Growth.

Pic 2 : A model image of a camel rider, representing the use of data technology to help with business decision making

Because camels can survive for long periods without food, withstand scorching desert heat and adapt to extreme weather conditions. They survive and thrive in some of the harshest regions on Earth, and in a post-COVID-19 business model, they are the ones that can balance budget and maximize value for money with limited resources.[1] Alex Lazarow.harvard business review.https://hbr.org/2020/10/startups-its-time-to-think-like-camels-not-unicorns"

How to Turn My Business into a Camel.

Before relying on technology, I tried to question my business by asking 3 times :

Why does my business have such a low ROI?
How can I increase my business ROI without negatively impacting Customer Satisfaction?
What are the practical steps to achieve my goals?

I started by analyzing my business data by looking at the main components first.

Pic 3 : A picture of real data in my business that needs to go through the data cleansing process before use

I found that there was a key variable, that Total Paid that guests paid for my property had a high correlation with Booking Total (0.92 out of 1), which makes sense because the more bookings a property has, the more revenue it is likely to generate. However, I found that the higher the Lead time : Number of days between the date of booking and the arrival date, the more likely it is to result in cancellations.

Pic 4 : Image of the relationship between variables in accommodation booking

This presents an opportunity to increase ROI easily, without compromising customer satisfaction, and without incurring additional investment. That is, assigning the admin team to contact customers who have canceled their bookings and ask them the reason for canceling their reservations. The answers they receive may include that the customer has changed their mind and no longer wants to stay, the customer may have switched to a competitor’s accommodation, or that the accommodation is too expensive from the customer's perspective. However, this is an opportunity for me and my team to offer special promotions before the customer changes their mind (Customer Churn), resulting in my business earning more income from customers who are about to cancel. Profits have increased significantly, even without additional investment, resulting in my business’s ROI aligning with my goals.

Pic 5 : Comparison of ROI before and after Customer Churn Prevention resulted in an increase in Profitability of approximately 25%

You can see that this is an example of how technology is used to answer hypothetical questions that I, as a business owner, had. Without a platform like Google Colab running on Snowflake and Khin Thandar Kyaw analyzing this problem for me, I would still be making haphazard decisions without the power of data to back them up.

Pic 6 : Business Play - More Profitability with Customer Satisfaction

The effect of Train Magical Creature

Finally, no matter what your business is doing, I would urge you to ask a lot of questions about your business that is struggling, as if you were asking ChatGPT. Of course, your business information is not easily found on the internet.

As a leader of your organization, you need to create a database of your business data for data scientists to analyze, or you can ask questions directly of your business AI. The magical camel-like creature in the form of AI will definitely help answer questions that appeal to your business to create sustainable profits.