Bianca

Dec 28, 2021

Work Term Report May 2021-December 2021

Introduction

For the past 8 months, I have been working for my co-op at Kenna as a Data Collection and Integration Assistant. I worked with a great team who taught me lots of new skills and helped me reach my goals as a co-op employee.

In this report, I will describe what my employer does and specifically what my team contributes to the company. I will review what tasks I completed in my role, and I will finish off with evaluating my learning goals and an overall summary of my experience in my first co-op job.

Kenna Marketing solutions building in Mississauga

About My Employer

Kenna is a marketing solutions company founded in 1985 and originally called AppliCan Marketing but rebranded as Kenna in 2002.  Kenna works for businesses to build better marketing strategies by creating quality customer interactions and goes by the motto “Customer first thinking”. Kenna works for many businesses but the biggest company we work for is BASF. BASF is a chemical company that makes seeds to sell to retailers which then farmers purchase to use in their agricultural crops. As part of the data collection team, we oversaw collecting all the sales data of BASF products and validated the data we received from the retailers. This needs to be done so when the data analysis is performed, they can correctly see if what they estimated for the season was correct and use the data to see how much and what products they need to make for next year’s season. SQL queries are used to integrate and validate the data into our database. Kenna as a company helps BASF create better customer experiences by analyzing their data when customers purchase BASF products. 

You can learn more about Kenna at: www.kenna.ca

Job Description

The main role of my job was to collect data and integrate it into our database double-checking that all the data I was pushing through was correct. Then at the end of the summer season, I was to validate that all the data in our database for my specified retailers for BASF so they can analyze the data. To get data I would call/email retailers to politely remind them about their monthly submission of transactional sales. Then once we had data submissions, I would work on linking. Linking is getting the transactional information from the retails data submission file about the grower/farmer and what product they purchased and then finding them in our database and making a match. 

If a match couldn’t be found SQL queries would be used to double-check that there is no close match, if that was the case then a new grower will be made in our database. After the linking portion is done during data submission sometimes follow-up thresholds would come up for certain transactions. Thresholds are links I must double-check since they were flagged by the software. For example, if the farmer purchased more than 60% more than last year we get notified and investigate whether the quantity is correct. During my investigation, I would use SQL queries to double-check the data that included left joins between different tables. 

After all the data from the retails was pushed through the system into our database it was usually time to re-start the process for the next month. At the end of my term when the farming season was over, we performed data validation for BASF. This included re-receiving data from the retails for a full year data file to compare numbers for each retail so we can be double sure that the data we give to BASF is correct and they can make the correct predictions for the following year. 

Learning Goals

These are the goals I set out for myself over my 8-month work term.

1.    I would like to keep getting better and be more confident throughout my work term at each of our given tasks such as threshold, linking, Gap Analysis and QAs.

These tasks I did daily at my job, and it was important for me to set these goals for myself of improving my skills so I can be efficient as possible as an employee. At the beginning of the term, I had to ask for lots of help from my mentor to confirm I was doing each task correctly. Later throughout the term, I was able to build confidence in myself and complete these tasks without the help of others. And when there was something inaccurate in the data, I felt comfortable bringing it up with the account coordinator where the discrepancy was so we could solve the issue together. By the end of my term, I was able to complete my daily tasks efficiently and correctly and was able to deliver quantity and quality to my company. For the last 7 months of my work term, I was able to keep a 100% accuracy rate for thresholds and links completed.

2.    When I am calling retails, I would like to be more confident on the phone about what I am talking about and react better in scenarios when the conversation doesn't go as planned. Also, get to know the retailers better so I'm able to have more efficient conversations with them.

A part of my job was keeping track of around 80 retails transactional data and getting in contact with them when their data submission was late or incorrect. At the beginning of the term, I was a little hesitant to do this since I wasn’t sure what to expect when calling these different retail locations across Canada. However, I was quickly able to overcome this fear and I became confident over the phone. After about a month I understood more about the company and what I was asking for when asking for data from the retails. Such as, I became familiar with what products we keep track of and between what timeline we would like for the data. I was able to be more helpful to the data submitter at the retail throughout my term when the data they submitted had discrepancies, I felt more comfortable explaining exactly what data we need. I learned more about the retails I was responsible for by the end of the term as well. By the end of the term, I could easily make a phone call without any hesitation or nerves.

3.    When I feel comfortable at my current tasks at my job to reach out and ask if there are more tasks, I can do on a more development side or a little more to do with coding.

I worked a lot with SQL throughout my term, but I was interested in working more on the dev side of things. I brought this up with my manager in August and she said she was really impressed with my work, and she would talk to the dev team. They said they would take me on, and I taught myself React and next js in my free time in preparation to help out. However, nearing the end of my term, I got busy with my main tasks for my co-op job and the dev team got super busy and didn’t have time to take the time to take me on and teach me, so I wasn’t able to do aid the dev team. But I still learned lots of useful skills.

Conclusions and Acknowledgements

I would like to give a big thanks to everyone on the Data Solutions Team I worked with for the past 8-months. Everyone was supportive and welcoming, and I was able to have a great first co-op term work experience because of them. Thanks to my manager, Jennifer Charter for encouraging me to do my best and giving me opportunities to grow. Also, a big thanks to Elaine Yao and Shajeah Janjua who were there to mentor me and were always able to give a helping hand when I had a question or when I needed help. Everyone on the team was truly great and even though it was online we were able to have a supportive community. 

Thanks to everyone here I was able to build great skills of what it is like working in the workplace. I was able to grow my professional skills and learned how to participate as part of a team in a work setting. I will miss everyone on the team and all the support they gave throughout the work term. 

A photo of me, Evan Hesiz (another co-op) and Elaine (our mentor) meeting up for coffee in October 2021