IN an age in which data has become its own currency, Ryan Simons is sifting through multitudinous data, helping companies strike gold — or, at least, make golden decisions.

His over 10 years of experience in data warehousing and business analytics would have led down a path of helping businesses and their managers make better decisions using data. And so, Simons struck out on his own, leaving his full-time employment with regional telecoms giant Digicel Group to build DenArthur Analytics Limited.

“We’re doing business for just over four years. Our actual start date was October 31, 2018, so we celebrated our fourth anniversary a few weeks ago,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

The name of the company is an homage to Simons’ grandfathers, using their middle names Denton and Arthur.

He recounted that the catalyst for starting the company was the understanding that data was becoming “extremely necessary” for how companies to operate in the current era and that despite companies having the data at their fingertips, “they are not taking full advantage of the data” — something Simons considers a tragedy.

One of the concerns the founder and CEO of DenArthur Analytics has is the need to provide relevant and timely data that will result in the best decision-making that ultimately drives productivity.

“So I started to address that gap in the marketplace,” he said, adding: “We’ve been doing well and we’ve got great responses and feedback from those we worked with and companies we have yet to work with. So we’re pretty excited about that trend.”

DenArthur’s clientèle includes medium-sized and large companies mainly operating in the financial services sector as they tend to generate large volumes of data. Given the risk and sensitive nature of data management, Simon opted not to share names.

However, he notes that a differentiator for the company has been the “depth of experience” in the DenArthur team who classifies themselves as “telecoms-grade data detectives and data expert”, especially since the telecoms industry is one of the largest touch points for data.

“So the volume of data I’m accustomed to managing in any given time is quite extensive, especially compared with a lot of other companies we may see from time to time. Our expertise lends itself so we can provide a high-level and even implementation of data models that guide companies on the way they need to go,” Simons outlined.

“We are looking at organisational data that is already in the organisation but we are mining and crunching data and creating data models from what’s already in their core systems,” he continued.

By doing this, he said, DenArthur is helping managers to make comparative analyses — whether year-on-year, quarter over quarter, month on month — and assess business results against targets.

Still, with data analytics being new to Jamaica and the Caribbean, where managers still depend on gut feelings to make decisions, selling and educating companies on the value proposition of data analytics has proved to be one of the challenges for DenArthur Analytics. Undeterred by this though, Simons notes that he would recommend to managers to consider the pain points in their organisations: Why does reporting and getting information sometimes take so long?

Each data model is there to support different functions and how the data is being used, Simons explained, adding that the company has designed models around International Financial Reporting Standards. And in a time when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations are having an impact on data usage in the Caribbean, while DenArthur is not a data security provider, it can advise its clients on what data is necessary and what can information can be transmitted.

For Simons, the shift from a 9–5 to embracing entrepreneurship was as difficult since starting in such a niche industry was not capital intensive.

“The investment, as it were, was minimal from my perspective. What really was significant though was the years of experience I had built up — you can’t put a dollar figure on that,” he shared with Sunday Finance.

He admitted, though, that he had some savings to cover personal expenses in the months ahead and enough to scale the business should it require more personnel.

Chronicling his first year, Simons revealed that he was doing a majority of the technical and administrative work when he started DenArthur Analytics.

“But as the number of customers ramped up that was not sustainable. So we started bringing on new team members to go through the technical aspects and we started broadening the operational aspects,” he stated.

The “we” to which Simons referred is his core team and board of directors consisting of his wife, Shawna, who is the chief operating officer; and father, Rudyard, who is responsible for sales and business development.

The company, however, had a “slight setback” in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Simons, some of the projects he anticipated were delayed, but the company picked quite a few projects to fill the gap.

Counting his blessings, the CEO said this turn of events led the company in a “bigger direction”, which includes securing its first international client based on the referral of another client.

“That was in June this year,” he said while disclosing that the company is eyeing further growth in the Caribbean and North America.

To match the growth in customers, “We’re working on building out the team to cater to the workload…As volume continues we’ll segment as needed, not just when it happens but in anticipation.”

Operating without a brick and mortar, DenArthur has a team of eight remote employees including one in the US and another in Canada.

On another note, Simons said that the company has benefitted from the “invaluable” exposure to the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship’s accelerator programme, having been paired with advisors who helped with “clarity of vision” and prompted personal growth. One of the highlights he said was learning about building a sales model that supports growth.