Hi Everyone, I’m Alec Campanini, a proud SMU MSBA ’19 alumni and an Analytics Manager at Walmart for the Merchandising group.
Before coming to SMU, I was studying accounting at Henderson State University, and before that I was earning a Pre-Med degree from the University of Arkansas. As I continued my path in accounting, I decided to get some experience in the workforce before going off to earn a CPA, then possibly become a forensic accountant for the FBI.
During my senior year, I took up a full time role as a Revenue Auditor at Oaklawn Racing and Gaming, where I learned that accountng may not be my passion, but I did enjoy the numbers and math. My professor at the time, Dr. Roslyn Roberts, mentored me on a regular basis and had attended a conference on Big Data at Texas Tech University. She shared the world of analytics with me and this TED talk by Andrew McAfee.
After those talks, I learned that I wanted to be some type of creator and push my limits. I began researching sports analytics, which at the time had just launched Zebra Motionworks. A player tracking technology that could feed back coordiantes of players using small chips in their shoulder pads.
Eventually this all led me to apply to a few graduate schools in analytics and data science, and of course I chose SMU for its coursework and networking.
While attending SMU I chose to go down the more technical track in order to push myself since I had no prior exposure to programming, or even typical analysis software. During my first 6 months I struggled to stay caught up in some of the larger courses, which is when I found out that I have a double astigmatisms and my issue was that I couldn’t read the board.
During that time however, I chose to sit in the front row of Dr. Karthik Babu’s Database Design course, where I learned about R Shiny and some simple applications of what it could do. During our first project, I teamed up with my buddy Alejandro and we built out our Shiny app as required. But, it didn’t stop there. We kept tinkering with different packages and template that made building out Shiny apps easier and quicker. Sadly, after that project I got busy, and didn’t have a lot of use cases or ideas for it at the time. I saved the code to my laptop and forgot about it.
After graduation I joined 7-Eleven in their Tax Technology group, automating their tax compliance process to reduce risk of tax liabilities and allowing tax specialists to work on deeper tax strategy rather than handling filings. The work was good at first, based solely in Alteryx, but it soon tuurned into managing a data pipeline in a mess of a workflow with no ability to fully automate.
6 months into my 7-Eleven work I was contacted by Walmart’s Tax group, who asked if I could automate and develop tools for their Audit group. I quickly took the chance on myself and for the next year I solely-developed what’s known as the Audit Ecosystem in Walmart. A platform that enhanced the data structures, automated audit calculations and gave multiple layers of reporting. This app started with the shell of our Shiny app from this class.
After a year, I was given the option of promoting to a higher level management position within Walmart’s core - Merchandising. Working in the Merchandising Operations has been the most fulfilling job I’ve ever had. My responsibility is to develop proof of concept tools and new business strategies, and scale my analysis to over 2500 merchants for all of Walmart’s Assortment and Space. This includes e-commerce, stores, marketplace, etc. Almost all of my work resides in R Shiny where I can deploy apps to an internal server, and scale them to my needs. Currently my work has over 6k views in less than 8 months across Merchandising and continues to grow as my PoC’s gain attention and development continues.
Push yourself. Here you will learn the basics to success in data. It’s up to you to then decide what path and what industry makes you the happiest. When I first came to SMU I thought I was going to do Sports Analytics. The field became flooded, pay was low and getting into it required a lot of networking. Now, I’m deciding the highest assortment strategies Walamrt has ever had and I was stocking the shelves overnight 5 years ago.
It’s okay to not know where you want to go when you graduate. Put yourself in a position to gain attention and grow your skillset somewhere while you continue your search. I hated the tax world. My undergrad degree is in accounting, and even at that time I hated tax. Well, I took a tax role and ended up at the largest retailer in the world.
Feel free to connect and reach out to me on LinkedIn.