God of Money

The next day.

Kwak Jungwook called for an immediate meeting.

“As you know, the headquarters is highly invested in this big data project.”

Kwak Jungwook continued calmly.

“Daesan had two opinions regarding this project. First is that it will negatively affect the UX. Second, we need to verify the data analysis results.”

Kwon Taegyun frowned. He heard about the first part yesterday but was unaware of the second objection.

“I have heard the first one, but you’ll have to explain further about the second part.”

Kwon Taegyun looked at Yoon Gihwan, who, in turn, directed his gaze to Woosung. Despite everyone’s attention, Woosung was deep in his own thoughts.

‘We meet again.’

Cha Yeoreum was sitting at the table too. Theis meetif og theirs surprised her but it also pleased her at the same time to see Woosung again. Yoon Gihwan poked Woosung.

“Hey, newbie.”

Woosung finally paid attention to the room. Kwon Taegyun was glaring at him with obvious hate.

“There is a saying, ‘Empty vessels make the most noise.'”

Woosung looked at Kwon Taegyun and continued.

“Have you heard it before?”

Kwon Taegyun slapped the table and stood up angrily.

“What the hell are you trying to say?”

Kwak Jungwook stood and tried to stop Kwon Taegyun. He waved at Woosung.

“W…Woosung. You need to watch your language.”

“No, I don’t. The amount of money your company received for this project is about 10 million dollars.”

Woosung continued slowly.

“So I looked into where that money was spent. The word ‘big data’ was all over the invoices. ‘New customers attraction using the big data analysis.’ ‘Increasing the ease of system use with the big data analysis.’ ‘Increased accuracy in predicting future system errors using the big data analysis.’ And so on.”

When Woosung tried to continue, someone from Daeyang interrupted him.

“I am Manager Oh Juhoon from Daeyang System. I find your accusations very insulting. Everything we put on the report is true. I don’t understand which part you think is fake.”

Kwon Taegyun added smugly.

“By the way, Oh Juhoon has a PhD in statistics.”

Yoon Gihwan answered.

“All of them.” He then smiled at Woosung.

“Are you kidding me?”

Oh Juhoon scowled and answered loudly.

Woosung shook his head and turned on the presentation screen. An excel file opened.

“This is a table I made of the Nuri Finances’ data analysis.”

-Period: February 21 ~ March 21

-Data on stock trading: 32,222,114

-Number of inquiries to call center: 1,234,523

-Number of visits to the homepage: 1,098,245

…

Woosung asked as he pointed at the screen.

“As you can see, majority of the data is from stock trading transactions. You weren’t planning to use this to make product recommendations, right?”

Everyone looked at Oh Juhoon. He adjusted his glasses and answered.

“Hmm…Of course not. That kind of data would be useless when making product recommendations.”

Yoon Gihwan frowned. He was right, Daeyang didn’t make such an obvious mistake.

“Then this means you used the data on product inquiries for call center and homepage…”

Oh Juhoon swallowed and glanced at Kwon Taegyun.

“T…that’s right. We used three years worth of data, so that would be about 30 million.”

“And you call that big data? That would be less than 100 gigs.”

Oh Juhoon remained silent. Kwon Taegyun sat down quietly and tried to help.

“You are too focused on the word ‘big data.’ You need to consider the quality of our work instead.”

“Quality? Haha, then let’s talk about that.”

Woosung’s mocking tone angered Kwon Taegyun. Kim Jaejin intervened.

“Hey. Don’t you think you are being a little rude?”

Woosung gave a quick response.

“No, not at all.”

Kim Jaejin stuttered.

“W…what did you say?”

“I said no.” Woosung continued. “If you want to talk about manners, how about you making us wait 15 minutes for a meeting?”

Kwon Taegyun tried to answer but Woosung was quicker.

“We keep getting off topic. Let’s get back to the presentation.”

Woosung clicked to change the screen to PPT.

“Data quality is just as important as the amount of data. An analyst should be ashamed to knowingly using the wrong data, just like in this case.”

Oh Juhoon reddened.

Kwon Taegyun.

Kim Jaejin.

They all became silent.

Except for Cha Yeoreum, all members from Daeyang System reddened. Woosung continued.

“Then let’s get back to the business. You mentioned quality. The focus of data analysis should be quality of work and the appropriateness of the data.”

The room was dead silent except for Woosung.

“The first thing is to set a goal. Then you should work towards the goal, rather than working on unrelated data and call whatever the result to be the ‘goal.'”

Woosung continued.

“But in this case, was there ever a clear objective?”

No one could answer.

***

Silence.

Cha Yeoreum looked around the room and turned to Woosung.

‘What is happening here?’

This was not the Woosung she knew.

She has known him for a long time. During university, Woosung barely passed to graduate, but the Woosung in this room was a completely different person. She looked at him with curiosity.

‘Tell me, what happened?’

Woosung shrugged.

‘We haven’t seen each other in a while.’

It has only been a year. She continued to look at him, but Woosung looked away.

Woosung finally broke the silence.

“We need figure out what we can do with all the data we have.”

The atmosphere in the room was changing. It now felt like a classroom, and Woosung is the teacher.

“The data on stock trading and on the online transactions. We need to combine the two.”

With 10 years of experience, Woosung was now the expert.

“We use HTS now, but in the future, more convenient tools will become available.”

In the future, MTS (Mobile Trading System) will become the main system. Whichever company monopolizes it will become the top of the food chain.

“We need to become prepared for that time. We need to analyze the available data to determine users’ HTS use patterns and improve on it. We need to be ready for the future.”

Kwak Jungwook looked at Woosung admiringly, but Yoon Gihwan looked at him oddly.

‘Look at this guy.’

Woosung was not providing any specifics of his plan.

Yoon Gihwan didn’t know much about mobile transaction systems, but he knew if Woosung’s idea was to take place, he needed to have detailed plans. Woosung wasn’t providing them. Kwon Taegyun opened his mouth.

“So…what do you propose?”

“Seminar.”

“What?”

“I will provide you all the information during a seminar. For Daeyang…”

Daeyang System.

It belonged to Daeyang Group where Choi Gichul’s father was the CEO.

Every time Woosung saw the word Daeyang, he felt an incredible anger. This was why he felt no respect to anyone who worked there. After a few seconds of thinking, Woosung continued.

“I will only charge 20,000 dollars.”

Kwon Taegyun asked again.

“What?”

“I will provide all the needed details during this seminar.”

Kwak Jungwook was already sold on the idea. He looked at Kwon Taegyun and Oh Juhoon.

“What do you think?”

“I think…”

Oh Juhoon looked at Woosung. Woosung wasn’t just fancy words, but they have not yet tested his skills Oh Juhoon stood and started to write an equation on the whiteboard.