How our analytics students are driving innovation at PEXA

Working with an industry disruptor gave Nico Purnomo a chance to put his unique mix of technical skills and business acumen to the test.

As early as high school, Nico Purnomo knew that developing both practical and strategic analytical skills was important to him. 

“I was deciding between pursuing a computer science degree, which was more technically focused, or an economics degree which is more theoretical. I ended up choosing economics, but I really wanted to do both,” he says. 

After completing his undergrad and working as a product manager for two years, Nico enrolled in the Full-time Master of Business Analytics program at Melbourne Business School.  

“When I looked into the Master of Business Analytics program, I decided that it was perfect combination. It’s the right intersection between getting the technical skills and adding the business value as well.”  

It wasn’t until Nico took part in the Analytics Lab subject as part of his studies, and was placed at industry disruptor PEXA, that he was able to realise the full potential of using both capabilities together. 

“We learnt that we need to always think about what sort of value we could add through analytics,” Nico says.  “It’s not always about how good you can code or how fast things can be, but how can it help the business itself?”  

Finding value for PEXA

The five-week Analytics Lab subject, included as part of the Full-time Master of Business Analytics, sees students fully immersed in an organisation and put to work on real-world business problems, giving them firsthand experience of what it’s like to work in the field as an analytics professional. 

Nico and his peers Kelly Chen and Tom Manirat were tasked with finding innovative ways for PEXA to make use of a new technology, Graph Database. The trio came up with multiple ideas, including streamlining the company’s property exchange platform and a novel way to reduce late settlements. 

“We basically came into PEXA as analytics consultants,” Nico says. 

“I came in, I was introduced to a problem and within the group we had to come up with fully formulated solutions within five weeks.” 

As a result, PEXA was able to fast-track adoption of the new technology and introduce it to the company’s wider group of analysts.  

“The problems we got the students to work on are genuine, real-life business problems we are looking to solve, and they are given access to all our technology,” says Data Governance Manager Ruth Layton. 

“We gave them access to the actual technology and asked them to prove that the program would add value to the analysts that we have working day to day. 

“And they were able to do just that.” 

Creating visibility on property settlements

The team’s solutions centred on one of PEXA’s technology platforms Workspace, which connects different sellers, buyers, financial institutions and conveyancers who are involved in a particular settlement. 

To come up with ideas, Nico, Kelly and Tom spent 10 days going through data from more than 9,000 workspaces looking for opportunities for improvement. 

One of the issues they found was that there was no simple way to display all parties, or all activity, for an agreement at once. That information wasn’t connected and instead had to be navigated by multiple links and breadcrumbs. 

The team then used Graph Database to create a new feature providing an easy-to-use overview of the transaction as whole. 

“That’s really helpful because it gives analysts a great picture of the parties involved and the connections between different entities,” Nico says. 

They also developed a solution which would enable more timely settlements.  

“With this network you can run different graph algorithms and investigate the different workspaces that settle late and link it to the customer base and subscribers. 

“Not only could we identify individual parties, but we could also identify patterns – like which particular parties, when they worked together, were more likely to result in late settlements.” 

Learning the soft skills

As they were coming straight from the classroom, the team had to spend some time learning what PEXA did and quickly building relationships with staff across the company. 

“It was not an easy task to do, especially as we are all international students. We didn’t even understand how property was sold and settled in Australia, let alone PEXA’s role in the process,” Nico says. 

“We developed an understanding by talking to different teams. Not only the data analytics team but also the customer experience and fraud teams as well. 

“From that, we learnt about the pain points – what can we touch upon using this technology? What challenges are there in the process that we can fix with this new technology? 

“Having to develop these networking and teamwork skills was invaluable, as they are going to be necessary in the real-world.” 

Innovate for good

Originally established as a conveyancing company, PEXA is now on a journey of transformation and innovation to expand its operations and add more value to the Australian economy – and beyond. 

“The way I like to describe PEXA is it really is a game-changer organisation,” says Ahlam Haddad, Head of Learning Experience. 

“We’ve changed the game on conveyancing in Australia, we’ve diversified into data and insights, and now we’re looking at other markets such as the UK.” 

Finding new ways to innovate is therefore crucial to everything the company does. 

“We have a set of fabulous values here at PEXA, one of them being: ‘Innovate for good.’ We want to do things differently, we want to look at things in a different way,” Ahlam says. 

“By partnering with the Melbourne Business School's A-Labs, it allows us to access the awesome talent that's coming up through the industry and allows us to be very innovative in a really different way that may be different to how we might look at things.” 

And the benefits go both ways.  

“These students are bringing a real difference into an organisation, but they also walk away knowing that they’ve had impact and experience in how to go about applying their learnings that they learned through studying.” 

New talent and new technology

By allowing the students to work on existing, real-life business problems, PEXA was able to unlock innovative ways to use a new technology that it suspected existed, but hadn’t been articulated yet. 

“You’re combining new cutting-edge talent with cutting-edge technology,” says Ruth. 

“They worked through the business problems we set, presented them back to us and how it could be implemented, but they also presented other opportunities they found through the process that may not have been in scope, but allow us to carry the work forward at the end of the tenure.  

“I think about forming, storming, norming, performing – they went through that in about three days, whilst doing their compliance training.” 

The Analytics Lab subject is open to all students studying the Full-time Master of Business Analytics. 

Melbourne Business School has also recently launched a new business analytics degree with flexible study options. To find out more, visit the Master of Applied Business Analytics page. 

To find out more about studying at Melbourne Business School, visit our Degree Programs and Short Courses pages, or learn about our range of services For Organisations.