DATA, CREATIVITY AND COLLABORATION WITH TRACY-LOCKE'S MICHELLE TISDALE
I'm the data ambassador, storyteller and expedIter"
"
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Iove it, can’t you tell? I could talk about this all day.” When someone starts an interview like this, you know it’s going to be good. And Michelle Tisdale didn’t disappoint. In reality, Tisdale needn’t have been so explicit. Her passion for data, technology, the importance of people and collaboration, and how it all comes together in her work at creative commerce agency Tracy-Locke shines through in our interview.
Tisdale has more than 25 years’ experience in advertising, marketing, retail and data-driven commerce. At Tracy-Locke, she and her colleagues provide a team of exceptional creatives with the data, analytics and intelligence that’s crucial to the award-winning brand campaigns they’re recognised for. She is, in her own words, a data ambassador, storyteller and expediter, passionate about making data fun, nurturing and evolving the culture
necessary to embrace innovation, and bringing together creativity and technology in perfect harmony.
You’re spoilt for choice when it comes to passion this time around. Ibstock’s Alex Richards, for example, gives both a masterclass in what it takes to navigate the kind of complex transformation he’s leading at the business, and fascinating insight into the psychology of change – the latter inspired by his two masters degrees in general and forensic criminal psychology.
Kari Jones, Woolworths Group’s General Manager - Analytics & Insights, is equally inspiring. Needless to say, Jones is an exceptional technology leader, but she also has a wealth of personal experiences – from playing and coaching international high-performance sport and dedication to personal leadership coaching, through to her early days at computer clubs, being inspired by her parents’ Star Trek VHS’s and, more recently, more than a decade of working at iconic organisations.
This is modern technology leadership: engaging, inspiring, multi-faceted and dedicated to the people and organisations it serves. Enjoy!
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Creative DirectorStroud & Clarke is a multichannel creative agency that produces exceptional business and lifestyle content for brands, leaders and pioneers.
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webb.nasa.gov
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Data, creativity, collaboration and commerce: welcome to the world of Tracy-Locke’s Michelle Tisdale
love it, can’t you tell? I could talk about this all day.” It’s true what they say, energy really is infectious. And Michelle Tisdale has enough to spare. The chat we recently had was a masterclass regarding the impact you can have when you truly love your work. Data leadership, the use of data and insights in retail and commerce, the power of innovation and technology in driving some of the best creative work in the business, culture and collaboration – you name it, Tisdale brims with passion for her work.
Fascinating? Yes. Inspiring? Absolutely. But, take a look at her track record in advertising, marketing, retail and data-driven commerce, and it’s not surprising. For the last 25 years, Tisdale has been at the forefront of data, insight and intelligence across consumer/shopper research, product marketing, category management, and sales, specialising in providing solutions for clients to realise increases in sales and improve performance. For the last six years, she’s been bringing that experience to creative commerce agency Tracy-Locke.
“As Chief Analytics Officer I oversee all our data, analytics and business intelligence activities and make sure we’re always at the leading edge and moving the industry forward through innovation,” says Tisdale, by way of introduction. “At Tracy-Locke, we’re focused on compelling commerce – creating compelling work for our clients that gets customers to buy into their brands and buy their products.
“Nowadays, people expect the companies, brands and products they interact with to really engage with them, and to have relationships that reflect their lifestyles and values,” she says. “People are more willing to buy products that reflect lifestyle, cultural and societal values – we combine data, analytics and technology with creativity to help businesses have those personal relationships. Within that context, my job is to give our clients the relevant information to understand their customers and their markets, so they can influence behaviour and engage effectively to sell relevant products to the right categories of customer; data helps achieve that.”
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Peoples’ use of technology and, thus, the volumes of data we all create and consume on a daily basis has grown exponentially over Tisdale’s career, she says. Over 25 years in the data insights space, she has held several roles, from startups to major media and marketing companies.
“All those roles have shaped me,” she reflects, “from right back in the 90s when I was fresh out of college and working with daily data from retailers to understand out-of-stocks, distribution patterns and sales forecasts. And we’re talking about a time where some people considered daily data as too much insight – we had to work to get people to understand the value of that and realise the predictive power it can bring to a brand or retailer. As a first job, it was such a valuable role in terms of understanding what data is really capable of, and how you organise it and get the most value from it.”
Stints at consumer goods company
Crossmark and international media brand, The Nielsen Company saw Tisdale hone her craft further, in particular around the ideation and creation of products built around data to maximise value for consumers and brands, data-driven marketing, digital consumer behaviour, and more.
“The uses for and volumes of data we’re all collectively using have evolved so much; I think people and businesses have just caught up with the pace of that evolution in terms of understanding the real potential. We’re not scared anymore,” says Tisdale. “The biggest change is the commoditisation of data. It’s no longer something for the few. Look at your desk now, your phone, your computer, all the apps you’ve used today, that’s all data that has value. The rise of better and more effective data visualisation tools means anyone can digest the information available to them, too.
“We embrace data so much more now,” she continues. “Particularly in our work at Tracy-Locke, it’s the foundation for really valuable fact-based conversations. We use technology, but at our heart we’re a team of excellent creatives and what’s really interesting is what data and technology brings to that process. My role, and data’s role, is to give them a broader lens on the work they’re doing, bring that fact-based insight and show how consumers and markets think, react and behave to help their creative flow. All of my experience
“It’s great to see how data can help our team see the art of the possible”
and everything I’ve learned from my work comes together here at Tracy-Locke. I never thought I’d be at an agency, but I’m just totally digging it. It’s great to see how data can help our team see the art of the possible and open them up to explore.”
Tisdale joined Tracy-Locke in 2016 and has subsequently moved through Director of Analytics and Head of Strategic Intelligence roles, prior to taking her current job of Chief Analytics Officer in mid-2021. This appointment coincided with a period of change and people-first rebranding at the business that saw the creation of a new brand identity centred around a core belief: there is no commerce problem in the world that creativity cannot solve.
At the same time new president Tina Manikas joined the business and a new executive leadership board – including Tisdale – was created to steer the future direction of the business based on four key pillars: driving strategic innovation, compelling creative excellence, expanding client partnerships, and unifying talentbuilding programmes. Today Tracy-Locke is part of the global commerce agency community Omnicom Commerce Group (OCG). The award-winning global commerce and communications agency designs and creates experiences for brands and drives conversion through empathy, technology and creativity. Its culturally relevant campaigns, including work for the likes of LEGO, Pizza Hut,
Pepsi, Godiva, Kellogg’s and more, are designed to hook human interest and connect with diverse and niche audience segments.
Technology, in particular data, analytics and intelligence is essential to this delivery. At the core of Tracy-Locke’s innovation capabilities is Omni, an industry-leading data and marketing orchestration platform that helps examine key issues, identify rich insights and craft sharp strategies that inspire compelling commerce ideas. This level of insight and capability is built on information on millions of people, in-depth consumer behaviour insight and retail-customer level data that informs every stage of Tracy-Locke’s development process.
“We call that process our marketing lifecycle,” says Tisdale. “Within it are four essential steps or phases, all underpinned and powered by data and insight, and always bespoke for each individual client. The first is ‘Define’, in which we set out the problem to solve and use our omniCommerce IQ technology to define the right strategic opportunity for the client. Here, we’re leveraging a lot of data to inform that process including defining the customer or audience, looking at cultural trends and market changes, then setting out the objectives – it’s heavy upfront with the data.
“The second step is ‘Design’, which is where our creative team comes in,” she continues. “To inform the creative
process we utilise empathy tools to understand the audience, typically that involves insight from surveys, focus groups and one-to-one sessions to understand first-hand the customer category and how the products impact their lives. The next step, ‘Activate’, is around how we bring the programme to life. Our commerce experience team comes into play here, using various tools and frameworks to map out and understand the consumer purchase journey and develop an activation plan around key shopper moments and touchpoints. Lastly is ‘Optimise’, where we use Omni-powered measurement tools to centralise, track and analyse results data and provide reporting, and to identify new growth opportunities.”
The application of innovative technologies and data has evolved during Tisdale’s time with the business. The adoption of Omni, she says, has been a particular game-changer. “We’ve transformed our use of technology since I began in 2016,” she notes. “We were using data well, but Omni and the adoption of different visualisation tools and other innovations have helped us provide an even better level of service. Omni is essentially a one-stopshop platform for all things data and workflow that allows us to leverage insight far more effectively. We subscribe to vast volumes of data globally, so it’s essential to have one platform that everyone can access, see one version of the truth, and collaborate through.
“We’re continuing to evolve our approach, too,” adds Tisdale. “Because of the volume and complexity of the different types of data we use, it’s important we look to democratise as much of the information across the business as possible. It’s a subtle shift from my team previously running every task to encouraging everyone in the business to look and play with the data, then come to us if they have a specialised task. We’re trying to push people to be smarter and understand the information they have at hand. And I think we’re ready. With the rebranding of the business, the leadership changes and the onboarding of our Chief Transformation Officer, Ashish Oak, there’s a shared sense of excitement about what 2023 can bring.”
“We subscribe to vast volumes of data globally, so it’s essential to have one platform that everyone can access, see one version of the truth, and collaborate through”
Leadership plays an important role in any change programme, as does culture. At Tracy-Locke the latter is a fundamental part of the overall success of the agency with its vision of ‘building the agency we always wanted to work at’ setting out clearly the shared intention of everyone in the business. When it comes to democratising data and the adoption of new technologies Tisdale refreshingly, and somewhat modestly, describes her approach as ‘laissez-faire’.
“I’m a data ambassador and storyteller, and when it comes to Omni, I’m an expediter,” she explains. “Culture is so important in the business and I see my job as endearing everyone to data, making it not scary and showing the potential it has to bring greater value to all their work. It’s fun, and that’s how it should be – I’ve introduced lunch and learns, webinars, team sessions and more, all with the aim of making it enjoyable and approachable. Getting technology and creativity together is a balance, but the bottom line is that the data and insights we have are here to help and refine the work our great people do. Specifically on Omni, I’ve been working to get everyone in the agency Omni-certified and to understand the power it has. It’s a real differentiator to our organisation so everyone should be able to talk to it.”
“We want to do very good work and be the best we can. We play hard, and we work hard”
Looking ahead, Tisdale and her leadership team colleagues are continuing to hone and develop their forward-looking strategy for Tracy-Locke which, from a technology perspective, will consider adoption of new solutions to bring to the market, continuous evolution of how the business leverages the data at its disposal, training and developing skill sets around new technologies coming into the business, and transforming reporting and output.
to the strategy, there are a lot of steps in motion for the next year but we still have to remain flexible enough to adapt to the market. The commerce and retail media spaces can evolve quickly: the time period, consumer demands and categories change so there’s always new elements to factor into any work we do. We have to be mindful and creative with how we’re using the data, technology and activation tools so that they are still relevant and impactful for our clients.
“From OCG we have a futurist focused on understanding and predicting market change,” she says. “We’re also looking at new cultural tools that we can use to analyse potential cultural shifts, what they mean, and what possible signals they will make in the market. It’s all this that makes the job so much fun. Each day the team comes to work, there’s something different, a new set of data or different insights upon which we can deliver our work. I have a great team, and we’re all inspired by our curiosity and an interest in what we do. It’s important. We want to do very good work and be the best we can. We play hard, and we work hard. That’s the motto.”
tracylocke.com
“We’ve been doing a lot of fun stuff, and I’m super excited about what this year holds,” Tisdale enthuses. “When it comes
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Alex Richards on the psychology of change, delivering successful tech transformations, and using innovation and people-power to deliver success
lex Richards isn’t an out and out techie [his words, not ours]. And, frankly, who cares? There’s more to senior technology or digital leadership and decision making than just technology today, anyway. Like strategic and business-focused thinking, or teams and culture, and an ability to manage complex change while understanding its impact on the business. And, perhaps most importantly, the role that people play in all of this. Richards absolutely gets this – talk to him and you’ll hear how passionately he speaks about what transformation really means and the kick he gets from seeing people he works with succeed, or how his love of the psychology he studied at degree and masters level influences his approach to his work. It’s also clear in the success he’s had across myriad tech and retail focused businesses through his career.
“I’m a Chief Information and Digital Officer, not a Chief Technology Officer – my view on that distinction is pretty strong,” he says, setting out his stall early on. “I’ve worked with a lot of very good techies over the years who’ve struggled to be pragmatic and engage with the business well enough to actually solve any problems. It’s great to be excited by technology – I’m guilty of getting caught up in things I think are cool or sexy, too – but not if it means you’re struggling to make a difference to the bottom line. That’s where I always position myself: I’m the glue between technology and the business.”
And that’s always been the case. Richards’ background doesn’t lie in pure technology, but rather in project management, agile business analysis, value delivery, and change management and transformation roles for tech-first companies like Experian, Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group and Boohoo. Throw in a university education focused on criminology, psychology and forensic psychology and his passion for people and the psychology of the major organisational change programmes he’s been involved with begins to make perfect sense.
“It’s been a bit of a journey and, if you’d sat me down at university and talked through my career path looking 10 or 15 years ahead, it wasn’t this,” he laughs, taking up the story. “My degree was in criminology, which was completely out of the blue. During my second year I came across forensic psychology as a discipline and absolutely loved it, so much so that after my degree I went on to do two masters degrees in general psychology and forensic criminal psychology.
Later, personal circumstances led me to a job in a finance firm in the data department as a data analyst and, very quickly after a few months, I moved into a more business analysis-focused role.
“Very early on I saw that a lot of the companies I was working with had a complete disconnect between technology, data and the business goals and so I looked to position myself within that area, working to try and bring that connection to life and making sure that everything we did from a technology and data perspective was
being used for the right purpose and to extract the most value,” Richards continues. “I progressed pretty quickly to Head of Business Analysis and Project Management and stepped into the role of supporting the team to understand how to deliver value for the business, the goals and objectives of the organisation, and how we convert those requirements into something tangible that the tech guys can pick up and get results with.
“At the same time, all the psychology elements around change or transformation, how to use those learnings to support people to adapt in a positive and effective way, and all the theories and practices that we can do to try and make everyone in the business feel accountable for the changes that are happening to them to get the best engagement were, and still are, absolutely fundamental to that kind of business analysis/project management type of role,” he adds.
Stints at global information services company Experian and the Mike Ashleyfounded British retail, sport and intellectual property firm Frasers Group helped cement Richards’ approach to business, transformation and technology, as well as his leadership style. He joined the former in 2017 as head of Business Analysis, Change Management and Process Excellence focused on making the delivery process for the company better and improving transparency.
“Very early on in my career I saw that a lot of the companies I was working with had a complete disconnect between technology, data and the business goals”
“I was given some great opportunities to lead the charge on transformation at the UK business,” he notes. “From a technology perspective, my focus was largely on the B2B sector. Experian is an explicitly tech-first business and it was a great place to cut my teeth on large enterprise PLC approaches to change in technology. From a change management perspective, it was a pretty siloed organisation with a lot
of product units operating in isolation. The challenge was to get people crosspollinating, sharing information and collaborating while bringing energy to groups of people that were pretty happy being inward facing, working with what they know, and not really getting out of their comfort zones to look at how they could contribute more broadly across the business.
“My role is a newly created position to essentially draw a line in the sand and say ‘we know we need to do something better in the digital space’”
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“Moving from financial services to retail at Frasers Group was a very different environment,” he says. “Less regulation meant change management and approval processes were less explicit, people did things their own way and how they’d always done them, but it was really valuable in showing me that if you scrap a lot of the processes people and teams will naturally start to follow steps that usually get the right results – you almost hit the right audit trail by accident. It’s a really great business and I learned a lot there from a commercial perspective, particularly around the brutal prioritisation and focus on making sure that customers are being looked after and investment is being spent in the right places.”
“I’ve always been explicit that this is an evolution of the good work that’s already been put in place by my predecessors”
Key trends that have proved catalysts for organisational change over this period have been the evolution of available technology and greater desire from stakeholders to deliver value in a more focused and agile way, says Richards. Specifically on technology, he explains that one of the most pervasive shifts of the last decade is the move away from monolithic technology architecture to a microservices-based approach. “To bring
that forward to where I am now with Ibstock,” he says, “my role was a newly created position to essentially draw a line in the sand and say ‘we know we need to continue moving forward in the digital space, let’s bring in someone with no experience of the sector but strong experience of working in digital-first businesses and in change and transformation to continue to bring our technology ambitions to life’.”
Richards joined Ibstock in early 2022, his role – new within the business – giving him an effective clean slate from which to start from a technology perspective. The company is a leading manufacturer and supplier of clay and concrete building products and solutions for the UK construction industry with more than 200 years’ history. Richards’ role is broad, encompassing evolving the organisation’s tech estate including moving data from on-prem to the cloud, standardising systems and technology and making better use of data. It’s a significant programme of change, for which he and his team have developed a new medium-term digital strategy centred around achieving a ‘One Ibstock’ approach to tech.
“I’m pretty passionate about the word ‘transformation’,” he says. “From a psychological perspective, the inherent suggestion is negative and that everything needs to be ripped up and started again. It’s not true, and certainly not here at Ibstock, where I’ve always been explicit that this is an evolution of the good work that’s already been put in place by my predecessors. The whole process of leading successful change is an interesting one for me. There’s a fundamental thing to realise when you’re doing work like this: despite 10,000 years or more of human evolution, we’re still wired the same way when it comes to an external stimulus and pressure triggering our flight, fight
or freeze response; we’re ultimately going to do whatever is the best option to bring safety. Whether that’s experiencing genuine danger from a mammalian predator or another tribe encroaching on your territory, or going through an organisational change, those biological structures are exactly the same for all of us.
“Knowing that’s going to happen means you can tailor your approach based on how well you know your department and your organisation,” continues Richards.
“With that in mind, my approach to change management is to never make large-scale changes coming into a business. I take my time to understand the context, get a feel for the culture and how people operate and then make sure I involve the affected people in the decision making process. That’s really important to negate any potential negative effects because you’re giving accountability for decisions and outcomes, engaging the parts of the brain that are focused on logical and rational processes and effectively making those people cheerleaders for whatever change is coming from as early a point in the process as possible. It’s also essential that you, as the leader, deliver all messages with clarity, particularly making it clear when the period of change is complete.”
Richards and his team are working through this process at the moment at Ibstock. The last six months, he says, have been spent taking stock and assessing the current digital estate, while at the same time developing a future-facing digital strategy for 2023. “There’s several technology changes planned for 2023, and all of them have the customer at the heart of everything. This year will be dominated by two key areas of focus. The first priority is delivering the evolution of the company’s ERP system which manages finance and accounting, as well as logistics and manufacturing. The second major priority is focused on the democratisation of data to provide a modern data platform for the business.
“There’s several technology changes planned for this year, and all of them have the customer at the heart of everything”
“ERP projects are inherently risky because you’re effectively dealing with the beating heart of the business,” says Richards.
“When you reach the point we’re at now where there’s a critical decision to be made about what the future system looks like, it’s important to pick your battles and not commit to a large programme of work that won’t deliver for a long period of time. We’re currently using a JD Edwards ERP and we have an option to upgrade and evolve that system, and we’re also considering a move to the Oracle Fusion ERP estate in the cloud. What’s especially exciting is the potential the change will unlock in terms of how the business works, automating manual tasks and unleashing functionality that we just haven’t looked at before. Getting a new ERP in a place where we can properly manage the API estate, have multiple other technologies interfacing with our ERP, and getting the information shared in the right way is going to unlock a lot of potential new innovations and technologies that can set us apart from our competitors.
“This could be basic things like mobile apps for our delivery drivers and trucks to manage proof of delivery, geolocation tags and tracking, through to more innovative tech,” he adds. “For example, we’ve ideas for augmented reality for our commercial team. At our head office we’ve got the brick library, containing samples of all our brick range. We have an augmented reality proof of concept
in build at the moment whereby we’re hoping to put that brick library in a salesperson’s pocket and allow them to show all our products’ colour, finish, size, dimensions and so on through a mobile app while on site. Elsewhere I’ve aspirations for understanding how blockchain can bring greater transparency to our supply chain and contribute to our sustainability efforts, through to the potential use of drones to monitor stock on our factories and yards. In many ways, it feels like we’re just scratching the surface at the moment.”
For most of this work, particularly the ERP change, using key technology partners is essential, says Richards. Upon joining the business he set up and ran a supplier briefing session to communicate clearly the aims and objectives of the transformation and set out an agenda for how to deliver on the strategy he and his team are working on.
“The whole purpose was to make sure everyone knows I want to work with suppliers that are bought into our goals and vision,” he explains. “I was clear about how they could expect me to work with them and, in turn, what our expectations were and I really invited them to come challenge us on things like the ERP upgrade. I expect the partners involved in scoping this out to be really challenging on the technology choices that we’re discussing. And not for their own commercial benefit, but because
they’re looking at us as a business, they understand our objectives, they understand what we’re trying to achieve, and they’re confident enough to offer ideas on different technologies we may not have considered at all.
“We already have some very good support from key partners like Redfaire and Q Associates,” says Richards. “Redfaire are JD Edwards ERP experts. They’ve a lot of experience in the general Oracle application space, we’ve outsourced support leadership to them and they’ve been very good at giving us ideas, involving us in conversations with Oracle directly to support investigations into new bits of tech or new ways of working, and I’m sure they’ll continue to do so and play a key architectural role in helping us decide the future of that ERP platform.”
Staying true to his people-focused leadership style, Richards has encouraged his team to take the lead on finalising strategic plans and development for 2023 and beyond. He is a firm advocate of democratising decision making and accountability in order to maximise outcomes. “As a tech department, we co-created a medium term digital strategy. Off the back of that, we can break down to the key directions of travel for 2023 and beyond,” he notes, “I shared with my team the five or six key
“From a change management perspective I want my team to feel accountable and to engender a sense of responsibility in each of them”
strategic focuses for this year – around half are ‘must wins’ that have to be prioritised and completed in the timeframe I want. In terms of getting there, though, I suggest what each could look like and offer ideas for how to achieve results but, from there, it’s over to them to go away and get things done.
“My role is to make sure the team understands what we as a business want to achieve and that they’re 100% bought into that goal, but from a change
management perspective I want them to feel accountable and to engender a sense of responsibility in each of them,” he says.
“And that’s really important as a leader. Not only will you have ideas out on the table that you never would have thought of, but it means you don’t get a team of drones that just wait for instructions. You have ownership and accountability and, ultimately, it means this isn’t my strategic plan, it’s ours and when we get to the end of the year, it’s a true team win.
“In terms of measuring that success, from a strategic focus it’s all about customerfirst and making it as easy and efficient as possible to do business with us,” Richards concludes. “We’ll be able to measure both technical priorities – the ERP upgrade and data – on how well our customer base engages with what we make available to them, that will be a key metric for me. I feel a responsibility for the business’ bottom line, for the revenue we’re bringing in, and from the profits that we’re making. That’s the purest form of value that we can create and a good way to determine how successful we are being and how well we’re enabling our customer base to operate as effectively as possible.”
www.ibstockplc.co.uk
What if we let our cities breathe again? Or created an urban environment that’s less dangerous, jammed, polluted, or killing what little biodiversity it has left? Spoiler alert: we can. At least if we all share the same level of ambition and passion for a greener, better way to move around as Voi.
Voi’s future, you see, is shared, electric and sustainable – and it’s built on town and city dwellers the world-over reclaiming the streets. The micromobility startup from Stockhold, Sweden, was founded in 2018. It provides a fleet of electric scooters to towns and cities that can be
unlocked, ridden and returned through a dedicated iOS and Android app. Once downloaded everyone, everywhere can find a vehicle using real-time GPS tracking, scan a QR code to unlock it and go.
Voi keeps its e-scooters maintained, charged and ready for use; it also continuously relocates them based on user data to make sure they’re in the most appropriate locations. To date, more than seven million riders in more than 100 towns and cities across Europe have taken more than 125 million rides on a Voi e-scooter. Now that’s real change. www.voi.com
“A FUTURE IN WHICH CITY DWELLERS LIVE AND MOVE IN A SAFE AND HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT WITH LESS POLLUTION, LESS NOISE AND LESS STRESS”
partnerships and collaborations with data, technology and software vendors to go to market together resulting in better outcomes and benefits realisations for our clients.
Over your career how has the adoption and use of data and technology in the enterprise evolved and what are some of the key trends driving change at the moment?
Can you tell us more about your role and responsibilities at Grant Thornton and elaborate on some of the work you’re involved in?
I currently lead the data, regtech and digital practice at Grant Thornton, one of the major professional services firms across accounting, corporate finance, tax and consulting. I joined around two and a half years ago to establish our digital and data advisory practice in Grant Thornton’s financial services group. Our Data, RegTech & Digital practice provides advice, implementation, and assurance to chief data officers and chief operating officers across financial services covering banking, insurance, and asset management to solve their most complex issues around data, either from a data management, data strategy, and data engineering/platforms perspective, or across data analytics and data science.
We also work with some of the most exciting and innovative technology and data companies across a broad ecosystem, developing
It’s fascinating how transformative data has been over the last 10 years. In my experience, both working closely with boards and executive committees at my previous banking organisations and in my current role as an advisor, the main trend is the rise of data-driven decision making. It’s now the mechanism whereby executive decisions are made on new products, new businesses, entry to markets, and the growth and evolution of existing products and services.
CEOs and boards are actively pursuing a data-driven approach with a focus on actions in this space rather than just rhetoric.
I have been fortunate to work closely with some inspirational CEO’s and COO’s in my career who have placed data at the heart of their strategy to serve customers, grow market share and improve efficiency.
Data has also become a key aspect of any successful transformation journey. If businesses are undergoing complex transformations, then data points, the use of customer, account, transaction, competitor, and market data, are all central to that change in terms of enabling market entry, new product development, the use of customer insights and much more.
Considering transformation, where is financial services compared to other industries in terms of technology adoption and data/digital capability?
Compared to other industries, financial services is very mature in terms of data. That’s predominantly been driven by regulation, particularly post-financial services crisis, where a focus on greater market security and resilience has seen institutions having to focus on building and developing their data management foundations and data architecture.
The challenging part is that you’ve many legacy organisations with customer data that can be 50 or 60 years old. So, you’ve
legacy platforms and legacy data, and it’s a huge challenge to transform in that environment. People talk a lot about ‘technology debt’, whereas I talk about ‘data debt’. Data debt exists because financial services organisations have data for customers, clients and individuals that can be very much out of date. If you’re a legacy organisation with 30 or 40 years’ worth of legacy data, there’s a lot of data debt, so the big challenge is keeping data both continuously current and curated to result in good quality data.
Legacy technology can generally be improved through significant investment in newer emerging technologies. Data debt, however, is even more difficult to improve – it requires
“A FOCUS ON GREATER MARKET SECURITY AND RESILIENCE HAS SEEN INSTITUTIONS HAVING TO FOCUS ON BUILDING AND DEVELOPING THEIR DATA GOVERNANCE FOUNDATIONS AND DATA ARCHITECTURE”
not only significant investment but in addition the requirement to contact, negotiate and influence customers, counter-parties and suppliers to provide up-to-date curated data. This is rarely simple or easy.
How complex is that environment for data leaders and what are some of those typical challenges they’re facing at the moment?
It’s really complex. I always talk about the offence/defence balance you need to have because, for a new chief data officer or a data leader, the time they have to be successful is relatively short. The main part of the job is really about keeping the show on the road and ensuring there are no issues in terms of the regulatory and controls
parts of the organisation’s data – it’s hugely important. At the same time, you have an organisational environment in which boards and executive committees have absolutely woken up to the fact that you can do so much more with data, therefore they expect more.
As a Chief Data Officer or a data leader, I think you have 18 months to two years to demonstrate value. So, one needs to undertake three things in parallel to ensure the tracks are being built whilst the train continues to move forward:
1. Establishing the data management foundations, improving the critical enablers for long-term success, covering master-data management, data quality, data lineage, architecture etc. through an effective data transformation journey.
2. Develop the top two to three critical use cases necessary for business strategy success for each business area/central functions, which can result in revenue generation, customer acquisition, cross-sell/upsell, new product launch, improving customer service, improving regulatory compliance, risk, finance and treasury focus, etc.
3. Establish an effective operating model for ownership of data and strike the right balance between federating the correct data products and business intelligence with a central data organisation. This needs to be coupled with focus on data literacy across all levels of the organisation .
There’s several challenges for the data leader: what type of reporting line do they have, do they sit at the top table, what’s the culture of the organisation in terms of how data literate it is and how much does it want to do with data, how is the data being federated or centralised within the organisation and how important is that? There are other questions around the investment that’s required for the data transformation journey and necessary to actually improve technology, adoption and usability.
The data operating model, technology and business working together, the use cases generated – all of these are constant challenges for data teams, and it’s difficult to be at the forefront of driving transformation while making sure you’re bringing the organisation along at the same time. You have to be an advocate, but at the same time you need sponsorship from around the executive table.
Time is short, and it’s essential that data leaders drive value from day one and, to do so, they have to find the business use cases, problems and issues to solve, and solve them as quickly as possible. That’s the only way to buy themselves (and more importantly the organisation) time to create a longer sustainable path which results in long-term benefits and success.
If it’s a balancing act between ‘steering the ship’ and adding strategic value, where and how can data be applied to add the most value to financial services organisations? Digitalisation has accelerated in the last two years or so, and it’s therefore essential to
have good quality and the right type of data for digitalisation. One of the simplest ways to think about adding value is to look at the rise of the Amazon-like fulfilment journey. As a business or individual customer, people now want to be served and fulfilled instantaneously, or as close to instantaneously as possible. Take interaction on a banking platform or application as an example. If you want to open a new account or take out a new product on a banking platform or app, how many clicks, or how much data is required to do that, or to request a new transaction? How much follow-up is there via the paper medium and how long does it take customers to fill out information which the financial services firm should already hold about a customer?
“YOU’VE LEGACY PLATFORMS AND LEGACY DATA, AND IT’S A HUGE CHALLENGE TO TRANSFORM IN THAT ENVIRONMENT”
to potential fraud. Therefore there is also a level of ‘education’ required for customers on why an Amazon Plus fulfilment journey is needed for financial services, however, the ‘plus’ needs to be as efficient as possible.
What’s the strategy or approach for legacy banks to compete with those startups and challenger institutions?
There’s a difference here between the older, legacy banks and the newer banks or challenger institutions. If you’re a new bank, your technology stack and good quality data means you’re able to fulfil customer requirements far more rapidly than a legacy organisation, because of the data debt and legacy technology I mentioned earlier. Firms need to ask whether they can fulfil a customer’s need as quickly as possible, in as comprehensive a way as possible, and not ask them for the data that they should already have multiple times. The challenge is how to do that in a safe and secure way because, if Amazon gets something wrong you lose your parcel, but if your bank gets something wrong, you lose your identity details, you lose your credit or debit card, or you’re vulnerable
Challenger banks generally have an advantage in terms of speed, better technology stack, better curated and up to date data and simplicity in their operating model with minimal latency between the customer and fulfilling the customer request. When we talk about challenger institutions, yes, they have a fantastic technology stack, but they also have the luxury of very up to date data that’s been collected in an enhanced way through the applications they’ve created. There are two real strategies for legacy organisations to compete with that. The first is to partner with the challengers, fintechs and technology firms to create better products like the way Barclays is doing with its Rise programme, for example. They can also compete on customer service. If you’re a challenger institution, your demographic consists mostly of customers and clients who are happy to interact with you digitally over an app or online.
Legacy organisations have customers with other needs and requirements and a different type of demographic, including wanting to visit a branch or pick up the telephone; you can’t just suddenly turn off that part of the process. What you have to do is make
your customer journey and the interaction you have with them far more effective. You still see in many of the industry surveys that, no matter how young or old people are, when they have a problem they want to pick up a phone to speak to a person on the other end who understands. Whatever happens, that’s still the key element. I was actually involved in some survey work and we found that even younger people out of university in the last five or six years, choose their banks not just on the application or technology, but also on the basis of the type of interaction they have with the bank.
There is therefore an opportunity for legacy organisations to couple the ‘human touch’ with enhanced digital platforms powered by better quality data. Some of the forward thinking financial services organisations are on this best-of-breed journey, leveraging some exciting technology vendors, and have committed investment on their data transformation to clean up the data they have on customers.
On transformation itself, can you talk us through some of the fundamental steps when it comes to data and outline how an organisation may work through that data transformation programme?
There has to be a compelling reason for that change, whether it’s a new executive team that wants to do something specific with the data, a regulatory imperative, a market need, or something from a digital or innovation standpoint, data is critical and the transformation will only be successful with that reason or business case in place. Once you have that, and before embarking
on the transformation, you need a currentstate assessment in which you assess where the organisation is with regard to data, where the capabilities are, what’s the operating model, team expertise and capacity, and what ‘data’ looks like across the business – that’s crucial. Equally important are the requirements for the change, which will be quite specific around the data transformation: are we transforming to capture market share, or to meet regulatory objectives, or for digitalisation? It’s important that those requirements are articulated clearly to the organisation.
You then have various capabilities through that data transformation that you create.
The first is a data strategy that’s linked to the business and technology strategies, because to be successful the data strategy should go hand-in-hand with both. You must also consider the data operating model and how to create it. By that I mean data ownership: who owns data in the business and how is data produced, sourced, designed, built, operated and serviced? The data operating model between the business, technology, data stewards, data owners, and legal entities – depending on the size of the organisation – is also important.
You would then consider the specific capabilities like data management, data analytics, data platforms, data engineering, data architecture, solution design and so on, and set out which have to be transformed or moved from current state to future state to make things work.
Alongside this, engagement with business stakeholders, your ability to understand the business case and work hand in glove with the business areas being transformed are essential. In my experience, one of the most effective ways I found to do this was to sit down with each of the senior stakeholders across the organisation and set out their key issues with data and the top three or four priorities of what they want to achieve, and collectively set out how you’re going to get there.
From this, the development of the ‘data transformation programme’ seeks to implement:
1. An effective data management foundation – focusing on establishing critical data elements, developing effective data quality rules and measures, establishing data lineage from source to target, setting in place an effective data architecture and good data governance.
2. Solving the critical issues and delivering the top 10 opportunities in the business with the maximum return on investment or which reduces the regulatory or wider risks.
3. Establishing the data operating model coupled with enhancing the data capability within the organsation
When it comes to rolling the strategy out across the organisation, should everyone have a responsibility with data in order to be effective?
Absolutely. Some think data is a very closed shop, but I think the opposite – it’s essential to everybody and everything. It’s the role of everyone in the organisation to be data literate and, as data leaders, we should ensure everyone is conversing with and using data in relation to their roles and operating more effectively.
“IT’S THE ROLE OF EVERYONE IN THE ORGANISATION TO BE DATA LITERATE”
One of the best ways to achieve that is to use real-life case stories. I’ll give you an example. The front-end or customer facing units who actually deal with and input customer data are really important. In a previous organisation, one of the things we wanted to get right is the quality of the data they input when onboarding a customer because it will be in the system for a long time. If you get that wrong or don’t do it properly we’ll have data debt, and all the analytics and data science in the world isn’t going to solve it.
We brought together some of the frontline leaders and teams and used case stories to illustrate how important it was to capture customer data, as well as to show the
implications of getting it right or wrong where a customer had a change in circumstances and information. There have been cases where customer data has been incorrectly updated and letters have been incorrectly sent to deceased customers, for example, which is an awful error for all parties. That’s happened because of two things: the data was either incorrectly inputted, or the marker or flag has not been updated to say that person has passed away and what types of letter should be sent to their next of kin. Having that as a real case study was really important in getting everyone doing the job to understand what we need to do to prevent it and what we can do better with data as an organisation.
“IT’S FASCINATING HOW TRANSFORMATIVE DATA HAS BEEN OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS”
“IT’S FASCINATING
HAS BEEN OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS”
Regulation is critical in the industry, so how complex is it to navigate that regulatory environment from a data perspective?
The role of a chief data officer in financial services is essentially a venn diagram of regulation, data, and digital, with digital being the more front-end facing part of the job. Regulation is key in the industry, and data is really important to regulation. There are multiple regulations in the UK financial services environment and data is at the core of compliance for several reasons. The first is regulatory reporting, which is critical. If, as a financial institution, you get those reports wrong you’re either fined/come under significant regulatory scrutiny, or you go through a major remediation. So the fundamental point of focus is how to get your regulatory reporting right.
The second component then is around putting that data together. You often have significant gaps in data where you need to go back to the customer, because nil return may result in investigations from the regulator. That requires communication with the customer because you’ve not collected the correct data properly the first time round, but the challenge is that there’s no real incentive for them to give you that data for your records or regulatory purposes. It’s quite the manual exercise, and can be both intensive and expensive to do.
regulatory obligations can be aligned from a data perspective.
Establishing an effective way of data stewardship is important from a regulatory perspective. The way you do that is, underneath the data strategy, you have a data policy that sets out why all of this is fundamental, and clearly defines the roles and responsibility of every single individual with regards to data. Underneath that data policy is a set of data standards that say if you are the owner of data on X, this is what you have to do, this is what you’re responsible for, these are the controls that are put in place to ensure this is all done correctly.
There’s been severe disruption in the market for the last few years. Looking beyond that, what are the key trends that should be on leaders’ radars?
For data leaders and the financial services industry, the big focus we’re seeing right now in terms of where data is fundamental is around ESG and sustainability. Every firm has to be sustainable and there are various metrics in terms of sustainability, but organisations are not going to be sustainable without being ESG compliant and that isn’t possible without ESG data.
The most effective and efficient way to mitigate these challenges is to have an effective regulatory data operating model and regulatory data model that ensures
I’ve written several articles on this and we’ve worked with a number of clients on how to build an ESG data framework and ensure you’re able to respond to sustainability requirements, because it’s very complex. That ESG data framework covers having an ESG data strategy similar to your data
strategy, creating the ESG data taxonomy, developing the correct ESG data pipelines, looking at ESG data reporting, creating ESG data analytics and platforms, and adopting a variety of components that put data at the heart of sustainability. It’s the only way a firm is going to be successful regarding ESG, and that’s true whether you’re in the financial services industry or not.
Another trend is data tooling becoming much more useful and indeed necessary in the data space. What I mean by that is, tooling required for master-data management such as establishing an effective data catalogue, data quality tooling to measure quality of data, tooling to map data lineage from source to target and data privacy tooling to ensure privacy and data protection principles are maintained. These types of
tool sets are now coming to the forefront to help organisations have better access and control of their data so that business intelligence, analytics and data science techniques can truly benefit from curated, accurate and important data.
Democratisation is another interesting subject. A lot of chief data officers are very focused on centralisation. I have a slightly different view: centralise the things which are critical for the organisation where the knowledge and expertise sits, and federate as much as you can out to the teams in the businesses which are closest to the customer. What do I mean by that? I always come back to use cases. So, the use cases that are specific to your business, whether it’s a personal customer or a high-net-worth or business customer, you want to create
“PEOPLE TALK A LOT ABOUT ‘TECHNOLOGY DEBT’, WHEREAS I TALK ABOUT ‘DATA DEBT’”
“ORGANISATIONS ARE NOT TO BE SUSTAINABLE WITHOUT ESG COMPLIANT THAT ISN’T WITHOUT
use cases that are close to the clients and the business teams that understand their clients and customers.
In terms of analytics and data science, you want to be able to create democratisation for commodity use cases. For the ones that front office teams can use, you absolutely democratise and you put that closest to the business users to be able to use with their clients and customers. I would say the commodity use case, 80% of what you have you could democratise and federate out, and you need to train and coach those closest to the clients to derive the benefit from this democratisation .
The other 20% of the use cases are going to be complex use cases, which are predominantly either really new, regulatory driven or need specific expertise in advanced data
science or advanced analytics. You keep those at the centre to ensure you have the right people working on them until they reach a state of maturity where they can be democratised; then you bring in new complex use cases. You need to federate the right use cases at the right time to the business across the organisation and let people use the data.
Data shouldn’t be the purview of only data practitioners, but rather, every single employee in the organisation.
A vastly experienced data leader and managing director, Niresh Rajah has experience across areas including chief data officer, board advisor, change and transformation, regulatory change, and automation and innovation. He is currently the head of the Data & Digital practice at Grant Thornton, where he is responsible for establishing and leading its data, fintech, regtech and digital advisory work. Prior to this he held senior data roles at Barclays UK and Lloyds Banking Group, and consulting roles covering transformation, data and strategy at Deloitte and EY.
“ORGANISATIONS NOT GOING SUSTAINABLE WITHOUT BEING COMPLIANT AND ISN’T POSSIBLE WITHOUT ESG DATA”
Bees pollinate around 75% of all fruit, vegetables, seeds and nuts on the planet. And yet, it’s estimated that we lose about 35% of the bee colonies that exist every year. Colony collapse disorder, where worker bees abandon their hive and queen, is a very real threat driven by pesticides, loss of habitat, climate change, poor nutrition and more.
What bees need is an optimal environment – a tech-heavy, data driven place to live and work, if you will. Enter Saar Safra and Beewise, for which bees come first, customers second. The business, which Safra founded in 2018 aims to stop and reverse bee collapse caused by climate
change through the use of precision robotics, AI, ML and IoT. BeeHome, a safe, natural and productive environment that allows beens a healthier and more natural way of living is the solution.
BeeHome houses 24 colonies, and is solar powered and entirely self contained. It autonomously takes care of bees in real time, provides beekeepers with up-to-date data on activity, remotely manages hives, monitors pests and other threats, and has in-built climate and humidity control. Little wonder Safra calls it a five-star hotel for bees…”
www.beewise.ag
“ It’s a five-star hotel for bees”
SAAR SAFRA, CEO & FOUNDER, BEEWISE
KARI JONES DISCUSSES
LEADERSHIP, THE IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE IN SUCCESS, AND HOW DATA AND ANALYTICS ARE DRIVING A SEAMLESS END-TO-END EXPERIENCE AT WOOLWORTHS GROUP
High performance sport [playing and coaching at international level], a dedication to personal improvement and leadership coaching, an educational environment based around service not self and paying forward for the sake of others, an early stint in computer club, more than a decade of work at iconic organisations. And Star Trek on VHS? They say the only source of knowledge is experience and, when it comes to Kari Jones’ impressive career, leadership evolution, and commitment to improving the performance of New Zealand’s organisations through the adoption of innovative technologies, advanced analytics and AI, you’d better believe it.
Most leaders can cite one or two, perhaps more if you’re lucky, key moments or experiences that have shaped their approach to work. But Jones is a different breed. She is, of course, an exceptional technology leader with a track record of driving successful change and transformation at some of the most respected businesses in New Zealand and an innate understanding of how and where to apply innovative technologies to add the most strategic value, how to build and lead exceptional teams, and a passion for delivering results with purpose – you can see all that in her latest role at grocery retailer Countdown supermarkets, part of Woolworths Group.
But she’s also a refreshingly honest leader, unafraid to discuss how a moment of ‘crisis’ [in her own words] led her to take stock and
evolve her approach to her work and her people, aware of how and where to apply her skills to the benefit of her team and the wider organisation, and passionate about serving those under her. Or, as she modestly terms it: ‘a snowplough, impediment remover, advocate and champion’. And it’s the journey that shaped all this.
“It’s one of those memories that’s really imprinted, right down to being able to clearly visualise the room I was in,” says Jones, reflecting on a key moment in the evolution of her leadership style. At national airline Air New Zealand, Jones was working as acting GM of the Data & Analytics team when she was called into a meeting with new boss Lionel Lopez – who she today credits as influencing her approach to driving strategic value from analytics technologies like AI.
For the eight months or so spent in the role, Jones had given her all: working to prove herself, demonstrating both her own and her team’s competence, pushing hard for results while championing the value of AI and technology to the organisation – on paper, the consummate leader. She recalls of the meeting: “In my attempt to give all to the job and drive value, something that in my time playing international Lacrosse would have won me a high five, I’d come across as too assertive, aggressive and bruising to deal with for my colleagues. It was the first time I’d ever received a ‘did not exceed expectations’ performance review, despite my exceptional delivery and results. That was it, the lightbulb moment for me and a test of what I wanted to do next.”
What Jones did next was work closely with her own personal leadership coach, Aenslee Tanner, carrying out personality and leadership assessments including Leadership Circle and Hogan’s Dark Side assessments to understand strengths, weaknesses, derailers, how others experienced her, and how to translate those characteristics that were ‘working against her’ into positive, affirming leadership traits.
“I made the decision to get in the game,” she says. “From my perspective, to be a good leader it’s really important to understand all that and realise how it can contribute to the culture you’re working in. It made a huge difference. It’s about understanding the value of leading from the back of the bus, not the front, pushing each other, getting super excited about other people doing well
because it’s a shared value you’re bringing, and understanding how I can use my energy [in the 99th centile on the Hogan’s Dark Side assessment chart, or ‘off the chart’ according to Jones] in the right way so my passion is a positive. It’s those little things, those moments that really make a big difference when it comes to leadership.”
And it worked. Six months after receiving that feedback Jones was headhunted for the post of General Manager of Analytics at the national logistics company, NZ Post. Two years later she was approached for the biggest role of her career to date as General Manager - Analytics & Insights at leading supermarket and grocery enterprise Countdown, part of the Woolworths Group. In addition, Jones has group accountabilities including leading Woolworths’ data academy, customer and market insights, and sustainability analytics for the group.
Jones joined the business in late 2020, entering the kind of environment that most data leaders covet. “I’ve never been in an organisation that’s so hungry and thirsty for data, and it’s super exciting,” she explains.
“At the same time, at the point I came on board, it was also one of the more chaotic data environments I’d been in: things were not working in the most efficient way, there wasn’t always the rigour around documentation you might expect, and there was a lot of pressure and expectation on the data team.
“It didn’t help that I’d started at Christmas – the busiest trading period for the sector,” says Jones. “I stayed on call, not necessarily to be able to get stuck in to helping, but to monitor, be available to speak with stakeholders, and understand the approach to critical business operations and reporting. I remember feeling how stressful it was. I also remember thinking that if I was finding it that stressful, how would the team be feeling in the thick of it, under pressure? My thought process was simple: ‘never again. How can we be better, raise the bar and create a data environment that’s in a better place than when we found it?’. It was an opportunity to bring change by focusing on the basics, and looking to bring in the structure, discipline and understanding that would be critical.”
Data, analytics and other digital technologies are crucial to Countdown, as they are to every retailer today. The pace of technology change has increased exponentially over recent years, including the rise of omnichannel
“ HOW CAN WE BE BETTER, RAISE THE BAR AND CREATE A DATA ENVIRONMENT THAT’S IN A BETTER PLACE THAN WHEN WE FOUND IT?”
“HOW
integration and retailers using technology to create seamless shopping experiences across all channels, greater personalisation through the adoption of AI and ML, mobile commerce as a new way to shop, and the use of robotics, automation and IoT for applications from streamlining operations and improving efficiency, through to delivering more effective supply chain and inventory management operations.
For retailers, this transformation means managing and delivering on increased customer expectations, a greater desire on the part of customers for fast, seamless and reliable shopping experiences and, for grocery retailers, the expectation to deliver on time, in full and in specification every time. Woolworths advocates innovative digital
technology, believing many of its biggest challenges will be solved with various types of AI, data and analytics . Within this context, the mission of Jones and her team is to reimagine retail with AI, creating an intelligent, digital and data-savvy grocery retailer enabled through smart analytics end-to-end, embedded right across the business. This will allow it to continue to personalise customer journeys, respond quickly in a rapidly changing environment, and provide value for money for both customers and suppliers.
The work and transformation that Jones has led over the last two years has centred around meeting this mission. In her first 90 days in the business, she set about establishing the basics: building credibility and trust quickly to pave the way for the significant
change programme that was necessary, understanding the current remit for her team and the size of the portfolio it managed, assessing stakeholder feedback, leadership team and maturity, resetting an agile operating model and focusing on recruiting the right people to take the team and the business forward, and driving a change plan that was centred around ‘the who first, then the what’. It was, she concedes, a transformation of people, team and culture as much as it was technology, making leadership and the ability to instil discipline and a sense of steadiness essential.
“The first 12 months was me in the weeds with the team, unpicking, decommissioning, rebuilding and stabilising,” Jones says. “In terms of data, it was extreme. There’s an appetite in the business that’s hard to satiate, which isn’t always healthy, and so many metrics that it can become overwhelming and difficult to know what to focus on and when. In addition, I found a fairly significant tech debt due to lack of architectural oversights and guidance, and a limited structure when it came to delivery and prioritisation
processes. To mitigate that, we’re trying to be more lean with our focus: what’s just enough, or the thing we can do with the smallest amount of data and in the smallest amount of time to prove or disprove a hypothesis because, otherwise, there’s such a strain on the analytics team.
“As the leader, my role is to run alongside them, to be a confidence builder and encourage as well as driving continuous improvement,” she continues. “It’s so important, particularly in terms of making changes like this and moving forwards, that your team is seen as value driving. That’s my purpose. It’s not about sitting there working out what’s the right configuration of some technology, or deep-diving into a certain aspect of our Google Cloud platform. Rather, it’s about understanding the right problems to solve, what’s keeping stakeholders up at night, the long-term direction of the business and current performance in relation to that. I’m the impediment or blocker remover; I always have to focus on the strategic context for a particular piece of work, how we prioritise the tasks in front of us, and the lens we put on it.”
In this instance, Jones set about restructuring her team, including new hires to bring in the necessary senior experience, skills and attitudes, to mirror the broader missions and objectives of the organisation while focusing on the number one priority: delivering value for the business in the immediate term –a challenging balance, she says, when also trying to look at future technology adoption and innovation in line with market evolution.
“It’s the balance we have to strike as technology leaders,” she notes. “You don’t get to talk about the future, if the nuts and bolts of the operation aren’t running. Making sure the technology, the analytics, operational functions, reporting – whatever you’re responsible for – is delivering for the business and its customers is the number one priority. Only then, once you’ve nailed that, can you consider the strategic context of where the business is going, its capabilities and the technologies or analytics solutions that will drive value in the longer term.
“As an analytics leader, there’s always a bit of a catch-22,” Jones states. “You know there’s massive opportunity around ML, AI, and intelligent process automation but you also have to meet the organisation where it’s at. Any change you’re bringing has to be about its value to the organisation. As an example for us, having all the reporting and metrics
YOU DON’T GET TO TALK ABOUT THE FUTURE, IF THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF THE OPERATION AREN’T RUNNING”
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the business needs at the start of a week and ensuring the data’s there to enable effective discussion and planning is of great value in the short term. Part of our goal with all the change I’ve been bringing to the team is removing toil, simplification and making things work right so we can move up the value chain. It’s there that you earn your ticket to the game, your right to have the right conversations with key stakeholders and start thinking about the forward-looking innovations you want to bring in.”
To deliver that value, Jones and team created ‘10 Enduring Themes’: data confident culture; develop team and pathways; one team focused on customer; embed the metrics that matter; drive business impact and value; focus on strategic outcomes; deliver trusted data in one place; build advanced
capabilities; and reduce toil and tech debt. These align with a broader five-year analytics ambition of enabling an intelligent, data smart grocery retail business through the pervasive use of data and the embedding of smart analytics end-to-end.
“Everything, all our data, is now in the cloud,” says Jones, referencing some of the technology changes already implemented. “That’s come with challenges, but also opportunities in that we can now operate better, be more secure, have our data better governed and more accessible. We’ve done a lot of work around adopting software development practices, processes and technology and our sophistication in the analytics space is increasing in terms of leveraging patterns like infrastructure as code, SRE-type thinking, using continuous integration and deployment techniques; all of that software engineering
techniques we’re applying to our data engineering. We have been fortunate to have a strong, trusted, collaborative partnership with Google specialists Kansa. Embedded in our team, they have accelerated our adoption of GCP, enabled us to harden our platforms, adopt better cloud engineering practices and uplift the skills of our inhouse team in the process.”
Other recent areas of focus for data and analytics in the business include using advanced analytics to reduce food waste and minimise stock loss, creating a more nimble supply chain, improved master data to support the automation of distribution centres, enrichment of product master data using AI, loyalty membership programme development and more, all with the goal of enabling the best customer experience.
AI, says Jones, offers unlimited possibilities when it comes to evolving the organisation’s proposition and refining the customer experience further. But, for a business that places a premium on customer trust and brand loyalty, AI ethics and the responsible use of data are unique differentiators. She explains: “Although our goalposts around what AI is today are shifting, and we’re looking at advancements in everything from facial recognition, biometrics and thumbprint scanning to Amazon Fresh-like services where you can ‘just walk out’ with your shopping so long as you have your phone, bluetooth and banking card connected, there’s a host of ethical questions and potential barriers for customers we have to navigate.
“We’re seeing a definite shift around privacy,” Jones continues. “There’s a trade-off for many of these services between convenience and providing personal data like facial scans or thumbprints. To make matters more challenging, conflict and aggression is on the rise in our stores and these technologies could help us address it, protecting our store team and our customers. But there is a big trade-off. One area we have to continue to monitor is customers’ perceptions of how they want us to use their data. An example would be in our loyalty
programmes where we’re able to target specific offers and relevant products to customers using a combination of algorithms and shopping behavioural data. There’s a big ethical component. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. We want customers to be engaged, but we also want to give them the power of choice about how they want us to use their data, and so it’s critical to make sure you keep a balanced scorecard around customer experience and satisfaction, and also the ethical use of their data and privacy.”
Technology aside, such a significant change in a business relies as much on culture and individual performance as it does on any given innovation or application. Jones has always had an affinity for high performing teams and a passion for building environments that bring out the very best in people while encouraging courageous, diverse thinking and personal empowerment. It is, she says, a bi-product of her early sporting career, in which she played and coached Lacrosse at international level – her accolades include representing Wales at the World Cup and winning a Gold Medal at the European Championships, coaching the Welsh and German U19 sides to junior World Cups, and acting as Head Coach for New Zealand’s national team for two World Cup campaigns.
“I’d point out, I’m leading an analytics team, not the All Blacks,” she jokes. “I’m less competitive about myself now and more interested in being a part of a winning, high performing team. I believe that it’s important to foster deep respect for the skills that each team member brings to the table and I see real strength in diversity of thought. My job as the leader is to enable the team to go faster, not to come up with the next big idea; it’s about creating an environment that fosters analytics professionals to do their best work.”
A key part of this is ongoing training, development and opportunities for the team to learn something new or apply their skills to a different knowledge domain. To this end, Jones has organised several learning
events, various hackathons centred around bringing people from disparate parts of the business together to solve business problems with AI, and she also heads up the Woolworths data academy. The latter, she says, will play a role in bringing analytics and the business closer together and help to democratise key data skills across the organisation, growing data confidence and fluency skills to encourage people at all levels of the business to engage with the information available to them.
Jones is also a champion for diversity, in particular encouraging and supporting the representation of women in the AI industry and acting as a member of the Gender Equality Network for Woolworths Group. Her own leadership team based in New Zealand comprises 12 staff, 10 of whom are women
– she actively recruited many of these team members from her own business network. In addition, the wider data science team at the organisation, currently around 100 strong, has a close to 50/50 gender split.
The nature of the industry, and the pace of change in both consumer demand and technology innovation means there is little time for Jones and team to rest – in reality, we sense, just as she’d like it. In terms of future strategy delivery and areas of focus, most of the enduring themes set out in the early stages remain, she says. In particular, this includes ongoing attraction and retention of talent, delivering ‘bread and butter analytics’ to ensure the ticket to the game for future innovation, scaling and industrialisation of foundational and advance capabilities and tools, embedding analytics capabilities that
will enable operational, real-time decisioning and integration into decision making processes, and delivering ‘self-service utopia’.
“We have the opportunity to become a true data-smart grocery retailer,” says Jones. “The personalised experience is incredibly important, and often what everyone focuses on: seamless shopping, the ability to research on your phone, do wayfinding, select products and navigate a store based on your personal preferences – it’s all an amazing opportunity. But, in many ways, I see it as the tip of the iceberg for us. The data opportunity is also everything that sits underneath in the belly of the operation, getting products from farm to fork. Advanced analytics is enabling improved replenishment, staff rostering, predicting customer visits as well as what and how many items they’ll likely purchase, making our fulfilment centres more efficient, or helping us to reduce waste and be more sustainable.
“We can use different types of analytics to constantly improve our operation and respond right in the moment,” she adds.
“Customer experience is the flashy bit that everyone sees and feels. But we can make a real difference in ensuring the whole organisation is efficient from end-to-end, taking a bit of the stress out of the job and delivering for everyone who visits our stores; there’s so much gold in there. And that’s the beauty of working in this industry. It’s both exciting and engaging working in an environment where you’re at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds coming together.”
www.woolworthsgroup.com.au
“ I BELIEVE THAT IT’S IMPORTANT TO FOSTER DEEP RESPECT FOR THE SKILLS THAT EACH TEAM MEMBER BRINGS TO THE TABLE AND I SEE REAL STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT”
“OUR FOCUS FROM THE OUTSET HAS BEEN OUR APPLICATION OF AI-POWERED AUTOMATION TO ECONOMICALLY AND SUSTAINABLY IMPROVE OUR GLOBAL RECYCLING SYSTEM”
Just because something is recyclable doesn’t mean it’s recycled. AMP Robotics is changing that. And helping the environment while it’s at it. The Coloradobased tech startup, founded by Matanya Horowitz, is reimagining and modernising the world’s recycling infrastructure through the application of AI, robotics and data capable of economically recovering raw materials for the global supply chain.
Its AI technology, known as AMP Neuron, uses computer vision to recognise patterns of specific recyclable materials in a complex waste stream with rates of speed and precision previously unknown. Nueron distinguishes different plastics, papers, metals and more and defines what needs sorting during different process stages. It then guides a robot to sort and recover the specific material to recycle, and tells it which contaminants to remove.
To date the business has helped businesses, governments and NGOs achieve higher recycling rates and supply greater volumes of post-consumer recycled content, removing materials from landfil and ensuring greater reuse.
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Ljubljana is undoubtedly an eco-conscious city. The centre is pedestrianised and cycle friendly, with residents and tourists taking advantage of its free bike-share scheme on more than 200 kilometres of quiet cycle paths. It has glorious green spaces, encourages its hotels and restaurants to source locally, and has the highest rate of household waste separation in the EU. Its sustainable development strategy has won award upon award and it regularly tops independent polls as the most sustainable city in Slovenia, Europe and the whole world. So, with all these green credentials in place, just one question remains –is Ljubljana a fun place to visit?
The University of Ljubljana believes in bringing its students’ ideas to life and has created the internationally recognised Ljubljana University Incubator (LUI) to support startups. It offers business premises, mentoring, access to financial resources and currently sponsors 18 companies and six entrepreneurial groups in the city.
Designed by architects Kragelj, MP Hub. is a relaxed coworking space that prides itself on its community atmosphere.
The modern and well equipped offices are in a quiet neighbourhood with easy access to amenities and green spaces.
Established in 1995, Technology Park Ljubljana (TP LJ) is an innovation hub that provides a supportive business environment for the development of high-tech entrepreneurship. With the mission ‘building innovation bridges’, it brings together over 300 companies and over 1,400 employees.
MP HUB.Would you like to spend the night behind bars? That’s the proposition from hostel Celica. Located in a building that served as a military prison for over 100 years, it has now been transformed by artists into a modern and lively destination where paintings adorn the ‘cell walls’.
The Grand Hotel Union guarantees a night of lavish luxury. The Art Nouveau building with iron roof structure designed by Josip Vancaš was built in
1903 and is considered a technological achievement in itself. It is now the most prestigious hotel in Ljubljana and a popular celebrity hangout.
Sometimes a look beyond the façade reveals a hidden gem. Set in the heart of the cobbled old town on the banks of the river, Vander Urbani Resort ’s four old town houses have been converted to a stylish hotel with meeting rooms for business and a rooftop infinity pool for pleasure. Wake up in Vanderland.
GRAND HOTEL UNION
CELICA
Translated as ‘the open kitchen’, Odprta Kuhna is a colourful food market held every Friday in Pogacarjev square. Established in 2013, it’s a foodie’s paradise that showcases authentic dishes from all over the country.
Billed as ‘high cuisine above the city’ Restavracija Strelec is positioned in the tower of Ljubljana Castle and boasts incredible panoramic views of the city. Chef Igor Jagodic serves up a range of quality seasonal and micro-seasonal dishes using locally sourced ingredients.
Located in the historic part of the city, next to a row of old chestnut trees, Restavracija Manna ’s focus is on organic healthy food but in contrast has a list that offers 300 wines and a range of more than 20 different cigars.
ODPRTA KUHNA
MANNA
Explore the city with a circular ride on the environmentally friendly Urban Electric Train that navigates the city streets connecting Ljubljana Castle, Botanical Gardens and the Museum of Modern Art, as well as many other popular tourist attractions.
Albert Einstein stated ‘reality is merely an illusion’ and a visit to House of Illusions on Congress Square certainly provides a welcome break from reality.
Its mind-bending exhibits include a gravity defying upside-down room and vertigo-inducing vortex tunnel. And when that all gets too much, you can relax with meditation on a bed of nails!
The abandoned army barracks of Metelkova Mesto was saved from destruction in the 90’s by underground artists and reimagined as an alternative cultural centre that is now one of the most recognisable attractions in the city.
8-9 MAR 2023
ExCeL, London
Immerse yourself in the engine room of digital infrastructure at the world’s largest gathering of data centre specialists, innovators and business leaders.
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8-9 MARCH 2023
ExCeL, London
Bringing together data and AI innovators, technologists, and business leaders, to help make data-driven decisions that intelligently shape their business.
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21-23 MARCH 2023
Europa-Park, Rust, Germany
CloudFest is the leading internet infrastructure event in the world, connecting the global cloud computing industry.
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17-18 MAY 2023
Santa Clara Convention Center, USA
For the ambitious enterprise technology professional seeking to explore the latest innovations, implementations and strategies to drive businesses forward. www.ai-expo.net/northamerica
6-8 JUNE 2023
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Fintech’s boldest and brightest voices delve into the challenges of right now and collaboratively shape what comes next for the money ecosystem. europe.money2020.com
14-17 JUNE 2023
Paris, France
VivaTech accelerates innovation by connecting startups, tech leaders, major corporations and investors responding to our world’s biggest challenges.
vivatechnology.com
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