Espen Langbråten is leading Europris' bet on digital platform, data warehouse, and analytics.

We had a great talk about everything data, but at the core we discussed three questions: 

1. How do you build your team?
2. How to recruit and build competencies in an ever-changing environment whilst keeping an eye on cost?
3. What resources do you need in house? What can you outsource to a consultancy?

Here are my key takeaways:

• It is not only hard to find competency in the marked and recruit, but also to retain valuable knowledge in the company,
• Give your employees the responsibilities they want and need to thrive on the job,
• Mentor-programs give the new employees a change to get integrated fast and at the same time the existing employees a boost of their sense of value and the chance to share their knowledge
• It is important to recruit basic technical skills and a hunger for learning, business acumen and domain knowledge is something you learn on the job
• You need to have core-competencies in house and work in close relation with your consultants to transfer knowledge
• The conceptual and even logical architecture needs to be owned in house
• Most problems the business faces are process based. Tech can aid to solve these, but it is seldom a tech problem by definition