Don't Panic! It's Just Data

The data-driven revolution has enabled brands to achieve true customer centricity — but only if they have the right data analysis and experience orchestration capabilities.

Whether creating a single customer view, generating predictive insights, or orchestrating seamless omnichannel experiences, organisations must work to make sure their customer data is accurate, accessible, and actionable.

The data-driven revolution is transforming the customer experience

Hosting this episode of the EM360 Podcast is Susan Walsh, Founder, and MD of The Classification Guru. Joining her is the Head of Martech Strategy at ActionIQ, James Meyers, who will be sharing his insight on the data-driven revolution and its growing impact on the customer journey and customer experience (CX) as a whole.

With an ever-growing number of competitors entering the market, it's vital for businesses to grow and retain their customer relationships by ensuring they have a polished, data-driven CX strategy. Tune in to learn about:

Why siloed data continues to be one of the biggest pain points, for organisations looking to create seamless CX

The types of valuable insights marketers can obtain if their company's data is de-siloed

Use cases of customer data platforms and how they're helping to power CX strategies today

Decisions organisations face when choosing between building a CPD in-house or licensing from a vendor

Advanced analytics is the next step for organisations that want to be at the cutting edge of data analysis. For decades, organisations have been generating reports, primarily documenting 'What happened?' or 'What is happening?'. Essentially, it was once solely about descriptive analytics reporting, until some decided to take it to the next level with diagnostic analytics - i.e. looking at why things happen. Fast forward to more recent years and the evolution of technologies like data lake and warehouse have led to explosive growth in data volume, velocity, and variety and increased the demand for organisations to garner greater insights from data. This is how advanced analytics was born.

Advanced analytics: the next stage in data evolution

On this podcast, Susan Walsh, Founder and MD of The Classification Guru, joins Jack Lambert, Technical Partnerships Manager at Jaguar TCS Racing. and Mark Whalley, Manager at Vertica. The trio of data experts shed light on the use cases of advanced analytics through the lens of Vertica's technology partnership with Jaguar TCS Racing. From looking at the current state of the industry to analysing the technical implementation of software into an organisation, you can expect a deep dive into the advanced analytics methods and tools driving the future of data.

Discover:

How Vertica is using advanced analytics to help businesses accelerate their data analysis

The birth, journey, and growth of the technology partnership between Vertica and Jaguar TCS Racing

Top tips on how to implement advanced analytics

Digital disruption and transformation are unavoidable in today's digital world. Fueled by the ever-growing and emerging list of next-generation digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and data analytics, organisations have no choice but to accept these innovations and utilise them within their operations and ecosystems if they want to remain competitive and succeed. However, as is commonly spoken about in the IT sector, adopting and implementing new technologies is not an 'easy as pie' or smooth sailing process.

The Benefits of Time-Series Databases and Opening Up Businesses Digitally

The challenges of digital disruption and transformation form the basis of this podcast. Scott Taylor, Principal Consultant at MetaMeta Consulting, speaks with Christian Lutz, Founder, President at Crate.io, and Bernhard Zimmermann, Director Business Development and Partner at Zühlke, to explore the solution: time-series databases. Christian and Bernhard begin by drawing on Crate.io and Zühlke's partnership as a case study example, highlighting the idea of data as the new currency from a digital ecosystem perspective. In particular, Christian lends his expertise on data collection and how we should be using it, sharing the pros and cons he sees from ML and AI models. Following this, the pair detail the business benefits of time-series databases and opening up businesses digitally from a customer portal perspective and a data collection strategy; Bernhard notably explains the data culture challenges for organisations and how to implement a strong data strategy. Final thoughts end on the future of data sharing and what needs to be considered from a security element.

Business leaders are in the midst of the biggest digital transformation revolution that the enterprise has ever seen. As the pandemic continues to accelerate the adoption of digital products and services, corporate culture, operations, technologies, stakeholder relationships/partnerships, and customer management/experience continues to evolve. Data transformation has made the most significant impact. No longer just an add-on, data and analytics are driving organisations on a daily basis, informing key decisions in real-time.

In this podcast, Scott Taylor, Principal Consultant at MetaMeta Consulting, sits down with Andy Isenman, Head of Technology: Cloud and Data at Heathrow, Mark Smith, General Manager of Microsoft Solutions, and Nick Baladi, Account Director at Adatis, to talk about utilising the analytics of big data to transform your business. The conversation specifically focuses on the optimisation of data to aid businesses in a post-pandemic economy, in which parallels are drawn to how Adatis assisted Heathrow to be a more responsive organisation by using Microsoft cloud solutions. The cohort of leading data experts discuss the impact of COVID-19 on data and cultural transformation, the importance of being data-driven, and how the multi-stakeholder partnership has successfully aided and benefited Heathrow's data journey and initiatives. Andy, Mark, and Nick also share some words of wisdom for organisations who are looking to begin their data journey and explore where they see data transformation heading in the future.

Cloud storage and data democratization are two strategic technology trends that have revolutionised the enterprise. Whilst the first enables organisations to store data and run workloads off-site, the latter expedites decision making by making data accessible to an entire team. However, in line with the ever-evolving tech landscape, both cloud storage and data democratization must move and evolve with technological changes, updates, and transformations.

What are data lakes doing to improve data quality?

Joining us to discuss unlocking the future of cloud storage and data democratization and answer 'What are data lakes doing to improve data quality?' is Thomas Hazel, Founder, CTO and Chief Scientist at ChaosSearch. Thomas begins by outlining the evolution and current state of cloud storage and data lakes, before looking at the challenges and opportunities each one benefits businesses. He also explores the philosophy that organisations must put up complicated gates to scale and access data, including top tips on how to avoid this damaging mindset. Final thoughts focus on the benefits of Object Storage from a standpoint of scalability, security, and ROI.

Analytical data is the beating heart of enterprise. It's the critical information we collect to improve customer relations, make better business decisions, and find growth opportunities. But to get it business-ready requires careful consideration and preparation for the right analytics solution.

Where There's Data, There's Growth and Profitability

In this podcast, Susan Walsh, Founder and MD of The Classification Guru, walks through the practice of transforming business data through analytics with Glen Rabie, CEO at Yellowfin, and Dan Schafer, Senior Database Administrator at Rocknel.

Learn from the experts how to simplify complex data and transform spreadsheet data for better business use, ways to approach different data sets more effectively, and how to tackle user-adoption problems head-on.

Key Learnings:

What organisations should pay most attention to when selecting a data analytics tool, especially from an implementation perspective

The importance of supporting an organisation after an analysis tool has been implemented

Want to find out more about Yellowfin's approach to transforming business through data? Click here!

Instant analytics and reporting culminate in the new open-source, column-oriented DBMS, ClickHouse. The system has grown to be one of the most popular database projects, with thousands of users generating analytical reports via real-time SQL queries since it publicly launched in 2016 following an 8 year internal testing period with Yandex. When faced with trillions of rows of data and the need to filter, explore, and interact with it, ClickHouse is the solution for businesses.

ClickHouse is the Future of Analytics and Reporting

In this podcast, Scott Taylor, Principal Consultant at MetaMeta Consulting, is joined by Robert Hodges, CEO at Altinity, to discuss ClickHouse, the first open-source, SQL data warehouse that competes with the major DBMS players. Over the course of the conversation, they look at:

The history and background of ClickHouse

Benefits of open source from a data perspective

Management perspectives of the data journey

Applying ClickHouse across small to large organisations

Application Programming Interface, or API, was initially built to tackle the historic IT issue of system integrations. The software enables two applications and their individual data siloes to communicate with ease, leaving companies to focus on matters that do not allow for automation. However, this isn't the only tech problem that API, when managed correctly, can be used to solve.

Martin Buhr, CEO and Founder of Tyk is joining Scott Taylor, Principal Consultant at MetaMeta Consulting, to explore how API management can drive digital transformation and continuity. Martin lends his expertise on making data 'talk' and delves into how GraphQL and Tyk's Universal Data Graph is changing the game. He also discusses the differences and benefits of best-in-class solutions versus home-grown solutions, before explaining the importance of digital transformation projects through use cases and customer stories.

Data sharing plays a vital role in ensuring organisations can generate insights, manage risk, and understand their customers. It can, however, be a highly complex and labour-intensive endeavour, with differing regulations across jurisdictions around how financial organisations review, approve and track data sharing activities.

In this podcast, Susan Walsh, Founder and MD of The Classification Guru, speaks with Kate Platonova, Group CDO at HSBC, and Lorraine Waters, CDO at Solidatus, about how HSBC is modernising data sharing with their DataVisa initiative. Kate and Lorraine explore the history of data sharing and how HSBC and Solidatus are revolutionising the industry from a digital transformation, ROI, and automation perspective. The two also lend their expert advice on what organisations need to consider when allowing legal experts access to information in a single repository.

Data powers the cogs of every business today and nearly every company wants to transform through the help of it. In a nutshell, data has become a true 'asset' to the modern enterprise, especially in respect of how data analysis can be used to inform and drive business decisions.

How Data Analysis Can Inform Business Decisions

Joining Scott Taylor, Principal Consultant at MetaMeta Consulting, to unpick and analyse this further is Philip Dutton, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Solidatus, and Wade Munsie, Global Chief Data Officer at GSK Consumer Healthcare. Philip and Wade share their thoughts on the realism of what goes into making data an asset, data-led decision-making, and the purpose of the CDO. The pair answer key business questions such as: how should companies begin their data transformation journeys and manage their assets effectively? How should a business approach the purpose of the CDO from an investment and governance standpoint? And, how should we deal with data quality? Additional topics of discussion include data ecosystem sustainability and setting up a CDO from scratch.