Driven by Data: The Podcast

In Episode 28 of Season 3, of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom joined by Jim Sterne, Board Chair Emeritus, Digital Analytics Association and Founder of Marketing Analytics Summit, where they discuss the rise of Generative AI and how organisations can leverage for success, which includes;

• How every person can have their own AI agent acting on their behalf
• How Generative AI has been 70 years in the making
• Why Generative AI will be as big as the birth of computers, the internet and the smart phone
• Why longtail content is now back
• Why Generative AI will completely change the world of SEO
• Why domain knowledge and branding will become the biggest commodity to success  
• How Generative AI will completely change your business and marketing strategy
• Why AI won’t take your job
• Why you should focus on training your entire organization to use the tool, and not focus on the people who can help you build them
• How companies will make Generative Ai a question machine, not an answer machine
• How Generative AI will change the role of Data & Analytics teams
• Why the strength of your data is now genuinely what gives you competitive advantage
• How Generative AI will drive more focus to data stewardship, governance, management, etc
• Why companies that offer data aggregation will see an increase in valuation
• Why everyone needs to learn how to use Generative AI
• Why Generative Ai is different than the Big Data and Data Science hypes of the past
• What Generative AI does to the role of Data Democratization and Data Literacy
• Why data literacy now becomes “business speak literacy”  
• Why the data dictionary becomes incredibly important
• Why the biggest skill now becomes; how to ask a great questions
• Knowing what to questions to ask or not ask
• Why the winners will be who can teach Generative AI to act like an analyst
• Why the level of playing field has been raised and what that means for raw talent

In Episode 27 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Ben Boutcher-West, Chief Digitial Officer at Connected Kerb, where they discuss how data is fuelling the EV world, which includes;

• How data is fuelling the EV landscape
• Why it's now all about user convenience
• Why data is the glue that will help realise a reduced carbon environment
• Repurposing a Data Asset into a product and how it flows into the boardroom
• How data is helping to inform future policy around EV investment within both the public and private sector
• Why the EV sector is still somewhat of the ‘wild west’
• The balance between obtaining value now and being seen as the tip of the iceberg of innovation
• Making company targets and KPIs part of daily standards to inform value-generating activities
• The threefold role of any data/digital team to ensure they’re embedded into the business
• The role that data plays in helping shape a sustainable future
• How to ensure that your team is adding value
• The rise of the citizen developer
• Recommendations of people to follow for advice, hints, tips and tricks to start your own citizen developer journey
• The advantages and challenges of working in a start-up when it comes to Data
• How different environments change the role and expectation of the CDO
• The future of the EV sector
• Why there’s likely to be 50-60 EV software start-ups to be launched this year

In Episode 26 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Farouk Ferchichi, President Data & Analytics at Envestnet Inc, where they discuss how Data & Analytics is fuelling digital interconnectivity to help people live a more intelligent financial life, which includes;

• Being in the first playground of Chief Data Officers
• The disruption which means organisations should be investing heavily into data & analytics more than ever
• The pressure on the financial ecosystem after SVB
• The importance of hyper-personalisation in both service and product offering
• What customers now want from their financial institution
• The challenges that FS organizations are currently facing
• The Data & Analytics solutions that help address those challenges
• The solutions to ensure that FS firms are meeting the constantly evolving needs of their customers
• How they’ve built a global open-banking connectivity layer
• The importance of being able to show the customer a 360 view of their financial situation
• The creation of an anonymised national monetary database that holds roughly $5 trillion across 15-20% of US households 
• How Data Products are being leveraged to help people understand their current financial health
• The relationship between hyper-personalization and data products
• The benefits to the customer and the FS industry
• Why large FS institutions are beyond chasing their digital competitors
• Why the operating model is integral for organisations to take advantage of this interconnectivity opportunity
• Why times of crisis provide an opportunity to simplify decision-making processes
• The combustion of financial literacy improvements with digital savviness
• The three things that all FS institutions should be considering to benefit the end consumer

In Episode 25 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Danny Gardner, Social Intelligence Lead at Haleon, where they discuss how to drive business value through the use of social intelligence, which includes;

• A fascinating career journey
• Why 80% of the data from social media is just noise
• Why there’s information that is good to know and then there’s information that’s actionable. 
• The typical use cases you see for social intelligence
• What social measurements are valuable
• The differences in Social Intelligence between B2B and B2C
• The use case that he is the proudest of
• What you need to build a social intelligence capability
• The importance of community building
• The challenges that organisations face that prevent them from taking advantage of social intelligence
• Why more businesses aren’t actively working in the social intelligence realm
• The tools to use for Social Intelligence Initiatives
• How to execute a social intelligence strategy
• How different social media platforms provide different opportunities/challenges
• The challenges of tying it to the bottom line
• How the ROI has been up to 350%
• Why ROI doesn’t have to be positive or measurable
• How to use social intelligence to understand your competitors better
• Why social intelligence can protect your brand image/reputation 

In Episode 24 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Denholm Hesse, Chief Data Officer at BDO UK LLP, where they discuss what the first 100 days as a new CDO look like, which includes;

• The importance of knowing the mandate you have
• Understanding what table you’ve got a seat at
• Why you’ve got to be at the right table to be able to deliver value
• The 3 segments of the first 100 days
• Why you must be able to influence the way an organisation operates to be successful
• The importance of being able to operationalise the strategy
• The benefits and challenges of working for an LLP
• Being the first CDO/Data Leader for an organisation
• Why big tech migrations are hard to prove ROI on
• Why being easy to work with should be a priority
• Why you shouldn’t get distracted by looking for quick wins
• The 3 key things you need to understand before you can think about strategy and vision
• Why doing what you did in your last role won’t work
• What the ultimate job of the CDO is
• Why the tenure of the CDO role will increase
• The importance of a communications plan to share the excitement
• How you can gauge progress based on the questions the data team receives
• Why you need to be in control of the value you can create
• The importance of getting the whole data team to be value-focused
• Why it’s imperative that you know how you’re going to execute
• Why you should create a tangible ROI target for the data team
• What Business Leaders should consider before hiring a CDO
• Why you shouldn’t rush into a CDO role
• Why you should focus on the mandate, the remit and the table you’re sitting at

In Episode 23 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Mathieu Lacome, Chief Performance & Analytics Officer at Parma Calcio 1913, where they discuss how Data and Analytics is being used to deliver success in the world of football, which includes;

• The journey from French National Team to PSG to Parma
• What he figured out about Football Analytics when co-authoring his book; "Football Intelligence: A hands-on guide to maximising your investments in data"
• The mindset towards data in football/sports is the same as in the corporate world
• How sportspeople aren’t used to working with data despite being surrounded by stats
• Why waiting 6 months to see results doesn’t work in football
• The importance of building your strategic assets despite needing quick wins
• Why scalability is critical
• The key use cases where data usually helps football clubs
• Why data in football is all about allowing them to make strategic decisions to win matches
• The difference in data maturity between different football setups
• Why having lots of investment doesn’t mean you’ll be successful with Data & Analytics
• The importance of working towards a strategic goal
• What's included in Strategy Value Creation for football clubs
• Business Strategy; in football it’s winning trophies, just like in business it’s to make money
• The difference between a Data-Driven strategy versus a Data-Informed Strategy
• What does a data team in a football organisation look like
• The type of projects they deliver
• Why data in football is like most other industries - Literacy and Adoption
• What they’re doing to drive literacy and adoption

In Episode 22 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Vin Vashista, Founder of V Squared and a LinkedIn "Top Voice", where they discuss how to deliver tangible ROI from your data and analytics initiatives, which includes;

• How Vin reached 160K Followers on LinkedIn and became a “Top Voice” by writing about data monetization
• Why he wanted to write a book that was a single blueprint in a book; “From Data to Profit”
• Why 70% of data teams are NOT delivering any returns for their organisation
• Why genuine ROI will keep the hype and boom going  
• Why you need to hire differently to monetize data
• How to identify the first green shoots of value creation
• The biggest problem is that we don’t connect the technology to the strategy
• Why it’s imperative to get C-Suite sponsorship if you want to be successful
• Why you have to delvier ROI incrementally and not wait for a big bang
• If you let technology drive strategy you end up with more technology
• Why you need a prioritization framework
• Why the frustrations of data and C-Suite professionals is the same root cause
• Why you need an opportunity discovery framework that involves the whole business
• Why business teams know where the opportunities are but they have no way of articulating their needs
• Why data teams aren’t the best people to decide what the business should be doing
• How we confuse strategy and tactics
• Why we need to interrogate our data & analytics ideas like a shark tank pitch
• Why most C-Suite Leaders think the data team needs to be managed as it can’t be accountable for its own value creation
• Why you need a Data Monetization catalogue
• The 3 slide sales deck that Execs keep falling for
• The 9-figure ROI use cases
• Why there are so few people who can connect hype to revenue
• Why C-Suite executives are transfixed on ROI yet still invest in data projects that don’t deliver any ROI
• Why many Data Leaders are great strategic leaders yet most don’t actually lead the strategy
• Why to be a successful CDO you need to have come from a Data role/background, but shouldn’t be hands-on
• Why we should train our technical people to be more than just more technical
• Why moving forward people who can’t prove ROI won’t have a place in the organisation
• Why data teams will be the growth engine for most businesses over the next 5 years
• The misunderstanding that you can clean your way to valuable data  
• Why you need a product-first approach to data
• Buy-in = TRUST
• Why 'track record of success' is the  only way to C-Suite sponsorship

In Episode 21 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Hannah Davies, Head of Data Academy at Admiral Group, where they discuss what it takes to build an effective Data Academy, which includes; 

• The importance of stakeholder engagement 
• Why it’s always about people 
• The journey of building a Data Academy community of 700 people 
• Why a Data Academy is so much more than training 
• Why the first hire into the Data Academy was an engagement and content officer 
• Having the ability to remove silos 
• Why data is the answer 
• The force that brings together; literacy, adoption, upskilling, development, community
• The different ways of working with different sizes of data teams 
• Being a great place to work for data professionals 
• The importance of giving people a way to engage without forcing it on them
• The 5 key pillars of the Data Academy 
• Why the element of community is her proudest achievement 
• What the community is made up of 
• How to cater for different audiences 
• Why many people have “taught fear”
• Removing the barrier of making a business decision with data
• How to change mindset and build confidence 
• The difference between data training and data culture 
• Tackling culture, adoption and literacy 
• Things to think about if you’re in the process of building a Data Academy 
• Upskilling, reskilling and retention  

In Episode 20 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Tiankai Feng, Data Governance Leader and former Senior Director of Product Data Governance at Adidas, where they discuss the importance of making data more fund and how to drive results through creativity, which includes; 

• The importance of making Data more fun 
• The steep learning curve and benefits of moving into governance from analytics 
• Why ‘use-case thinking’ is the most exciting but difficult part of Data Governance 
• How Data Quality is completely subjective based on usability 
• Why creativity and data are often seen as a paradox 
• Why creativity is all about mindset 
• Why urgency and frustration led him to bring creativity into his data role 
• How the enemy of creativity is common sense 
• The benefits gained from bringing this level of creativity to the data team  
• Why there are always ways of doing things differently in Data & Analytics 
• The value that creativity brings to communication 
• How you can use unconventional formats to communicate the value of data
• How you can improve communication, collaboration and PR by being creative
• How you can increase literacy by thinking more creatively 
• The area it has been the most effective in the organisation 
• Leadership sponsorship and stakeholder advocacy 
• Where you should start to think about where you can be different/creative 
• How you can channel your inner creativity 

In Episode 19 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by CJ Anderson, one of the most recognised Data Governance advisors in the UK, where they discuss the importance of tackling Data Governance from the bottom up, which includes; 

• CJ’s journey from a librarian to one of the most recognised names in Data Governance
• Why most legal organisations' clients are far more data mature than they are
• Why the role of Data Governance isn’t about enforcing policies
• Why you want the most junior people to be having the Data Governance conversation
• The importance of opening the lines of communication
• DG is about helping to change the perception of Data
• The importance of the data sausage machine
• Why Data Governance is your Lego green mat
• The importance of using language that makes sense to your audience
• The challenges that most data-immature organisations face on their journey to data maturity
• How operational processes happen in silos and why cross-functional working isn’t common
• Why job titles matter
• Why you should start small and at the bottom
• Why data maturity is a marathon and not a sprint
• The two differing Data Governance approaches
• Why most organisations only have 1000 data points they truly care about
• The relevance of the Silk Road story in data stewardship
• Why Data Governance doesn’t work while sitting in IT