Q1. Tell us a bit about your background and how you ended up in your current role.
For a large part of my career, I was involved with Data Migration which involved moving large amounts of data around regardless of whether it wanted to be moved or not, until I realised gathering information from the data was actually what I loved most. Practising and keeping up to date with the latest BI and Analytics trends, toolsets and innovative solutions is also a passion. I ended up in the role when my predecessor decided to move back to India and I threw my hat in the ring for the role.
Q2. What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today and how are you looking to tackle it?
Capacity. Or lack of. Tackling it is a challenge as you can’t just say “we need more people”. It’s how you show and make the case that is hard. By collecting and collating the business needs over a period (say, 90 days) I then plan to map this back to estimated work sizings and then compare to the team capacity and velocity. Expectations are very important. Not being able to deliver something until 4 months away isn’t always a problem. But you must deliver when you say you will.
Q3. What has been your biggest success for 2020 so far?
A complete re-design of a sales reporting system. We’ve gone from a static sales report by day by-product to a rich set of sales figures across multiple customer attributes.
Q4. In which business area, function or metric, has your team made the biggest impact?
To date, it would be Sales. The cab off the rank to benefit will be marketing with our self-service push.