Cynozure named as finalist for ‘Consultancy of the Year’ and ‘Best Place to Work in Data’ in the British Data Awards

Cynozure named as finalist for ‘Consultancy of the Year’ and ‘Best Place to Work in Data’ in the British Data Awards

LONDON – 21 March 2024 – Cynozure, a leading data, analytics and AI company, today announced that is has been named a finalist for ‘Best Place to Work in Data’ and ‘Consultancy of the Year’ as part of the British Data Awards. 

The British Data Awards celebrate the U.K.’s data success stories, contributions and initiatives, from all types of organisations including the FTSE 100, tech unicorns, innovative start-ups, public sector pioneers, not-for-profit organisations, and everything in between. They represent the very best of the U.K. data community and this year, over 300 entries were received. Recipients will be announced at an awards ceremony on the 8th May in the iconic Grand Hall at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms in London.  

Jason Johnson, Co-Founder of Predatech & British Data Awards 2024 judge said, “Each year we set out on a quest to discover and celebrate the very best that the world of data has to offer. I’ve been blown away by the standard of entries this year and would like to extend my congratulations to all our finalists on this incredible achievement. I can’t wait to celebrate your successes in May.” 

Jason Foster, Cynozure Founder & CEO commented: “We’re honoured to be named as finalists for ‘Consultancy of the Year’ and ‘Best Place to Work in Data’ as part of the British Data Awards. This achievement reflects our commitment to not only providing exceptional service to our clients but also cultivating an environment where our crew have the right tools and support needed to thrive and make a positive impact in everything they do. We look forward to celebrating the achievements in data of all the fellow finalists in May.” 

 

About Cynozure 

Cynozure is a leading data, analytics and AI company that helps organisations to reach their data potential. The company works with its clients on data and AI strategy, data management, data architecture and engineering, analytics and AI, data culture and literacy, and change management and leadership. Cynozure also produces one of the most listened to Podcasts in the industry - Hub & Spoken – featuring leading experts in data and analytics technology. Its exclusive members club, the CDO Hub, provides global data leaders a forum to collaborate, share, learn and grow. The company was named one of The Sunday Times’ fastest-growing private companies in 2022 and 2023 and named the Best Place to Work in Data by DataIQ in 2023. For more information, visit www.cynozure.com. 

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Jason Foster, Cynozure Founder & CEO, named Entrepreneur of the Year at The Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards for the Services Industries in London

Jason Foster, Cynozure Founder & CEO, named Entrepreneur of the Year at The Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards for the Services Industries in London

LONDON – 22 November 2023 – Cynozure, a leading data, analytics and AI company, today announced that Founder & CEO, Jason Foster, has been named the 2023 Entrepreneur of the Year for the Services Industries in London.

Recognised annually as one of the most prestigious accolades in the entrepreneurial world, The Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards received over 5,000 applications this year alone.

The judges commented: “Cynozure’s business journey is a testament to their steadfast determination and adherence to core values. This exceptional entry demonstrates not onlv remarkable talent in its principal offerings but also a profound engagement with the wider business community and its people.”

Francesca James, founder of The Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards, said: “I am thrilled to witness the extraordinary achievements of this year’s winners. Their success stories are a testament to the dynamic and innovative spirit that thrives within UK entrepreneurship. These inspiring entrepreneurs embody the creativity, determination, and passion that are at the heart of our nation’s business success. Their accomplishments not only celebrate their own journeys but also light the way for future generations of innovators and business leaders”.

Jason Foster, Cynozure Founder & CEO added: “Thank you to Francesca, James and judges at Great British Entrepreneur Awards for this recognition. It’s such an honour to be part of this group of brilliant entrepreneurs who are really pushing boundaries and driving change. And, of course, a huge thank you to all the crew at Cynozure for all their hard work and commitment, and to our clients for their trust and partnership – they’re all at the heart of what created this recognition.”

 

About Cynozure

Cynozure is a leading data, analytics and AI company that helps organisations to reach their data potential. The company works with its clients on data and AI strategy, data management, data architecture and engineering, analytics and AI, data culture and literacy, and change management and leadership. Cynozure also produces one of the most listened to Podcasts in the industry – Hub & Spoken – featuring leading experts in data and analytics technology. Its exclusive members club, the CDO Hub, provides global data leaders a forum to collaborate, share, learn and grow. Cynozure has offices in the U.K., the U.S., and Europe and serves clients around the world. The company was named one of The Sunday Times’ fastest-growing private companies in 2022 and 2023 and named the Best Place to Work in Data by DataIQ in 2023. For more information, visit www.cynozure.com.

 

About The Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards

The Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards celebrate and champion entrepreneurs across the UK, building communities to support their endeavours at various stages of their journey.

With stiff competition and a history of recognising businesses that become household names, the awards are a beacon of excellence in the entrepreneurial landscape.

 

Editor’s Notes:

About the Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards:

The Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards are more than just an awards programme. Known as the ‘Grammys of Entrepreneurship,’ the awards have become a community that supports, celebrates, and champions entrepreneurs at various stages of their journey. With more than 5,000 entries annually, the awards aim to discover and recognise the brilliance within the entrepreneurial business community across the UK.

 

Previous Winners:

The Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards have a strong track record of identifying exceptional entrepreneurs across nine nations and regions before they become household names. Beyond those mentioned in the release, previous winners include Johnny & Pauline Paterson of Dr PawPaw, Hannah & Sophie Pycroft of Spectrum Collections, Philip Belmont of Zilch, Justin Basini of ClearScore, Lizzie Carter of Only Curly, and Dave Linton of MadLUG. These entrepreneurs have been transformative forces in their respective sectors, paving the way for innovation and job creation.

 

Judges:

The awards are judged by a panel of some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs and business leaders, including the founders of Specsavers, Poundland, and Innocent.

Cynozure named as the 14th fastest growing company on London’s 2023 Fast Growth 50 Index

Cynozure named as the 14th fastest growing company on London’s 2023 Fast Growth 50 Index 

LONDON – 9 November 2023 – Cynozure, a leading data, analytics and AI company, today announced it has been recognised as the 14th fastest-growing business in London. The recognition is part of the Fast Growth 50 Index for 2023, which identifies the fifty fastest-growing companies across six nations and regions, including London, over a two-year period from 2020 – 2022.  

This year’s index for London has highlighted businesses from multiple sectors that together generated a turnover of £2.23 billion, at an average growth rate of 188 percent, with the creation of nearly 11,000 jobs last year. The 2023 Fast Growth 50 London list is in partnership with UBS, the world’s leading and truly global wealth manager.  

Professor Dylan Jones-Evans OBE, Founder Fast Growth 50 said: ”The UK Fast Growth 50 Index demonstrates that a small number of fast growth firms, such as Cynozure, make a substantial contribution to the UK’s economic landscape, providing real examples of how innovation, enterprise and sheer hard work can make a real difference in all sectors from construction to financial services to technology. Their incredible growth during difficult times shows that through generating wealth and jobs in their local communities, entrepreneurship is the cornerstone of regional and national prosperity. Most important of all, their success stories demonstrate the impact of ambition and adaptability, providing a blueprint for sustainable growth that will hopefully inspire others to follow a similar journey.” 

Jason Foster, Founder and CEO at Cynozure commented: “In an age where data, analytics, and AI are shaping the future of business, we take great pride in guiding our customers through this challenging landscape and helping them to reach their full data potential. We are thrilled that this work drives our growth and let us to securing a spot among London’s top 50 fastest-growing companies.” 

Jason Foster, Cynozure’s Founder & CEO, recognised as One to Watch in The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 2023

Jason Foster, Cynozure’s Founder & CEO, recognised as One to Watch in The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 2023

LONDON – 19 October 2023 – Cynozure, a leading data, analytics and AI company, today announced that CEO, Jason Foster, has been recognised as One to Watch in The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 2023.

Created by trusted investment partner LDC – part of Lloyds Banking Group, and supported by The Times, The LDC Top 50 champions the business leaders who are pushing for growth and building successful medium-sized businesses.

This year’s nominations were of an exceptionally high calibre and the competition was fierce, showcasing the drive and determination that unites business leaders across the UK.

The leaders featured in The LDC Top 50 are growing their businesses at home and overseas, making a positive contribution to society and driving progress against their sustainability goals. They hail from every corner of the U.K. and span every sector of the economy. Together, they employ more than 6,700 people and turn over more than £1.2bn.

The Ones to Watch are leaders making great strides and growing their businesses. They are excelling in their industries and making a positive impact on customers and employees, yet still show so much potential for future growth.

John Garner, Managing Partner at LDC, said: “We started The LDC Top 50 six years ago to champion the remarkable success stories of medium-sized businesses, the unsung heroes of the British economy. Since then, we’ve received more than 3,000 nominations and celebrated more than 500 business leaders through the programme, surpassing all our expectations. The stories behind this year’s Ones to Watch really captured our attention and I’d like to congratulate them on their achievements so far. We’ve no doubt that this is only the beginning for each and every one of them!”

You can find out more information on this year’s LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders programme here.

Key insights and resources for a successful data culture journey

Key insights and resources for a successful data culture journey

In today’s data-driven world, organisations are recognising the immense value of cultivating a data culture within their teams. A data-guided culture not only empowers decision-makers, but also enhances efficiency, innovation, and competitiveness. 

At Cynozure, we’ve been exploring this topic for the past years and have developed valuable resources with the finest data experts in the field to help you understand, embrace, and thrive in this data-centric landscape.  

Let’s delve into some of our best resources to shed light on the importance of data culture and literacy, and practical steps that you can take to start a successful journey with your team. 

Article – A CLEAR™ Path: How to Foster a Robust Data Culture 

In this article, our US Managing Director, Jennifer Agnes, navigates through our CLEAR™ approach — Communicate, Leader, Educate, Act, and Relate — unveiling a comprehensive pathway with tangible examples to nurture a thriving data-centric culture. 

Webinar – Data Culture: Navigating Challenges and Cultivating Change 

In our webinar, hosted by our Product & Customer Director, Tim Connold, our U.S. Managing Director, Jennifer Agnes, and the former CDO of IAG Loyalty, Kinnari Ladha, discuss the significance of creating an environment that encourages data-driven decision-making and nurtures data literacy within teams. Join the conversation as they share valuable insights and practical tips on how to foster a data-guided culture. 

Podcast – Using Communications to Create Change 

In this podcast episode, Caroline Sherman, VP Corporate Affairs at Mars Multi Sales, engages in a conversation with Jason Foster about the pivotal role of data literacy in business success and corporate communications. Tune in now to discover how effective communication can drive positive change within your organisation. 

Article – Data Strategy Without Data Literacy? Like Boarding the Titanic! 

Our Product & Customer Director, Tim Connold, explores why data literacy is imperative for organisations looking to harness the full potential of their data, optimise resources, and gain a competitive edge. In this Dataversity article, Tim highlights three key factors for mapping out an effective data literacy plan. Read here. 

 Podcast – Mistakes to avoid with data literacy programmes 

In this episode, Jason Foster, talks with Greg Freeman, CEO and Founder of the Data Literacy Academy, to explore the critical importance of data literacy in future-proofing your organisation, common mistakes to avoid and best practices to put in place when implementing data literacy programmes. 

Podcast – Empower Your Organisation with Insights by Improving Data Literacy 

Join Jason Foster in a thought-provoking discussion with Helen Blaikie, Chief Data Officer at Aston University, about the critical role of data literacy in empowering employees to make informed decisions, identify opportunities, and solve complex problems. Listen to this episode now and gain insights into how data literacy can be a game-changer for your organisation.  

Article – Forget Data Literacy, Think Decision-Making Literacy 

Data isn’t just about facts; it’s about making better decisions. In this Dataversity article, our CEO, Jason Foster, explores the evolution of data literacy into a critical strategic thinking tool. Discover why strategic decision-making is intertwined with data and how data literacy needs to adapt accordingly. 

Podcast – Why Data Literacy Should Be Viewed as a Sliding Scale 

In this podcast episode, Jason Foster discusses why data literacy should be viewed as a journey, where individuals and organisations progress over time. Gain a new perspective on how to approach and improve data literacy within your team.
 

Conclusion 

At Cynozure, we’re committed to helping you navigate this data-driven era. Watch, listen, and read these resources to embark on your journey towards a more data-guided future. 

If you have any questions or need further assistance in implementing a data-driven culture within your organisation, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at hey@cynozure.com. We’re here to support your data transformation journey every step of the way

Cynozure shortlisted for three 2023 Data IQ Awards

Cynozure shortlisted for three 2023 Data IQ Awards 

Cynozure finalist for Best Place to Work in Data, Data Champion, and AI-Enabled Data Solution of the Year 

LONDON – 10 July 2023 – Cynozure, a leading data and analytics company, today announced it has been shortlisted for three 2023 Data IQ awards: Best Place to Work in Data, Data Champion, and AI-Enabled Data Solution of the Year. The DataIQ Awards honour both companies and individuals that have demonstrated excellence in the data industry over the past 12 months. 

The Best Place to Work in Data award celebrates the Cynozure Crew’s supportive and collaborative work environment, along with fostering a healthy work-life balance. The Data Champion award recognizes CEO, Jason Foster, for his exceptional leadership and visionary contributions to the data industry. Finally, the AI-Enabled Data Solution of the Year award highlights the collaborative effort between Cynozure and Veracity Trust Network in developing cutting-edge AI solutions for combating digital threats. 

 

The winners of the Data IQ Awards will be announced at the ceremony on Wednesday, 27 September from 6pm at The Roundhouse, London. 

CEO at Cynozure, Jason Foster, commented: “We are honoured to be shortlisted for three prestigious Data IQ Awards. Being recognised for our great place to work, leadership in championing data, and AI-enabled data solutions is a testament to our commitment to excellence and reflects the hard work, dedication, and innovative spirit of our entire team at Cynozure.” 

An open letter to CDO Hub members

Data leadership is evolving. 

There are the pioneers who currently hold executive and C-suite positions. They navigated early challenges, met resistance, and ultimately cracked opened the door for today’s data leadership. We’re also witnessing a huge wave of brilliant minds now entering this space. Some from more technical or functional data roles and some brand new into the field. 

Data leadership is no longer an exclusive club for the large financial services institutions and retailers. Charities, manufacturing companies, law firms, regional government, publishing, and many other sectors are also now investing and expanding their capabilities to drive value from data. It’s no longer a nice to have, but a business imperative. 

The data leadership community

This means the data leadership community is evolving. It’s growing; globally. The levels of capability and maturity are on an upward trajectory. Some at the very sharp end of applied artificial intelligence. These are the digital and data native organisations where a culture of using data is weaved throughout the fabric of the business. Whereas others, are just starting out on the journey, educating, influencing, hustling, and building credibility and early wins. 

This all combines to create a fascinating opportunity for the community to collaborate and embrace the diversity of experiences and perspectives. Share ideas. Share challenges. Learn from past failures. Learn from innovations that have come about by being unshackled from legacy. Push and poke topics. Flip old conversations on their heads. 

Showing up and providing a space for this community to thrive, learn and set the standard on what world-class data leadership looks like is something we care deeply about. We aspire to hold a space where you can build towards being the best leader you can be, in a fun, interactive, collaborative, ego-less, intimate setting that promotes honest and engaging discussion. 

Thank you

CDO hub members really do encompass everything that’s great about the global data leadership community. We are acutely aware that you have many options for how you spend this kind of time, so we thank you all for your contribution in making this such an open and positive community to be part of.  

Wishing you the best for 2023. 

Yours, 

Jason and the Cynozure crew 

Cynozure ranks 45th in The Sunday Times 100 2022

Data consultancy, Cynozure, ranks 45th in The Sunday Times 100, Britain’s fastest growing private companies 

 

• Data consultancy, Cynozure, has today ranked 45th in The Sunday Times 100 annual ranking of Britain’s fastest growing private companies.
• Cynozure has doubled in size for the second year in a row with a number of high profile brands – such as Knight Frank, Samaritans and Penguin Random House – among clients.
• This growth recognises the increased importance of data in supporting organisations to thrive post-pandemic. 

 

London, Friday 1 July 2022: Data consultancy Cynozure has achieved 45th place in the 2022 edition of  The Sunday Times 100, Britain’s fastest-growing private companies. 

The list takes on the baton from The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 series and supports profitable businesses in the UK that have exceeded £5 million in their latest year of trading, without reaching £250 million.

In the last year Cynozure has more than doubled in size and tripled in geographic region, securing its place as one of the UK’s leading data and analytics businesses. The company supports its partners in the use, access, and understanding of data in a way that facilitates better decision making across the business. It is a trusted partner to high-profile clients such as Knight Frank, Samaritans, and Penguin Random House. 

An increasing number of organisations are recognising the importance of data. According to 451 Research, 90% of business leaders believe that data will be of more importance to their organisation in 12 months’ time than it is now. Despite this, only 26% of that group say nearly all strategic decisions made at their organisation are currently data-driven. There is a clear need to bridge this gap, and support business leaders to harness the power of data to enable better decision making, in turn driving efficiencies and productivity within the wider organisation.

Jason Foster, Founder and CEO at Cynozure, comments: “Data can be one of the most powerful ways to transform an organisation and we’re seeing more and more business leaders realising this opportunity. We’ve had a very successful year as demand for our services has soared and I am extremely proud of all the hard work that the team has put into supporting our clients, and expanding the business. Having this achievement recognised by The Sunday Times 100 – and especially making it into the top 50 – is hugely rewarding.”

 ENDS

 

Media contact:

Kitty Guillaume kitty@seven-consultancy.com / Robyn Margetts robyn@seven-consultancy.com

About Cynozure

Cynozure was founded in 2016 with the ambition to reshape how businesses view data and analytics. People first, business first and outcome focused. With a history in driving business value through data and having worked in industry, Founder and CEO, Jason Foster set out to establish a new precedent on data strategy in a traditionally tech-led data industry, and is doing so through its Level Up Framework, which focuses on business outcomes and adding incremental business value. 

Today, the growing Cynozure team continues to work hand-in-hand with forward thinking organisations, developing best practice and making data more accessible for everyone. Cynozure is also an active member of the data community, regularly publishing whitepapers and blogs, as well as its weekly podcast – Hub & Spoken. It was recently ranked 45th in the 2022 edition of Sunday Times 100, Britain’s fastest-growing private companies.

4 years of Hub & Spoken, 4 years of sharing the love for data.

Our very first podcast was published on this day four years ago.  

Yes, Valentine’s Day!  

And we can happily say that the Hub & Spoken community has grown bigger and stronger, expanding globally with listeners spread across 126 countries. 

We’re proud to be joined by amazing guests (true leaders in the real sense of the word), and to be able to share the important topics discussed with such openness and frankness. Hosted by Jason Foster, our CEO, conversations cover all aspects of data strategy, business value, AI, diversity, leadership, mental-wellbeing and beyond. What makes Hub and Spoken incredibly special is the human factor: the brilliance of the guests, their forward-thinking approach and their desire to do well in their role, for their organisation and society.  

 

100 Episodes & Special Series 

It’s a great ride and just a couple of months ago we reached the milestone of 100 Episodes. To mark the occasion, we invited back our first ever guest on episode 1, Pete Williams, CDO at Penguin Random House. But this time the tables were turned, and for episode 100 he interviewed Jason! They discussed the evolution of the data, reviewed Hub & Spoken and covered the importance of data in society’s progress. 

We curated a Special Series of inspiring conversations with outstanding business, data and technology leaders taken from the first 100 podcasts.  This series of six podcasts brings together a selection of insightful nuggets to help inform and inspire the best results from data and analytics. 

Each episode focuses on a key theme, central to success with data and in business. 

Did you miss any? Find them here… 

Primer: The evolution of the data industry
Part 1: Data strategy – using a data strategy as a vital asset in creating a data-guided organisation
Part 2: Data management – unlocking business value with excellent data management and data governance
Part 3: Business value – delivering incremental business value through the application of data and analytics
Part 4: Data platforms – how technology is your enabler to building adaptable data platforms and products
Part 5: Data leadership – the evolving role of the Chief Data Officer and data leadership
Part 6: Purpose – creating a better, more purpose-led and resilient future   

 

Episodes with the Cynozure Crew 

At the end of last year, alongside the conversations with the best data leaders in the industry, we started to dive into the most vital data topics with our crew – to share some of their expertise too.  

You may already have heard Jason’s discussions with Jennifer Agnes on Data Management, Tim Connold on Data Product and Ricardo Santos on Data Technology. 

Stay tuned to hear from more of the crew: Ed Wynn, James Lupton, Paul Briley, Keith Goldthorpe, Helen Blaikie coming soon.  

 

Thank you! 

A special thanks to all our guests, who have shared their stories with us, and inspired our listeners around the world. And thank you to you for listening and your support of the Hub & Spoken journey.  

We can’t wait to see what’s next and look forward to sharing more amazing data stories with you!  

We’d love to hear from you; join the #HubandSpoken discussions on Twitter and LinkedIn – where we also share news, clips and updates on all episodes. 

Jason joins the Forbes Council

Jason Foster joins the Forbes Business Council

 

Forbes Business Council Is an Invitation-Only Community for Successful Business Owners and Leaders

 

Jason Foster, our Founder & CEO, has been accepted into the Forbes Business Council, the foremost growth and networking organisation for successful business owners and leaders worldwide.

 

He was vetted and selected by a review committee based on the depth and diversity of his experience. Criteria for acceptance include a track record of successfully impacting business growth metrics, as well as personal and professional achievements and honours.

 

“We are honoured to welcome Jason into the community,” said Scott Gerber, founder of Forbes Councils, the collective that includes Forbes Business Council. “Our mission with Forbes Councils is to bring together proven leaders from every industry, creating a curated, social capital-driven network that helps every member grow professionally and make an even greater impact on the business world.”

 

“I’m looking forward to meeting members, taking part in discussions and the opportunity to share thoughts on positive use of data” said Jason.

 

ABOUT FORBES COUNCILS

Forbes Councils is a collective of invitation-only communities created in partnership with Forbes and the expert community builders who founded Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). In Forbes Councils, exceptional business owners and leaders come together with the people and resources that can help them thrive.

 

To learn more about Forbes Councils, visit forbescouncils.com.

Letter to CDO Hub Members 2021

We set up the CDO Hub to act as a personal growth accelerator for senior data leaders. A space where peers can have open and honest dialogue about the challenges, and evolving role, of the Chief Data Officer.

Community Led

We work hard to make it informal: no egos, no pretence, no shiny and polished stories, and focus on intimate, real-life, community led discussions. This is true peer to peer learning where the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Together we are setting the standard of what world class data leadership looks like and the value it can deliver.

Member Feedback

We’ve had an average rating of 4.79 / 5 for meet ups in 2021 and some really positive comments such as “

Great session all round with excellent content, never seen the chat so reactive to the presentation before! The debate in room 3 was phenomenal, which goes to show what happens when you ask the right questions for debate!”

“Like-minded curious data professionals who want to help each other, no sales.”

“The monthly dose of data therapy, The best crowd, the best themes and the best thinking”.

We really couldn’t ask for much more that this.

Worldwide Data Leaders

The 24 meet ups ,and nearly 40 hours of in person learning through 2021, have been open to the now 250 members worldwide (including UK, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, United States, Dominican Republic, Belgium, Russia, India and UAE). We’ve covered so many topics, such as creating caring and compassionate teams, culture, understanding and dealing with imposter syndrome, story-telling, data strategy, data literacy, dealing with change, data strategy, and many more important discussions about being in data and in leadership.

Thanks to all those members, and wider industry friends, who stepped up to co-host and lead these significant discussions.

Online

Remaining online for the year has been a blessing for many of you who are unable to travel to physical locations we may use. I also understand it’s not ideal for many others who prefer not to spend additional time online after a day of online meetings. This has been the biggest challenge for us – not being able to have a mechanism that works for everyone.

In 2022 (COVID situation allowing), we’ll make way for both modes and will add in-person meet ups back to the agenda in London (likely to be March, June, Sept and December), alongside the online meet ups that have been running since early 2020.

IMPACT

More than anything else though it’s important to us that we make an impact. An impact on your careers, an impact on your ideas, an impact on the outcomes that you can deliver and the impact we can all have on creating positive outcomes. In December of this year we launched our new initiative: IMPACT,  focused on delivering positive change through the collective brilliance of this wonderful data leadership community. Primarily this is focused on providing support and help to purpose led and impactful projects, charities and initiatives.

Learn more about IMPACT and how you can get involved.

Thank you

We have absolutely loved seeing this community grow, flourish and the level of engagement you all give it. We cant wait to see more collaboration across you all, more opportunity to learn and grow together and having more of an impact than ever before.

Wishing you all the best for the festive season and a happy new year.

With thanks

Jason

Celebrating 100 Episodes of Hub & Spoken

100 Episodes of Hub & Spoken – can you believe it?!

To celebrate this milestone we invited our first ever guest on episode 1, Pete Williams, back. But this time the tables were turned, and for episode 100 he interviewed host Jason Foster. They discussed the evolution of the data, reviewed Hub & Spoken – the original data podcast, and covered the importance of data in society’s progress; an extended episode that perfectly lined up the next 6 episodes.

 

Hub & Spoken Special Series

To showcase the most important topics to help educate and inspire the best results from data and analytics, we put together selection of insightful episodes. This special series is curated to bring together some of the themes we’ve heard covered over the course of 100 episodes. It was a challenge not to include something from every episode – massive thanks to all of our guests for the great discussions, insights and knowledge shared. We’ve been lucky enough to hear from leading experts in data and analytics at the top of their game.

 

A data strategy is a vital asset to create a data-guided organisation

A data strategy is a framework that allows you to deliver business value through the application of data and analytics. It’s a vital asset to support buy-in, get approval, and create a data-guided organisation. In episode 101 of the Hub & Spoken special series, we look back at the discussions we’ve had with some of the industry’s best data leaders on this topic. We explore the role of the data strategy, the important ingredients, the need to focus on outcomes – and how the strategy needs to evolve and adjust with your organisation.

 

Unlock business value with excellent data management and data governance

Artificial intelligence, data science, cloud data warehousing and other trends get the limelight these days. But data management, and its friend data governance, are often dismissed by organisations as being old fashioned and cumbersome. In episode 102 of the Hub & Spoken special series, we’ve curated previous discussions with some great leaders in this space. They demonstrate that you can create a strategic asset out of your data; take focused, deliberate, and iterative steps to make data accurate, available, accessible and actionable.

 

Deliver incremental business value through the application of data and analytics

In episode 103 of the of the Hub & Spoken special series, we look back at some of the brilliant conversations we’ve had with business and data leaders about the thing that matters most about data: delivering value. We hear examples of how to deploy data for business benefit, and business use cases that deliver value. Plus the role data plays in some of the worlds leading manufacturing, food, retail, media, financial services and big brand organisations.

 

How technology is your enabler to building adaptable data platforms and products

Accelerate returns from data at pace and with agility, by using technology the right way. It’s one of the enablers to a successful data strategy, but can equally be an inhibitor if not implemented correctly. In episode 104 of the Hub & Spoken special series we look at back at the conversations we’ve had with business, data and technology leaders about deploying technology. We cover how data platforms and data products enable delivery of value at scale – and the best way to go about that.

 

The evolving role of the Chief Data Officer and data leadership

The role of the Chief Data Officer (CDO), and senior data leadership in general, are a mainstay of discussions on this podcast. In episode 105 of the Hub & Spoken special series we look back at the conversations we’ve had with some of the industries best up and coming, and established, leaders. We explore what it takes to become a CDO, along with the demands and responsibilities of the role. We also touch on topics such as imposter syndrome as a blocker to high performance, and what the C-suite care about when it comes to data.

 

Create a better, more purpose led and resilient future

Creation of a better future for all through the positive and open use of data requires us to be the change we want to see. In episode 106 of the Hub & Spoken special series, we look back at the conversations we’ve had with brilliant leaders to uncover the use of data for the good of society, and a more sustainable future. We explore how leaders and their teams can become more resilient, diverse, and build a more human centred world.

 

We’d love to hear from you; join the #HubandSpoken conversation on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The Metaverse: A Dystopian Nightmare?

The Metaverse: A Dystopian Nightmare?

As technology keeps advancing, the ways to interact also evolve over time. Metaverse has been a hot topic in the digital world for how it transforms the way we connect – that can either be beneficial, or disruptive, to businesses.

Jason Foster shares his insights on the metaverse: what it means, its characteristics, where it has come from, and where it can go in the future.

 

Metaverse… what?

The word is credited back to a sci-fi film called “Snow Crash”. It was launched in 1992. The use of the term metaverse has steadily increased in books and some films until the recent explosion on social media.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, “The metaverse is a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces. You can kind of think of this as an embodied internet that you are inside of rather than just looking at it.”

It’s as though you’re inside the internet and you’re interacting with physical people in a digital space, rather than just looking at the internet and interacting with people through the lens of a screen.

Essentially, it’s a collection of technologies that exist as augmented reality, virtual reality, high throughput networks, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, online commerce, virtual meeting technology like zoom, virtual event platforms, online gaming concepts and more.

Basically a collection of all these technologies that create a new upgraded version of what we currently know as the internet.

 

Metaverse characteristics

One of the leading organisations looking at this from a certain lens is the law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright. They talk about the characteristics of the metaverse that allow this embodiment of ourselves in an online space, to help understand what needs to be in place for the metaverse to exist now. There are five things that they talk about.

1. Persistence. Metaverse will exist regardless of where you are, or time of day.
2. Synchronicity. The participants of the metaverse who are engaging with the metaverse or interact with one another in the digital world in real-time, react to the virtual environment, just as they would in the physical world. We’re at the same time interacting in the digital world in real-time, in a very similar way that we would in a physical world.
3. Availability. Everyone will be able to log on simultaneously. There’s no cap on the number of participants.
4. Economy. This is really the important one as it’s going to accelerate metaverse adoption everywhere. People, including those in businesses, will be able to supply goods, supply services, and exchange those goods and services for value that people will recognise.
5. Interoperability. The metaverse will essentially allow participants to use their virtual things, products, services, or their persona across different experiences, on the metaverse. This is a total cross-platform capability.

To summarise

Organisations are working on how we more closely blend physical and digital – rather than fully immersive digital – which takes you away from any kind of real social interaction, and puts it all in the digital space. We must put the controls and relevant guard rails in place. Which will mean we support a much brighter future. Digital and physical interaction with each other, rather than leaving the current world behind and moving to this new digital space.

 

Listen to this episode of Hub & Spoken

9 Lessons on Delivering a Data Strategy

Jason Foster shares some of the key things he’s learnt about delivering value from data. This is based on his years of experience helping 100s of organisations and thousands of individuals to do just that.

A clear summary to craft a roadmap to get value from your data articulated in 9 key lessons.

 

Lesson #1: Delivering value drives investment and credibility

Whilst it is really vital to do these things, no amount of talking, writing papers, looking at what others are doing, and building plans are worth more than proving you can deliver value and do something different that you couldn’t do before. Align that value to the demands of the business strategy and operations, so that it’s aligned with what the organization is doing and trying to achieve.

 

Lesson #2: It’s not foundations versus value

It can be really easy to get stuck on the debate on whether to build foundations first or deliver value first. It’s unnecessary to focus on sorting out the data first and only then looking at how to deliver that value. These things must be done in combination. Otherwise, you risk creating an expensive cost center –  just building foundations and not delivering any value off the back of it.

 

Lesson #3: It’s never too early to communicate

Stakeholder engagement, management and communication are needed regularly and tailored to the audience that you’re focused on. Don’t wait until it’s all sorted to start talking about your strategy for data. Use communication to educate, set expectations, provide clarity, build relationships, get good news, give bad news, and update on progress.

 

Lesson #4: Not all stakeholders are made the same

Everyone is different. All the people you talk to have different backgrounds, experiences, skills, knowledge, and personal priorities. The business objectives that they’re focused on won’t be the same. Their hopes, their fears will all be different. So, you need to know your audience and manage accordingly. Change how you engage with individuals.

 

Lesson #5: A bigger budget doesn’t equal a better strategy

Your data strategy budgets should be relative to the size of the opportunities that lie ahead of you. You need to know where that opportunity is in order to get that relative budget. A big budget that builds capabilities but no real tangible benefits don’t tend to end very well. But, a tight focused budget aimed at generating value and the capabilities required to do so wins way more often.

 

Lesson #6: Like a start-up, product-market fit is really important

Product market fit means finding a good market with a product capable of satisfying that market. Build data product solutions, e.g. a report, or an algorithm that scratches an itch, solves a problem or creates an opportunity for your market and your key stakeholders. Work from your market back to your products, not the other way.

 

Lesson #7: It’s a team sport, and you need to buy and sell players

There is a breadth of different and complementary capabilities that are needed in data, in a data team, and across the organisation of people that are interacting, engaging with data. Some are very visible and on the pitch, leading from the front. Some very important team members play an integral role in improving the chances of success and delivering results but aren’t leading from the front.

What you need changes over time, depending on the stage of the journey that you’re at and the style of team that you want to create. This isn’t about one single individual that’s going to solve your problems. This is a team sport that needs a mix of diverse, wide-ranging sets of skills and capabilities.

 

Lesson #8: You need the technology you need, not what the vendor is selling

You wouldn’t borrow a key from someone else’s door to open yours. You need the right key that’s right for your door. Technology can unlock some incredible value, but you need the right key to unlock it. It’s important, therefore, to know the technology gaps that you have, the priority for closing those gaps, and an understanding of which vendor to plug those gaps and whether you need that right now, or the appropriate time to do so.

 

Lesson #9: Data is a journey, not a destination

There is no destination with data. It’s a journey. The idea is to be in a position to consistently and regularly deliver business value through the application of data.

 

In summary

So as long as the organisation is operating, there’ll be work to do when it comes to data analytics, insights, building models, and getting value from those. There are many different waypoints on routes of delivering that value. You travel at different speeds, you go at different times, or you may even need to change your mode of travel, but the results are not finite if you’re able to continue to deliver value for as long as the journey goes.

Make sure you enjoy the journey.

 

Listen to this episode of Hub & Spoken

Want to know more about this topic? Watch our On-Demand Webinar on How to Define a Data Strategy

Tech Exec Interview with Jason Foster

We are glowing with pride to share this interview that Tech Exec magazine did with Jason Foster with you!

How did Jason start out in data, and why was he motivated to set up Cynozure?

If you’re interested in finding out a bit more on our background, aims, and how we put our mission into action to serve our community you’ll enjoy this read…

Find out about…

A data company

Cynozure was established to reshape our collective vision of data and analytics and set a new precedence on data strategy in a traditionally tech-led data industry. “I was inspired by my time at M&S,” explains Jason.

“At that time we were really at the sharp end of data; there was an air of newness, of being leading edge, but with that you do make mistakes. In many ways, Cynozure was me creating the organisation I wished existed at that time to steer me through the journey pragmatically. I took a step back and asked ‘what is this really about?’, and the answer was simple: building a better future for all through the open and positive use of data.”

 

People led

Culture and collaboration are key to success – both for us, and for the customers that we work with. It’s one of the 6 pillars of a data strategy, and is something we embody as part of our values.

 

Business goals = data goals

“When people struggle to get a data strategy signed off, it’s typically because they’ve majored on the things they need to build and implement, or the capabilities needed, rather than the business outcomes they’re looking to impact. You have to align your use of data to what you’re actually trying to achieve in the business, and that can be challenging and difficult sometimes.”

 

Cynozure’s Services

Wherever you are on your data journey, Cynozure is here to support you. Our Level Up Framework is your guide to a successful, pragmatic and adaptable delivery of your data strategy.

 

CDO Hub

Cynozure supports data leaders meet their responsibilities, with an initiative founded to set the standard for good data leadership, and shape what it means to be a modern business and data leader: the CDO Hub. It’s an industry community, based on peer-to-peer collaboration, sharing and learning.

 

For all this and more, read the article or take a look at the full edition of Tech-Exec magazine online

Getting buy in for investment in data

How to get started with buy-in for investment in data

What is ‘buy-in’, and how to go about getting managerial and investor support when it comes to funding for your data strategy?  

 

One Big Message 

Trying to get investors to buy-in to your data strategy or product can be a daunting task. By generating proof of concept, creating a clear strategy and aligning your project to the business objectives you will be able to demonstrate proof to stakeholders even if they are from a non-data background 

 

Be clear with your outcomes 

When it comes to sourcing funding for your data project, you have to be very specific about the outcomes your data project will achieve and the value it brings to the company. It simply isn’t good enough to have a ‘ballpark figure.’ Investors want to know where their money is going and what their return on investment will be. Getting specific with outcomes allows decision-makers to mitigate risk when offering you buy-in.  

  

Your personal experience with individual stakeholders 

Another measure of determining how well your buy-in pitch will be received is to review the individual stakeholder’s personal experience with data. Depending on their existing knowledge you may need to include more information to help the stakeholders understand how data can help the business. You can come up with similar examples, be more comprehensive with your modelling, or create very obvious links between your strategy and how it will directly improve business outcomes. This is particularly important when you are trying to pitch a data strategy to a decision maker who may not have much data knowledge.  

 

How to create an effective buy-in pitch 

There are many different ways to make a buy-in pitch more effective, but one measure of how well it will be received is by looking at the strategy. The clearer the plan and the more relatable it is to the business goals, the easier it is to formulate costs and predict how effective your strategy will be.  

Having clarity with your plan will allow you to demonstrate how your data strategy aligns with the business objectives and budgeting.  

  

Create buzz around your pitch 

The more publicity you have of your strategy or proposed product, the more likely you will be able to attract interest in your idea.  

When trying to create buzz around your plan, follow the marketing rule of 7: people usually need at least 7 touchpoints with your idea before they come on board. Avail any opportunity to get the word out there – use trade shows, office meetings, conferences, anything that can bring more visibility and credibility to what you do.  

 

To summarise 

Getting buy-in for your strategy or data product is about communicating your strategy’s value to stakeholders. With the correct planning and preparation you should be able to effectively remove any doubts the stakeholders may have so they can invest with confidence.  

 

Listen to this episode of Hub & Spoken

Use Case Definition | Webinar

Use Cases – The Super Power to Your Data Strategy

In order to create and organisation that is guided by data, it’s imperative that your strategy is focused on business outcomes. This is so that you can be clear about what you are trying to achieve,  and do things that benefit the business.

Use cases help to give you that focus on business outcomes from both a macro strategy and micro data product development perspective. They help to give the direction and requirements for solutions to build, technology to put in place and most importantly the basis for your business case.

In this webinar, Jason Foster discusses how to keep your data strategy aligned to business outcomes through the definition of use cases and how to value your data and analytics initiative.

Topics that Jason covers include how to:

• Understand the business strategy in context of data
• Why put a value on data and analytics?
• Move from bottom up to top down thinking
• Align everything you do to business benefits
• Understand and make us of use-cases
• Define business questions
• Get alignment from business strategy to data products

Create the right data skills and team structure | Webinar

Move from a rigid, to a cross-functional organisational structure for your data and analytics strategy.

Traditional organisational structures can have rigid roles and responsibilities, boundaries around what teams can and can’t get involved with, and put people and skills or teams in pigeon-holes. This hinders your ability to create an adaptable, agile and business outcome focused data strategy.

To build an organisation that is completely aligned to your end goals requires a change in mindset. A change that looks to increase cooperation and collaboration within and across teams, redefining what a ‘team’ is and focusing on what really matters.

Jason Foster explores how you switch from rigid to cross functional teams, the benefit that delivers and how you manage this within traditional organisational structures.

This session will give you an understanding on:

• Accelerated change through better organisational design
• Increasing co-operation and collaboration
• The data and analytics skills needed for success
• The need for cross functional, outcome focussed teams
• Practical options for how best to structure your team
• The case for a strong operating model to govern and enhance what you do
• The path to change

The Role of the Modern Chief Data Officer

The Forward-Thinking, Innovative Chief Data Officer

The Chief Data Officer role is a business leadership role. It’s accountable for the definition and execution of an organisation strategy and plan that delivers incremental business value through the application of data and analytics.

 

Using data to drive value

Using data has always been about driving value in your business. Sometimes that’s like a defensive play or an offensive play, but ultimately the successful day-to-day leaders over the last 10 years have harnessed data, applied insights to business problems, business situations, business opportunities, that help organisations make better decisions because of the access to the data that they have and the access to insight that that data can produce.

 

Clarity of accountability

In most organisations, having a Chief Data Officer (CDO) by name only is like having a paper cut-out of a person trying to help you push a heavy object up a steep hill.

The CDO needs to have clarity of accountability so that they can have clarity of purpose about what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and they need to have influence. It cannot be a role in name only – someone who isn’t able to drive an agenda. It can’t be someone who doesn’t have the backing of the organisation. It can’t be someone that isn’t able to drive influence or isn’t in a position of impact.

 

A CDO’s capabilities

Because data cuts across so many different departments, technologies, and pieces of an organisation internally and externally, it’s really important that they’re able to:

1. Negotiate. Change and negotiate the way things are done. Influence the organisation to make change happen, to get strategies approved and to influence the way things are done.
2. Communicate. They need to be able to educate people, tell stories and set expectations. They must be creative in the ways that they communicate messages, explain situations, vision, and practical plans.
3. Adaptability.The level of adaptability that someone who’s not just sort of focused on a fixed plan, is what helps to come up with a plan but adapt themselves and their organisation and the teams that they are all looking at to make sure that they are always focused on the things that are most important.
4. Listen and be pragmatic. This isn’t about applying what has worked before and just going off with that militantly. It’s got to be about understanding what’s happening, listening to an organisation, picking up on the cues that suggest something needs to be looked at, and also being pragmatic about the way things are done based on what you hear, but also what’s going on around you.

 

Choose the right people to take charge

Over the last 12 to 18 months or so, particularly through the pandemic, there has been a huge increase in organisations wanting to properly build a strategy around their data.

This is driven largely by the awakening, that data and insight in an organisation and insight into the business, into the customers, into the performance, really helped to trade through uncertain times. The continuing uncertainty is the only thing that’s certain.

So the ability to understand what’s going on, by using insights to help drive the decisions is going to be increasingly important.

This has led to an equal increase in organisations wanting to have the right level of type of people who are able to take charge and deliver on the promise that all of the opportunity that data can bring.

 

To summarise

Regardless of whether it’s a board-level position or otherwise putting the right people in the right structure, the right strategy and the right leadership in place, and building the right energy and attention to the topic of data and its associated impact is what’s going to be at the heart of business growth, in the coming years. As the emergence of the CDO role and the maturity of the CDO role begins to take hold and fix.

 

Want to know more about this topic? Listen to this episode of Hub & Spoken

Introducing the Level Up Framework (™)

Introducing the Level Up Framework (™): your guide to a successful, pragmatic and adaptable delivery of your data strategy

Creating an environment for success

Success tends to depend on clarity of purpose, a solid strategy, a clear plan, plus the ability to adjust and adapt as you progress. This is as true for data as it is for any initiative you embark on, and becoming data guided requires that formula.

Having worked with hundreds of organisations across every sector over 15 years, it became clear to me that certain activities are consistently required to create the kind of success that the data ‘brand’ promises, and a certain environment is required to breed that success. 

Time and again I see the same blockers and challenges inhibiting organisations from meeting expectations and delivering value. There is frustration and anxiety from business and data leaders about what to do first, which order to proceed in, how quickly to progress certain elements – and how to make success more certain. 

Every situation is different of course. But there is commonality to the building blocks, activities and thinking that is required as you progress to becoming an organisation that is guided by data.

A framework that guides the journey

The Level Up Framework is a method we’ve developed to make your data journey more practical, more predictable and easier to explain to stakeholders.  It removes the fog; it brings clarity around your data strategy in terms of what you need to do, in what order and to what end.

The framework values business outcomes and building capabilities in equal measure. An approach that focuses (to the point of obsession) on adding incremental business value is the priority. It takes learnings from the way that digital and data-native organisations have successfully started, ramped up and scaled their organisations, and applied these through the lens of the data journey.

The Level Up Framework is based on five stages that give you activities to carry out. Milestones let you know when you’re ready to go to the next stage (we call them the ‘Breakthrough Criteria’).

Each stage builds on the previous. The better the achievement of the criteria of one stage, the more certain and likely you are of success in the subsequent stage. It also values iterative improvements across the journey rather than big giant bang changes that take too long to implement and deliver value from.

The Stages of the Level Up Framework 

Here are the stages of the framework, including the aim and the priority high-level areas of focus for each stage:

Stage 1 – Establish: set the agenda for data in your organisation, get buy-in and secure initial funding.

• Educate the organisation
• Identify the business need
• Create a starter team
• Build the case and get initial investment
• Communication and collaboration

Stage 2 – Prove Value: build credibility and prove the value of data by delivering business return, building foundational capabilities and refining the roadmap.

• Build a minimum viable product that delivers some business value
• Create visibility of core business metrics
• Establish technology practice
• Get investment to scale
• Communication and collaboration

Stage 3 – Scale: deliver business value at scale across the organisation and cement your core capabilities.

• Deliver big business returns
• Scale data products and services
• Grow skills and organisation design
• Mature the operating model
• Embed data-guided culture
• Communication and collaboration
  

Stage 4 – Accelerate: shorten the time to market for business outcomes at scale through data products and service. 

• Deliver fast business returns
• Build strategic optimum organisation
• Implement event-driven and automated actions
• Incremental, rapid innovation
• Continuous improvement/learning

Stage 5 – Optimise: refine and optimise business processes, outcomes and results. 

• Focus on optimisation of process and outcomes
• Think small adjustments, huge returns
• Hands-free decision-making
• Valued data asset
• No decisions made without data 

Organisations that use this framework to help shape their roadmap, communicate to their organisation, and manage their progress report an increased pace of sign off for their data strategy, and speed of the value they’ve returned, in comparison with previous attempts.

 

Data is Not the New Oil

Data is not the new oil

 

Jason Foster, argues that the metaphor ‘data is the new oil’ shouldn’t be used as it comes with such negative connotations. And it isn’t effective at explaining the value of data in organisations. He uses a balanced argument to explain the reasons the metaphor does work and the longer list of reasons it doesn’t work as an analogy.

He also puts right how The Economist is mis-represented in an article it published in 2017 where (it is said that) this phrase was created and spawned.

 

One Big Message

There are totally some similarities between data and oil but it has been misrepresented and is a dangerous analogy to use.

 

Why data isn’t like the new oil at all

Whilst oil has given humans huge opportunities to do things that it wasn’t able to do before – give humans ways to live, interact with the world, and products to buy and services to take on. It’s so huge that it can be so hugely damaging to the environment because of oil spills and the amounts of plastics that it’s turned into. It is absolutely damaging the earth that we’re now trying to unwind but data has the ability to reverse those problems.

Data can be used to pick problems and use that data to drive improvement in terms of climate change and improve the chances of survival. All sorts of really positive ways for data being used for good and not causing harm to the environment.

 

Accessibility of data

Making money from oil is actually limited to a very few people or people within those countries. Whereas data is open and accessible. It’s broad and available to every organization and individual. It’s not finite in a way of who can access it, but it’s also not finite as a resource oil.

There is only a limited amount of oil. Certainly, that’s accessible by humans and we find more and more creative ways of getting to that oil. Now, we’re running out of oil and looking for more sustainable ways of producing and looking at renewable sources of power. There is less oil now than there was before. Data, however, is the opposite. It’s unlimited. It’s growing exponentially. There is more being produced in this very moment than there was in the last hundred years that came before it.

So oil is very finite and data is exponential and continues to grow all the time. 

 

Impact of Misuse

The fines for misuse weigh more heavily to oil than they do to data. The largest fine for a problem with oil was $18.7 billion given to BP for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The total data breach fines is something in the region of one’s to billion across all fines in the world and the largest was $600 million for Equifax in 2017 which is a customer data breach. The kind of money that’s exchanged when there’s a problem is so much bigger for oil than it is for data but that may change because the regulations are tightening up.

Data is lower in terms of its impact for misuse than the oil has. Obviously, the oil industry is much further ahead and much more mature than the data industry and thinking about that, data can become more like oil. According to the article by The Economist in 2017, it already has signs of it happening but we are in a strong position to protect against that.

 

To summarise

Pertaining that data is the new oil is a lazy and potentially dangerous analogy to use when trying to explain data within an organization. Instead of using that metaphor, data should simply be described as something that generates more positivity in the mind of a person or an organization.

 

Listen to this episode of Hub & Spoken

Data – Art vs Science

Art vs. Science

In this blog post, Jason Foster, considers whether art or science plays the most important part in creation of a data guided organisation. He explores the influence art has on the success – and failure, of data science strategies, along with the right blend to achieve positive outcomes. What’s more important in your data strategy: art or science?

 

One Big Message

The science is something that is needed, but it’s art that really drives the difference.

 

Art of Leadership

The art of executing plans and leading them in a really strong way makes a difference. Talking about the art of planning, shaping, defining, and changing culture, the art of management, influence, communication, and storytelling are the things that make someone a good leader of data and the ability to do these, make it possible to really change the narrative of data within an organization. 

It’s the thing that really drives the change required. It means that you can truly add value in your organization. This sort of rich insight can be used to make decisions, to know what’s going on, what to interact with and get more value because of it.

 

Art against Science

There’s been a lot of rhetoric about following science which is necessary but if you think about it, science isn’t really giving the answer but it’s giving indications and predictions about the way something will behave. It also helps assess the impact of that behavior. 

Science gives us a whole load of indicators about what might happen, but the art can show us whether this has been executed well or not. The art is the decisions that are made about how to react to the science and the indications and the variables that have been provided by science and look at those scenarios.

 

To summarise

It’s the blend of science associated with bringing data together, with unpicking the trends, creating predictions with the art of leadership, and decision-making, that really helps positive outcomes. It’s more important than ever that we keep in mind that we need both sides of this really valuable equation of bringing science, algorithms, predictions, technology, statistics to the table alongside with this art of leadership of influence of communication and creativity outside of what we need to do.

 

Listen to this episode of Hub & Spoken

Five years of Cynozure

Five years of helping organisations to maximise their potential through the application of data.

Five years of building a brand and team that aims to create a better future for all through the open and positive use of data.

Five years of enabling organisations to create adaptable, pragmatic, scalable and forward thinking data strategies.

Five years of sharing with the world that data means business.

Five years of Cynozure!

 

The last year has been crazy (you don’t need me to tell you that of course). In fact it doesn’t really feel like a year at all. More like ten. It’s like ten years of change crammed into one small period of 12 months. So much has happened, so many changes have been made. From transformational, generational shifts to minor inconsequential changes that I’m sure we’ll all forget about.

 

With that backdrop, coming into and trading through our fifth year has been an absolute blast. So much has changed and shifted. The way organisations talk about their aspirations for data, the appetite to solve the data challenge, the interest from Board members to invest in the right data initiatives that create positive change.

 

It’s not been a year to stand still and I’m thrilled that our awesome team, our inspiring community and our amazing customers have allowed us to not only exist, but thrive and flourish. For that I am incredibly thankful.

 

So what did year five look like for Cynozure?

Incredible customers

We live for the customers we serve. The past year has been fantastic in terms of the type of interesting work, industries and challenges we’ve been able to support with our work. In Public, Private and Third sectors the appetite we see for organisations to get their hands at the wheel of their business, and steer it successfully through some challenging times, has really focussed the attention on the part data plays in that.

 

It’s been huge fun to shape multi-year data strategies. Sometimes setting direction, or leading the journey; sometimes building data platforms on AWS, Azure, Google, Snowflake and many others; sometimes helping to design organisations and operating models that can help rapid deployment of data products that solve business challenges.  Whilst we unfortunately can’t name all of them, we are grateful to every customer for putting their trust in us to help guide them and their organisations to success. 

 

It’s amazing to see that, from global banks to single country focused retailers, and from small charities to global complex organisations, the challenges have been real. But always solvable with the right brains working on them.

 

Supporting the education and learning in industry

We continue to focus on, and care about, levelling-up the standard for what being good at data means to the world. This year we’ve ramped this up with the launch of the (now bestselling!) book, Data Means Business, that I co-authored with Barry Green. We wrote a book that would provide a clear and pragmatic guide to business leaders wanting to better understand what data means to them, and with enough depth that data leaders and professionals would get huge value also. Humbled that it reached top spot in a number of data categories – and the top 10 in the ‘Business Management and Leadership’ category, along with some of the greats like Steven Covey, Malcolm Gladwell, Simon Sinek and Chris Voss.

 

We ran 20 webinars and masterclasses through the year to give better clarity and understanding around data strategy, building modern data platforms, data product management and DataOps. The aim has been to make these topics clear and consumable for everyone.

 

Data product management

This has been an important and growing theme. Earlier this year we beta launched a data product management community for product managers to come together. It’s been really well received, and we’re growing slowly as we learn what works – and what people are after, in order to add value to the data and business community.

 

A global presence

This year saw our reach expand across the world with our CDO Hub growing from a London focused group of members to an international audience. This has broadened the conversations members have, and opened up great discussions and networking opportunities. Our membership stands at around 200 and we always aim to ensure that every member is better off because of the time they spend with the group.

 

To further drive our international expansion (and move to .com!) we launched a regional CDO Hub and our consulting services in the US led by the fantastic Jennifer Agnes. It’s clear that the quality of the data leadership community is excellent, and that the aspirations of US companies are huge.

 

It’s also been amazing to see that our podcast, Hub & Spoken, has increased frequency to weekly episodes. It’s listened to in 120 countries around the World thanks to great guests, great discussion and content.

 

Wonderful, talented crew

We craft our team very carefully so that every interaction with us is valuable and positively impactful. This year we have grown in our numbers to meet growing demand. Our tight and close knit crew mean everything to me, and we all value the time we spend with our customers, community and partners.

 

In the last year we got to congratulate our lead solution architect consultant, Rebecca Noonan, on the birth of her second child, and more recently welcome her back from maternity leave.  Pavan Divve, one of lead data engineers, had his first child so we’ve had fun talking about sleepless nights and bottle feeding with him too.

 

Unfortunately we also had to deal with tragic loss, as our legal counsel died suddenly just last month. An incredible human being, Richard played a core part of our team and growth, and I dedicate the year to him and his family.

 

Award winning 

Awards are a fantastic way to be recognised for the work we do, and being selected as part of the DataIQs leading figures in data for a second year running was a real honour. There were so many great and inspiring people that have graced this list and I’m humbled to be amongst them.

 

Growth 

Sustainable growth is an important principle of how we run the Cynozure business; to make sure we can continue to serve the best way we can – and invest in continuous improvement to our proposition. Thanks to our amazing customers we have seen solid growth for the fifth year running. 

 

Five years of Cynozure

My heartfelt thanks to everyone that has engaged, supported and represented us this year – can’t wait to see what the next five years brings, and I hope you will be with us as we continue our journey.

Data Means Business with Barry Green and Jason Foster

Would you like to find out a bit more about how Data Means Business came to be?

Barry Green joined Jason Foster on the Hub & Spoken podcast to share how – and why – they wrote the book.

Data Means Business with Barry Green and Jason Foster

Jason Foster and Barry Green recently released a brand new book “Data Means Business.” In the book, they deep-dive behind the scenes of successful businesses that harness the power of data, by deconstructing their processes in simple, easy to follow text.

 

One Big Message

Jason & Barry felt that there was a gap in the market for a book that was consumable by a business leader audience, but with enough depth for the data leaders and professionals to get real value out of it too.

 

Synergise strengths

When you have two experts collaborating, avoid writing separate pieces and stitching it together. Instead, use your synergy to bounce ideas around and improve each other’s work. By doing this you’ll find that ideas and concepts come to life faster.

It is also interesting to note that despite having multiple people comment on the same topic, their previous experiences and knowledge means they will inevitably describe it from a different angle. Combining different perspectives helps to give a varied approach to topics and allows for a fuller, more in-depth discussion.

 

Use analogies to simplify complex topics

We all know that using analogies can be a powerful way to illustrate your point and make it memorable. But what does this have to do with writing?

The answer is simple: everything. Analogies are an integral part of language, so they’re essential when you want to communicate effectively on paper. And the best analogy is one that has a clear connection between two things, which will help readers see how two concepts are related in their own lives. Analogies are particularly important when you are trying to break down complicated concepts in data.

Analogies don’t just happen -they take time and creativity- but once you find the perfect match for your message, you’ll be able to educate a larger audience because of their universal nature.

 

Leverage your network

If you are on an active lookout for someone to collaborate with on a bigger project, start by searching around your own network first. If you haven’t found the perfect someone to collaborate with inside your network, there are plenty of opportunities to meet other people interested in similar topics.  Trade shows and conferences are an easy way of meeting like minded people who can become some of your closest allies.

For those of us who are savvy online, you can reach out and form connections on LinkedIn, or other forms of social media. If you are open and willing to broaden your network, you never know who might become your new business ‘running partner.’

 

Writing a book in under a year

Writing a book is difficult – and writing one in under a year can seem almost impossible. In the podcast, several tips were given on how to reach big goals in a short timeframe.

• It can be easy to give up halfway or take an extended break, creating a set timeline will keep you on track.
• Becoming an author is a high-level creative process that requires a lot of attention and mental power. Therefore, it is important to take the time to step back and review your work every so often.
• Hold yourself accountable. Even if you want to keep your special project under wraps, you still need to keep yourself accountable in trying to reach your goals.
• Be mindful with time. Use your time wisely – if you are spending hours staring blankly at a screen there is no point in being there. Vary up your schedule, revise old text or shift your focus completely so you can be productive in the moment.

 

To summarise

Coming up with a book concept and seeing through the process right through to publication in under a year can seem like a daunting task. However, with the right people to work with and some grit and determination it is fully possible to create a bestseller – even if writing doesn’t come naturally to you.

 

Find out more about the book, and download part one for free.

 

 

Vanity, Sanity, Reality: What’s really important for your data strategy

Vanity, Sanity, Reality: What’s really important for your data strategy

You see them everywhere – vanity metrics plague many facets of society especially in the business world. C-suite executives and ambitious leadership often use vanity metrics to try and paint a much rosier picture of their business.

 

Business vanity

Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity and cash is reality. 

In the business world, there are many vanity metrics. The most common one is that people get mixed up between revenue, profit and actual cash in the bank. Revenue is a vanity metric extensively used in marketing and is often misleading from what is actually happening in a business. 

Profit can similarly be a vanity metric because it is a hypothetical used on financial documents. Until invoices are paid and the bank transfers go through, you don’t actually have any tangible result of your success that can be used to drive your business forward.

Cash flow is actually the most reliable metric as it shows that expenditures have been paid and the money is sitting in the bank. You can spend, invest and upgrade with cash. 

 

Translating a similar approach to data

Artificial intelligence is vanity, data is sanity and business outcomes are reality. 

Artificial intelligence is vanity

While it might seem really nice to talk about all the slick tech you have set up, what does it contribute to your business? 

If you are not aware of the functionality of your artificial intelligence and how it adds to your business, it could just end up being a very costly expense. 

Keep on top of your tech stack and AI to ensure that you aren’t spending on systems that are not contributing to your goals. 

Data is sanity

Not all data is sanity. Good, clean, trusted data is sanity. The type that is conducive to providing in-depth insights and contributing towards the business’ key performance indicators. 

Data is similar to profit: it doesn’t mean anything unless something is being done with it. You need to utilise data for a purpose that helps achieve your business goals. 

Business outcomes are reality

Most people think that the most important thing for a business is to make money. While this is true, what really matters, in the long term, are outcomes.

Business outcomes are the culmination of AI and data to improve the business. The goal of any business should be to provide value for its customers so they continue to buy from them again and again. This means understanding what drives customer satisfaction and designing products and services with those needs in mind. 

What’s more, business outcomes are about doing things that create value – which is the reason your business exists to begin with. 

 

To summarise

It is easy to get swept up in vanity metrics, detracting from the core factors that drive a business. Understanding why you are in business and the end goal of creating positive outcomes for your clients and customers will keep you focused on what metrics are truly important. 

 

Listen to this episode of Hub & Spoken

The right planning horizon for your data strategy

The right planning horizon for your data strategy

With so much uncertainty, change, movement in people behaviour, adjustments in business strategy – and long-tail world events – it’s normal to wonder about the period over which you should plan your strategy. How can you be sure of a short, mid and long term plan when everything might change tomorrow?

 

One Big Message

Data strategy is the framework that enables you to generate business value through the application of data and analytics. So with that in mind, we need to think about what timescale is sensible.

 

Different time horizons

Let’s think about it like a funnel where you start off with a really wide reach as far as you can think as possible. And then, slowly come down to a point where you’re at really specific initiatives and activities. Now those are two different time horizons for specific activities we need to do now and there’s a really long-term vision for where we want to go.

Regardless of the size of your organization or of the stage that you’re at, it’s useful to think about these different planning horizons when planning out and thinking about your data strategy.

Vision as a top-level: Simon Sineck, the famous management guru and leadership guru, would talk about the purpose and the why. The “why the vision”, the north star of your data strategy should remain pretty unchanged regardless of what kind of time horizon you’re looking at.

Business strategy: Data strategy should clearly align itself with the vision. That includes taking a broad look at the data strategy itself, the components of the strategy we are trying to execute and the kind of capabilities that you want to build.

Operational plan: This is when you start to get into the nuts and bolts of what you want to do. This includes looking at what you want to achieve in that year to contribute to the data strategy, which ultimately contributes to the business strategy.

 

Some additional considerations to take into account

Budget cycles: If tied to budget cycles, then clearly you need to think carefully to align yourselves to financial planning. Plans you put in place for your data strategy aligned up with any budgetary decisions or requests you need to make when it comes to being able to execute the strategy.

Otherwise, if you’re not tied to that financial budgeting cycle quite so tightly, then you can flex a bit more and I’ve seen some organizations even request money quarterly so that they can get the next quarter’s investment. It’s good to sort of allocate the budget across over one year or a number of years, and then grow from there.

Mechanism from vision to activity tracking: This whole mechanism of going from vision to activity tracking at a detailed level allows you to really flex and adjust the days, weeks, months, quarters of activity that you’re going to do without changing your overarching goal for the year.

Using retrospectives: At the end of each of your planning horizons, you should be looking back to assess what went well, what didn’t go so well and what kind of changes we might want to make off the back of that looking forward. Not only should you consider the outcomes and how successful you are in the outcomes you’ve achieved, but also in the process itself, how this plan processes and how these planning horizons really worked for you.

 

To summarise

The idea here is to create a really adaptable data strategy that can flex and adjust around what’s happening in the real world. To know what’s happening within your business so it will not fix you and handcuff you to a stated data strategy that may have gone out of date a number of years back.

Want to know more about this topic? Listen to this episode of Hub & Spoken

Cynozure Launches in the USA

Cynozure’s mission to change the way business is done through positive use of data expands to the United States

We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that Cynozure has launched in the United States with a team led by Jennifer Agnes, our new US Managing Director.

 

Our ambition and approach has always been centred on enabling more people to use, access and understand data. The more people that can use it, and use it to do good, the more value data has in our world. We’re committed to a better future for all through the positive and open use of data. 

 

“Since 2016, we’ve seen fantastic growth focused on the UK market, and have helped incredible brands and organisations to achieve success in their business by applying smart data and analytics strategies” said Jason, CEO and Founder, “We have clients with a global presence, and some international clients in Europe, but this addition of a US-focused team will help to expand the reach of those we can truly impact. This expansion will help us better serve and support the requirements of the organisations that we work with, and we couldn’t be happier to start 2021 with expansion into this data savvy territory.”

 

CDO Hub Success

In the summer of 2020, Jennifer launched the US chapter of the CDO Hub (having seen first hand the benefits of this members-only club for senior data leaders) as a way to build a US-based community of data leaders interested in leveling up the craft of data leadership. What we found were passionate, experienced data leaders hungry for honest, constructive conversation without sales pitches or product demos… Just brilliant leaders keen to “pay it forward” to develop the nextgen data leaders, and find advice and best practices to help solve their own data challenges.

 

The success of the CDO Hub for the US market showed us that the appetite was right for our culture, methodology and service offering; so we are therefore excited to continue to grow our brand and presence there. 

 

We’ve launched with our full service offering to the US, covering:

• Advise: We craft the future business outcomes together with a bespoke and practical data strategy based on our methodologies and best practices
• Design and Build: We design and deliver data and analytics technology solutions that generate business outcomes with the market leading technologies
• Maximise: We help implement and embed the business and culture change needed to deliver success
• Grow: We help individuals and teams to attain their personal and professional potential through coaching, education and executive briefings.

Work has already started for Cynozure in the US

Exciting work has already begun in the North-east with a global consumer goods company, and global financial and services brands. The entire Cynozure crew is looking forward to extending our services to other organisations too.

 

Jennifer concluded:

 “I’m thrilled to be part of the Cynozure Crew to build the US-based business. Jason, James and the entire team have created a great brand – based not only on their data expertise as their clients can attest, but on the value they place on data as a way to make a difference in the world.  They care about their clients’ success and their employees’ success.  And their approach to data is refreshing because it is business outcome centric delivered by experienced business and data professionals.”

 

An experienced business, data and innovation executive, Jennifer has held numerous global leadership and transformation roles in Europe and North America. The breadth of her experience – from risk management, six sigma, and data leadership to banking and financial services, consumer goods to energy management – underscores her ability to translate complex business challenges into simple, and effective people, process, data  and technology roadmaps that result in successful digital transformation and business outcomes.   

 

If you’d like to discuss your data strategy with Jennifer, you can reach her at jennifer@cynozure.co.uk

To hear more from Jennifer, listen to Episode 55 of Hub & Spoken – she and Jason discuss advancing the craft of data leadership.

7 Data Trends for 2020 | Jason Foster

Looking ahead to 2020, it’s going to be an incredible year in data trends. The potential of data and analytics is unrelenting, with more organisations realising this power. In most cases, these businesses are doing it with more care than ever before.

Data privacy continues to appear in the headlines with massive GDPR fines. Similarly, new governmental bodies are scrutinising the growth of AI on an international scale.

The data industry has also seen a lot of change over the year. Consider the major acquisitions of data tools by Salesforce and Google alike. What impact will these events have through 2020? How will the culture of data and analytics transform as more data leadership takes on?

7 Data Trends for 2020

We’ve mapped out 7 data trends for 2020, based on everything we’ve seen over the past year. Did we miss any data trends? Let us know on LinkedIn or Twitter.

The AI ‘Hype Bubble’

In 2020, the famed hype around AI probably won’t burst, so expect to hear more buzzwords and headlines than ever. However, it’s become clear in 2019 that the realities of AI are starting to bite.

We’ll likely see a realignment of expectations, and a new focus on foundational use cases that support the automation and optimisation of internal operations. We had Daniel Hulme, CEO of Satalia and expert in everything AI, on the podcast to share his perspective on the awareness of practical AI.

Move towards DataOps thinking

The ability to deliver value quickly, with robust processes and move data through the value chain – from idea to activation – is where organisations will win with data. Through 2020, we’ll see the growth of DataOps as a method to achieve this ambition.

Thinking about building data products and solutions with similar methods seen in digital native businesses and startups will increasingly be a focus.

Continued push for democratisation and self-service

Many tools and vendors are enabling people to approach technical tasks more easily – for example, in data ingestion you now have an array of tools to choose from, with Panopoly, Fivetran, Dataiku, etc.

However, more people need to be careful not to over-democratise; trying to make everyone an expert isn’t a solution, and we’ve already spent years pushing back against the foundation of new cottage industries.

Evolution of ‘Smart Cities’

There’s a whole lot of hype around the concept of Smart Cities, and the development in IoT, APIs, and cloud platforms are enabling more and more collaboration between citizens and local government (and between local governments themselves).

For example, the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) has been set up to drive increased collaboration and shared technology between London Councils. These projects will continue to grow and deliver real value to the tax payer and citizens’ wellbeing through 2020.

Acquisitions will bear fruit

Despite being announced earlier this year, in 2020 SalesForce will maximise their acquisition of Tableau, and we’ll finally see this integration start to take shape. It’ll be interesting to see the effect of Tableau giving SalesForce some real firepower in the data and BI space.

Will we see them pivot completely to be a data, data warehouse or analytics platform? Likewise, Google will start to fold Looker into their stack more fully – and maybe we’ll see Google Analytics delivered through Looker?

Cloud platform wars

With AWS, Google and Microsoft fighting over the cloud platform market and ensuring use cases on data, analytics and AI are in their kit bag, we’ll see a continued and rapid rise in organisations moving their workloads to the Cloud.

Whilst we’ll see 3rd party vendors like Snowflake collaborating with the Cloud vendors, we’ll also see them taking some of the consumption and provision of their own tooling direct to customers instead of people purely using the native tools that come from the Cloud vendors themselves.

The Chief Data Officer

Similar to the growth we’ve seen over the past decade, 2020 will see a continued trend of organisations taking on a senior data leader to own and lead the definition and delivery of their data strategy. The expectations are always high with this position, and tenure can be short because of that.

2020 will see some movements across the industry through a combination of the hype deflating and early foundational work over the last couple of years coming to an end,  and the focus in organisations switching to value and outcomes over governance and consolidation.

How accurate were our predictions for 2019?

This isn’t our first rodeo – in 2018, we made eight predictions for what would change in data throughout 2019. How well did we do?

Increase in data breaches and GDPR fines.

Absolutely. In January, we saw Google hit with the largest GDPR fine to date. In June, British Airways contested a record £183m fine, and a month later Marriott Hotels were hit with a £99m penalty related to a data breach discovered in 2018.

For Tim Connold, this was only the first step for ICO, with these fines laying down the groundwork for the watchdog to fully bear its teeth in years to come.

More backlash and protests against big (data focused) tech companies.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a sizeable rock this year, you’ve probably read about the furore against Amazon and Facebook this year. Amid opposition from customers and lawmakers, Amazon’s profits fell short in their second quarter.

In a similar vein, Facebook has come under more scrutiny than ever with Mark Zuckerberg spending time with Congress and Facebook introducing new internal controls – but this hasn’t hindered growth.

Power to diversity: an increase in diversity in data and tech roles.

There’s been some progress in gender diversity this year, but there’s still lots to do. Looking across the industry, not enough leadership positions are held by women. Likewise, most funding in tech startups goes to male-led organisations.

Women in Data continue to do an incredible job raising awareness and educating the importance of gender diversity.

Growth of data at the board level.

Looking at LinkedIn, there are now over 6000 people with the title ‘Chief Data Officer’. Back in 2010, Gartner reported that there were just 15 CDOs in large organisations, with that number rising to 400 in 2014, and leaping to 4000 in 2017.

Closer to home, membership in the CDO Hub community has doubled this year. However, we’ve seen a drop in board ownership of data, likely due to many GDPR programmes finishing, with many CDOs not integrating into Board level.

Ethics start to take more prevalence at the heart of data analytics in 2019.

In the UK and beyond, we’ve seen a greater interest in data ethics than ever before. The UK’s Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) grew its footprint and remit this year. Likewise, they published their first papers on the ethics of AI. Further afield, new ethics bodies have also been set up to consider similar issues abroad.

Renaissance of the Data Warehouse.

There’s certainly been an increase in discussions about building data warehouses and using traditional data warehouse techniques. Snowflake is a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant this year, and had a valuation of $4b. That’s pretty impressive growth for the cloud-based data warehouse.

Focus on data fidelity, instead of data quality.

Of all our data trends, this hasn’t really proven true in 2019. Quality and governance are still big priorities, and are considered to be a foundational requirement for success. We haven’t seen data fidelity take off as a term or approach to replace quality, as predicted.

Data literacy across a business, not just focused on Analysts.

There has been some progress in data literacy, gathering traction with programmes like Qlik’s Data Literacy module, but most literacy still focuses on creating analysts – and not levelling up to the board room.

 

That’s everything from us. What are your data ambitions for 2020?

Hub & Spoken – our new podcast.

We’re in and around conversations with lots of organisations and senior leaders who are interested in learning, sharing and growing in the data and analytics space.

Alongside our core consulting business, it was a natural next step for us at Cynozure to engage in the business and data leadership community, and to get under the covers of stories and share those more widely.

Looking around, we found and there really isn’t much dedicated to data and analytics, so we’ve created Hub & Spoken to be the number one place to hear from the best business leaders that have an interest in how data can help to accelerate and launch business models that give impact. 

We also want to look at the topics about data and analytics that hit the mainstream; we’ll be doing a regular round up of interesting, funny and thought provoking news stories that make it into the public and trade press.

The content will adjust and evolve as we progress, and will listen to feedback from listeners – so please get in touch and let us know what you think! 

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