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- Hello, and welcome to The Red Olive Fibonacci Podcast.
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The podcast all about data and analytics,
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where we hear from leading specialists
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and get their take on the industry.
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I'm your host, Nicky Rudd.
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Today, I'm joined by Ben Barrass,
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Group Head of Data at Centaur Media,
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a provider of market intelligence
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and publisher of publications such as, Econsultancy,
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Design Week, and The Lawyer.
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Ben is responsible for planning
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and execution of the data strategy
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across all of the digital subscription products
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that the company runs.
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He has nearly two decades of experience
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working in a range of digital business operations.
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He's a marketing technology expert
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and a specialist in using data
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to transform digital processes
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in both large and small business environments.
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Our conversation covers the importance
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of building data collection in a project from the outset,
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why it's crucial to really understand your audience,
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and a new way to think about what data we collect
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and whether it's worth sending email
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to the people on your email list that never open it.
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What are we waiting for?
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Let's go.
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(upbeat music)
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- I started off as a service side developer,
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a back-end developer back in the day,
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and got more into analytics,
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and controlling data flows between systems,
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and various sorts of integration work.
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So when I left,
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worked in a small company as a temp director,
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pretty much every single aspect of the business
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was data-led in some way.
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It was effectively an affiliate marketing organisation,
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so all the revenue came through digital tracking
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and everything else.
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So, my journey into data was more led by
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the need for me to make stuff work.
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So, hooking up various types of systems,
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and then making sure things spoke to each other,
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and the clients and suppliers and contractors
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all knew kind of what we were billing
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or why we were billing,
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and make sure the right messages
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went out to the right people.
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My experience then mainly got involved with
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making sure everything was hooked up and working together,
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and the various robots of data
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were connected into the right systems.
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And I moved on to Econsultancy
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very much along those same lines,
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joining their marketing team to help really drive
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their marketing segmentation and messaging.
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I remember Ashley, on my first day at the job,
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one of their events, he announced me to the room,
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one of his speeches he was doing,
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they've made their first data hire within the organisation.
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And I think it was telling for Econsultancy
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that they saw the need to put their first data hire
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into the marketing team.
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I wasn't joining finance or sales or backend devs.
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It was very much focused around the marketing efforts.
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And from there, I've moved from marketing
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into sort of core central systems,
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and then trying to organise
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what is effectively a transitioning publisher
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from an old sorta print model,
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into a digital transformed online content
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subscription business,
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and all the associated systems and services
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that go along with that.
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- What's the steps that Centaur has gone through
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in moving from that sorta traditional print publishing
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into a fully digital online publisher,
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and also events and trainer as well, I think.
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You do training as well, don't you.
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- Well effectively, all of those businesses,
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the events, the training, you know, the webinars,
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the reporting, all comes from valued content.
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So, whether you're a publisher
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that sticks words out on print,
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or you're a publisher that sticks words out on the screen,
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or talks words at events, or, you know,
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it's that expert knowledge and understanding
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that people are coming to you for.
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And I think, to some degree,
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the business to business market
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obviously is transitioning more easily
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than maybe the B to C market will,
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because obviously you've got very distinct niche audiences
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that are coming to you for that kind of expertise.
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The whole sort of digital transformation experience
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obviously isn't limited to publishing,
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and has been part of the core ethos of the business
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for the last few years,
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in the way that it's helped other businesses
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through their digital transformation efforts as well.
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So it's been a really interesting learning curve
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to see how different industries
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are tackling some common transformational problems, really,
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that I know that we've gone through,
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that you see them facing.
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And it is sometimes difficult for our business.
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And as much as we talk about how people should be doing it,
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and then behind the scenes,
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you do see some of the situations where actually
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that's quite a challenging thing to do for organisations.
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- With all of the publications
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that were in Centaur's portfolio, if you like,
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how did you go about it?
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Have you sort of taken it
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so that you've taken certain publications
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and then moved them on,
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or has it been a company-wide thing?
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What are the steps that you've sort of taken
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to get to where you are now?
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- A lot of the transformation
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has been mostly around standardisation of services.
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So, the portfolios,
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obviously we're all effectively individual businesses,
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all run as individual businesses in their own way,
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have their own reason for doing their own events,
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their own magazines.
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And I think the way we've approached it
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is through a certain level of standardisation.
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So especially around the marketing technology,
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make sure we're using single services across the business,
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and harmonising a lot of data systems and integrations.
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It's about making businesses aware
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of the opportunity they've got
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from the services that are available to them,
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by creating almost like a standard approach
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to how they can then manage their business online.
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Some businesses transitioned much better than others.
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We've gone through a kind of
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a phase withdrawal of the print publications,
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a more sort of effective push of online events
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and face-to-face type expertise,
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sharing, networking type events,
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and really a big push around
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bringing our corporate clients into an online environment.
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So, getting people more used to changing their habits
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from expecting to pick up
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a corporate magazine on a reception desk,
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through to actually them logging in,
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or viewing a set of blog articles,
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or something on a phone on the train
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on the way in in the morning.
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And it's that sorta habitual change, I think,
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that has been slow and gradual
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over the course of the sort of last five years,
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where we've been able to sort of,
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not slowly substitute one for the other,
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but as people get more used to consuming content online,
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we've ridden that wave
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along with the sort of the audience that we've got.
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You can offer more value services online
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than you can in a magazine.
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And it's about trying to supply valued content
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in a mechanism that works for consumer
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that maybe a magazine can't.
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There are certain publications that,
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I can't say should never transition,
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but you look at Creative Review, for example.
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It's a beautiful magazine.
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It's beautifully printed, the artwork's amazing,
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it's for a creative audience.
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You can only supplement that experience online.
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You can't necessarily replace
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that tangible feeling of holding that beautiful thing,
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if you see what I mean.
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It is easier with a smaller number of publications.
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We were 50, 48 brands or something along those lines.
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We've cut that down to two main portfolios now,
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which we can really support.
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- That's a massive task, isn't it? (laugh)
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- Yeah, so I mean, from a data perspective
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on the transformation side,
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there's a whole lotta work
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around just managing those portfolios,
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and sort of standardising stuff,
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making sure everyone's got the associated data they need.
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But there're also a lot of massive similarities
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in the way the specific B to B audience operates,
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how you target them from a marketing perspective,
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how you understand what the market sizing is.
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From that side of things, the whole B to B data environment,
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I can't say it's easier,
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but (laugh) you've got some pointers
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with some fairly standardised variables there
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that you can work with.
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- Obviously, when the publications were print,
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there was a subscription model.
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With the online, how many questions have you asked
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of the people who are subscribing
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about what they actually want?
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How do you manage that?
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- The registration systems
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that we've got across the various products,
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it's a balance of getting a level of information out
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that you'd need in order to be able to operate the service.
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By operating the service, I include marketing.
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It's not ops, though, it's about delivering value content.
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So, there's certain standardised fields
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that you kinda need to have available,
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understanding someone's level of seniority, for example,
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or, you know, the actual company they work for,
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the industry they're in, that sorta stuff.
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That's all fairly required.
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But at the same time,
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we've shied away from asking more questions than that.
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The reason for that is
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we probably became a bit more sophisticated
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in the way that we understand user behaviour
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behind the scenes.
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So the idea was we could trim down our data collection forms
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in order to supplement it
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with specific behavioural information.
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I think, to some degree,
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the issues that we have around data collection
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tend to be ownership of forms.
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Is it the product teams that own the forms,
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'cause they wanna churn the people through the forms
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as quickly as possible with as least barriers as possible?
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We try things like progressive profiling,
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you know, other types of ways
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of extracting other types of information out
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during the course of a visit.
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The move to first party data being powerful,
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it's not news to us.
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We've always had payables, gateways,
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soft or hard payables to force people to pay
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or to register before they can view our content.
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So for us, we've always dealt in first party data.
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We do very little in third party data.
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But the ability to be able to
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really judge someone's intention via their behaviour
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then requires a massive amount of work behind the scenes
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to ensure the content they're viewing
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is appropriately tagged
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so that you can really draw
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some strong conclusions for that.
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If you've got an editorial team
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more and more favouring the idea of
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a sort of a transparent value exchanges
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or zero party data approach,
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where you just literally go and say to someone,
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(chuckle) well, why do you wanna use us?
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What is it we can deliver for you
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that's actually gonna be of value?
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Okay, we'll just stick to that,
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and we won't do any of the other stuff around the sides.
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If you tell us you're not interested in it,
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we just won't do that.
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I think just how you convert that
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into some sort of tangible data collection thing that works,
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it'd be very straightforward
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for us as a data team to implement that.
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It would be very hard for a business
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to turn down the opportunity to sell someone something
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that maybe they've implied they weren't that interested in.
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I think that's probably
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the hardest battle across the business.
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It's like you send an email, right.
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(laugh) What have you ever seen email open rates
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that vary massively away
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from what generally they always are?
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You know, if you look at, what's it,
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25% open rate on an email,
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you send it to 75% of the people that aren't interested.
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But yet you've got 100% of a list.
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You're gonna use that list every time.
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And every time, you get 25% open rate for it.
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(chuckle) It's like, well, why are we sending it
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to the other 75% of people all the time?
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It's 'cause the business can't let go of the fact
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that their list is this big,
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and they have to use their list.
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Because if they don't use their list,
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they're not exploiting the value of their data.
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When in reality, 75% of the people,
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they just don't care less anyway.
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- I was gonna say,
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it's obviously there's changes in cookie law and, you know,
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how you can re-market stuff and what people are looking at.
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And that's sort of a whole intent data.
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Is that something that you are looking at
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as a business for kind of future,
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as in what you could predict somebody would be interested in
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to make sure that you're tailoring that experience for them?
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- I think that intent data will be more important
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when we look to associate with new markets.
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It's difficult to some degree in some of our markets,
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because we have got great coverage.
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They're not big pools.
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You can pretty much identify
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all the people that are in the pool already.
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You know, the account managers know the market.
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They know the people they're dealing with.
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They know why person X isn't buying.
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We're not talking trying to sell 3 million widgets a year
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to 10 pence each, or whatever.
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It's high value sales, high value corporate subscriptions
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to big companies who work in established markets.
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To some degree, we're always fishing in the same pools.
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And that's only gonna work for so long.
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When we have exhausted those pools,
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that's when we look to extend out into other areas, I guess.
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That's when we start to really leverage
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on building out regionally diverse audiences,
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changing our editorial content approaches,
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looking to find lookalikes,
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all that kinda stuff will start to really come into its own.
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It does to some degree in some parts of our business,
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and those parts of the business tend to be the ones
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that are more e-commerce focused at the moment.
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Whether they're selling events, or training products,
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or something like that,
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that are separate to sorta maybe a corporate subscription.
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We'll pick out specific product areas of the business to do,
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not like stunk works, but you know,
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sort of adopt certain levels of new approaches,
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different ways to approach new challenges.
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And they'll take it on in a little structured way
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and then bring that back to the business as a case study.
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That's kind of how we adopt new technology now.
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So, if one part of the business starts to use something
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and it really sort of works,
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we'll then introduce that out
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to other parts of the business,
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or maybe look to remove
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a couple of existing ways of doing business
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and replacing it with a new structure
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that's been proven in one smaller area of the business.
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We can be a lot more agile that way.
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We can resource for it a lot better as well,
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because you don't then have a cross-portfolio project group
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trying to administer, you know, an 18-month project.
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You're dealing with a couple of brand managers
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and a product team, or, you know, a marketing team.
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Everyone's getting involved,
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everyone learns how to use the products.
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You can really make some changes quite quickly that way.
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The approach to marketing segmentation (chuckle)
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is kind of my background, more than anything else.
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All the old sorta standard marketing approaches,
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clustering, you know, segmentation analysis,
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all that kinda stuff,
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they're the same as they ever have been.
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There's different tools and things
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available to do 'em all now,
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but that kind of approach and things
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is very much the same as it always has been.
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In a business that's so led
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by people that've been in the industry for a while,
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people that understand the customers so well,
Speaker:
00:14:10
the role of data to challenge their belief,
Speaker:
00:14:15
if you're coming at someone
Speaker:
00:14:16
with a fresh report I certainly don't know about,
Speaker:
00:14:18
it's very easy to gain their trust and bring them on board
Speaker:
00:14:22
with what you're trying to tell them.
Speaker:
00:14:23
If you're dealing with someone
Speaker:
00:14:24
who's been an account manager in the industry
Speaker:
00:14:26
for 10, 15 years,
Speaker:
00:14:28
and they've spoken to all the people,
Speaker:
00:14:29
and they're very clear on why people buy
Speaker:
00:14:31
and why they don't buy,
Speaker:
00:14:32
what role is there for data?
Speaker:
00:14:34
What can you offer them
Speaker:
00:14:35
that potentially they don't already know?
Speaker:
00:14:37
So, you're kind of setting yourselves up
Speaker:
00:14:40
almost like an antithesis of their belief
Speaker:
00:14:43
in order to try and push them in a different direction.
Speaker:
00:14:45
You're almost getting involved in psychology
Speaker:
00:14:47
in order to do your day-to-day work.
Speaker:
00:14:50
You kind of have to position everything that you're doing
Speaker:
00:14:53
in such a way that it allows people
Speaker:
00:14:56
to change their worldview.
Speaker:
00:14:58
- It's quite interesting,
Speaker:
00:14:59
because when we're talking about kinda subscription models
Speaker:
00:15:01
and stuff like that,
Speaker:
00:15:02
you're always thinking about prospects or customers,
Speaker:
00:15:05
and it being an external thing.
Speaker:
00:15:06
But it sounds though that actually
Speaker:
00:15:07
you're using your data strategy as well
Speaker:
00:15:10
to actually help and change behaviour internally as well.
Speaker:
00:15:14
Would you say that's true?
Speaker:
00:15:16
- Yeah, I would say that's probably more true
Speaker:
00:15:19
than it is us providing our data
Speaker:
00:15:22
to assist the external part of the business
Speaker:
00:15:24
and the customer part of the business, in as much as,
Speaker:
00:15:27
you know, data's the only way
Speaker:
00:15:29
you will change people's (chuckle) minds.
Speaker:
00:15:31
With digital transformation,
Speaker:
00:15:33
data transformation is always a subset of it.
Speaker:
00:15:36
It shouldn't be, but digital transformation,
Speaker:
00:15:39
all the gloss gets put into the website,
Speaker:
00:15:42
the process, the conversion rates, the e-commerce,
Speaker:
00:15:46
you know, all the flashy stuff,
Speaker:
00:15:47
and the, you know, we're gonna be remarketing this,
Speaker:
00:15:49
and we're gonna be, you know, using LinkedIn,
Speaker:
00:15:51
and it's gonna be great.
Speaker:
00:15:53
You're gonna see our adverts everywhere and all that stuff.
Speaker:
00:15:55
And then when it comes to actually
Speaker:
00:15:56
the nuts and bolts of the data transformation,
Speaker:
00:15:58
people forget that actually,
Speaker:
00:16:00
there's a very different set of skills
Speaker:
00:16:03
involved in a business with regards to how it uses data,
Speaker:
00:16:06
how it understands data, and how it processes data.
Speaker:
00:16:08
At Centaur, we're really, really lucky,
Speaker:
00:16:10
'cause everyone promptly brought into I want data.
Speaker:
00:16:14
You know, I know I need this data
Speaker:
00:16:15
in order to make these decisions.
Speaker:
00:16:17
It's just making sure that
Speaker:
00:16:19
the systems are there in such a way
Speaker:
00:16:21
to be able to deliver that information to them.
Speaker:
00:16:23
Because what you do tend to lose quite quickly,
Speaker:
00:16:26
without all of that really boring stuff,
Speaker:
00:16:29
to most people, not necessarily me,
Speaker:
00:16:31
but all that stuff around governance, trust, reliability,
Speaker:
00:16:36
you know, being able to put a number out to the business
Speaker:
00:16:39
and stand hand on heart and say, that is true
Speaker:
00:16:42
that is accurate, that won't change,
Speaker:
00:16:44
you only need a few disasters along the way,
Speaker:
00:16:47
where, oh, sorry, no, that's wrong. (laugh)
Speaker:
00:16:50
Can we have that back, please?
Speaker:
00:16:51
We've gotta do that again.
Speaker:
00:16:52
Or, you know, something else happens
Speaker:
00:16:54
and maybe you lose a bit of data here, there,
Speaker:
00:16:56
or everywhere where something wasn't quite tracked properly,
Speaker:
00:16:59
or, you know.
Speaker:
00:17:00
Without that sort of governance
Speaker:
00:17:01
and that rigour around the team,
Speaker:
00:17:03
all of a sudden you lose a lot of trust and reliability.
Speaker:
00:17:06
It sets your data transformation efforts back massively.
Speaker:
00:17:10
And I think that's probably the biggest challenge,
Speaker:
00:17:13
that kinda trust, building trust within the business.
Speaker:
00:17:17
Being there when they need you in such a form that allows,
Speaker:
00:17:21
you've gotta effectually be a mind reader.
Speaker:
00:17:22
You need to know what they're gonna be asking for
Speaker:
00:17:24
in six months time,
Speaker:
00:17:25
so you can make sure that it's available for them
Speaker:
00:17:27
when they get around to needing that piece of information.
Speaker:
00:17:30
- How important is it
Speaker:
00:17:31
to have the visualisation of that right,
Speaker:
00:17:35
so that it's accessible for everybody who needs it
Speaker:
00:17:37
do you think?
Speaker:
00:17:38
Is that a big part of a project, do you think,
Speaker:
00:17:41
of that transformation?
Speaker:
00:17:42
- Yeah, no, it is definitely.
Speaker:
00:17:43
I think we've been through various phases of this.
Speaker:
00:17:45
So, you know, your initial phase of migrating
Speaker:
00:17:48
from massive Excel sheets of information
Speaker:
00:17:51
that you're sending out, and going, look, isn't it great.
Speaker:
00:17:53
And everyone's looking at an Excel sheet going,
Speaker:
00:17:54
no, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker:
00:17:56
Through to some standard visualisations,
Speaker:
00:17:59
where people go to, you know, a handful of times,
Speaker:
00:18:03
see things are going in
Speaker:
00:18:04
kinda the direction they want them to do,
Speaker:
00:18:05
and then never revisit them again,
Speaker:
00:18:07
to maybe trying to get it to that next sort of level
Speaker:
00:18:09
of how do you actually present that information
Speaker:
00:18:11
back to people to keep them interested
Speaker:
00:18:13
is a massive challenge.
Speaker:
00:18:14
I know a lotta companies talk about things like,
Speaker:
00:18:16
you know, lunch and learn sessions,
Speaker:
00:18:18
and getting the analyst out into the business.
Speaker:
00:18:21
We're not blessed with a massive data team
Speaker:
00:18:23
of thousands of analysts and, you know, massive budgets.
Speaker:
00:18:26
So what does make the difference
Speaker:
00:18:29
is just making you publicly available to talk through stuff,
Speaker:
00:18:34
to almost be the voice of the report,
Speaker:
00:18:37
and being able to recall that information
Speaker:
00:18:40
on demand (chuckle) in a meeting at the drop of a hat.
Speaker:
00:18:43
To be fair, lockdown's been a blessing for that,
Speaker:
00:18:45
'cause you can have a million windows open, right?
Speaker:
00:18:47
(laugh) And you can just be, like,
Speaker:
00:18:49
how many subscribers have you got on product H?
Speaker:
00:18:51
You'd be like, yeah, of course we've got 647 as of last.
Speaker:
00:18:56
You know, you can't do that in a meeting, really,
Speaker:
00:18:58
you'd look like a fool.
Speaker:
00:18:59
That sort of data literacy,
Speaker:
00:19:00
that understanding of what your business is
Speaker:
00:19:03
is something we're really trying to promote.
Speaker:
00:19:04
We call it know your business.
Speaker:
00:19:06
But it's just a one-pager, all the top numbers.
Speaker:
00:19:09
You know, how many subscribers have you got,
Speaker:
00:19:11
what's your average renewal rate,
Speaker:
00:19:13
what's your newsletter sizes, that sorta thing.
Speaker:
00:19:16
The most basic kind of information possible.
Speaker:
00:19:18
So I kind of go on (chuckle) the basis of
Speaker:
00:19:20
what can we do to make things easier.
Speaker:
00:19:22
So, when it comes to the analyst,
Speaker:
00:19:24
I'm trying to get those guys to be embedded within the team.
Speaker:
00:19:28
So when the project teams are starting to look at stuff,
Speaker:
00:19:30
they're infusing that understanding into the product
Speaker:
00:19:33
or project delivery.
Speaker:
00:19:34
They're bringing back the understanding
Speaker:
00:19:36
of what the business is actually trying to do.
Speaker:
00:19:38
And we can then make incremental changes to what we're doing
Speaker:
00:19:44
in order to make sure that we can answer
Speaker:
00:19:45
some of those questions,
Speaker:
00:19:46
or at least expectations are being met across the business.
Speaker:
00:19:49
That you're gonna be fine doing that,
Speaker:
00:19:50
but you're absolutely not gonna get
Speaker:
00:19:52
any more information around there
Speaker:
00:19:54
unless you wanna put this massive project in
Speaker:
00:19:56
and do this piece of work.
Speaker:
00:19:57
And we do do some fairly wide-ranging technology changes.
Speaker:
00:20:03
We've done quite a few over the past few years.
Speaker:
00:20:06
And they're not a lot of fun.
Speaker:
00:20:08
They tend to suck up all the resource.
Speaker:
00:20:10
So what happens then is you get this void of
Speaker:
00:20:13
I can't do anything now because the central teams are busy
Speaker:
00:20:15
doing this particular type of technical implementation.
Speaker:
00:20:18
So the business almost has to stop
Speaker:
00:20:20
and wait for that to all finish.
Speaker:
00:20:22
And then as soon as that finish,
Speaker:
00:20:23
you get the tsunami of data requests come in,
Speaker:
00:20:25
which you're not prepared to deal with
Speaker:
00:20:27
'cause you're still mopping up
Speaker:
00:20:28
from the end of the last project.
Speaker:
00:20:30
That's again where trust and everything starts to fall down.
Speaker:
00:20:32
So pretty much, and this is where my background
Speaker:
00:20:35
around business and marketing kinda come in,
Speaker:
00:20:39
is I tend to sit more as an interface to the business
Speaker:
00:20:43
than I do as an interface to the data.
Speaker:
00:20:45
Is translating what the projects and things are doing,
Speaker:
00:20:48
what volumes we have,
Speaker:
00:20:49
what approaches we can take
Speaker:
00:20:51
in order to answer the questions.
Speaker:
00:20:52
- Yeah, it sounds like,
Speaker:
00:20:54
with some of the things that you've mentioned there,
Speaker:
00:20:55
that that has been a hard lesson to learn,
Speaker:
00:20:57
but you've been in that situation,
Speaker:
00:20:59
and things have gone pear-shaped,
Speaker:
00:21:01
let's not go there again.
Speaker:
00:21:03
Has it been a baptism by fire over the last five years,
Speaker:
00:21:05
would you say?
Speaker:
00:21:06
- The baptism of fire is more around
Speaker:
00:21:07
understanding the prioritisation
Speaker:
00:21:09
of where you sit within a business.
Speaker:
00:21:11
Now, I had this thing where, you know,
Speaker:
00:21:12
phase two never happens in a project.
Speaker:
00:21:14
So, when you're walking through something
Speaker:
00:21:17
and they're like, yeah, that's great,
Speaker:
00:21:18
but we'll put that in phase two.
Speaker:
00:21:20
We originally had it put in phase one,
Speaker:
00:21:22
but we're not gonna quite hit that,
Speaker:
00:21:23
so we're gonna move that out.
Speaker:
00:21:25
That tends to be more of the analytic type jobs
Speaker:
00:21:30
in favour of the front end working properly.
Speaker:
00:21:33
Obviously people have to buy stuff,
Speaker:
00:21:34
people have to register, and that user experience,
Speaker:
00:21:37
which is absolutely right.
Speaker:
00:21:40
The frustrations tend to come from the fact that
Speaker:
00:21:42
you always feel, to some degree, second fiddle.
Speaker:
00:21:45
I think it's
Speaker:
00:21:47
you know you're gonna get asked questions on this later,
Speaker:
00:21:49
and you know you're gonna have to say,
Speaker:
00:21:50
I'm sorry, we can't deliver that because it's actually,
Speaker:
00:21:53
it wasn't included as part of the project,
Speaker:
00:21:55
or we weren't able to get that in on time.
Speaker:
00:21:59
- I was gonna ask a little bit about shoring up.
Speaker:
00:22:02
Sometimes you haven't got the information,
Speaker:
00:22:04
because either it's gone into, you know,
Speaker:
00:22:06
sort of it's the next phase
Speaker:
00:22:07
or you get to the end of it and somebody says,
Speaker:
00:22:08
well, we really could have done with that.
Speaker:
00:22:10
And how do you go about
Speaker:
00:22:12
scoping out a project as best you can
Speaker:
00:22:15
to make sure that you have, you know, shored that all up
Speaker:
00:22:17
so that you've got as much information as you can.
Speaker:
00:22:19
Is there a process that you go through to ensure that
Speaker:
00:22:22
when you're scoping out those individual projects,
Speaker:
00:22:24
that they are gonna deliver on what you're gonna need
Speaker:
00:22:26
or what you're gonna be asked for?
Speaker:
00:22:28
- There are control mechanisms
Speaker:
00:22:30
and things in place with project management techniques
Speaker:
00:22:33
that allow you to ensure that
Speaker:
00:22:34
certain things get picked up at certain times.
Speaker:
00:22:36
And I think data is no different.
Speaker:
00:22:39
It's the same as any other part of the business
Speaker:
00:22:41
trying to deploy something,
Speaker:
00:22:42
making sure that business requirements are met
Speaker:
00:22:45
from an early time.
Speaker:
00:22:46
That being said, I'd be a complete liar if I said
Speaker:
00:22:50
that that happened in every single case.
Speaker:
00:22:53
(laugh) Works in a very similar role will understand,
Speaker:
00:22:56
the day before something goes live,
Speaker:
00:22:57
you get the email that says,
Speaker:
00:22:58
oh, we're launching this tomorrow.
Speaker:
00:23:00
And you're, okay, I know I'm gonna be asked
Speaker:
00:23:03
for some stats on that.
Speaker:
00:23:04
What have you put in place?
Speaker:
00:23:05
Yeah, phase two.
Speaker:
00:23:07
Okay, so I've got no data for it.
Speaker:
00:23:11
Everyone's gonna start looking at me like I'm an idiot.
Speaker:
00:23:13
I can't answer any questions on what you've done.
Speaker:
00:23:16
That's just the way of life.
Speaker:
00:23:17
But by pushing people out into the product teams,
Speaker:
00:23:21
you know, you get those early warning signals.
Speaker:
00:23:22
That's all you can do.
Speaker:
00:23:23
Just make sure you're engaged.
Speaker:
00:23:25
And I think if someone's putting a new product in,
Speaker:
00:23:29
it's gonna be based on a business goal, right.
Speaker:
00:23:31
There'll be a very specific forecast
Speaker:
00:23:33
that we generate for that.
Speaker:
00:23:33
Centaur doesn't spend money on stuff on a whim.
Speaker:
00:23:37
If it's gonna throw some cash at something,
Speaker:
00:23:39
then you can believe there's a very good reason behind it,
Speaker:
00:23:42
why it's being done.
Speaker:
00:23:43
So, by engaging earlier in that process on any new project
Speaker:
00:23:48
or any new piece of work that gets done,
Speaker:
00:23:50
that's probably easier.
Speaker:
00:23:52
Because people wanna know
Speaker:
00:23:54
whether their business goals being hit.
Speaker:
00:23:55
Because ultimately
Speaker:
00:23:56
that's how they're gonna increase their budgets next year,
Speaker:
00:23:58
that's gonna lead them to spend more money on marketing,
Speaker:
00:24:00
that's gonna grow their own side of the business.
Speaker:
00:24:03
So, they are more likely
Speaker:
00:24:04
to engage with an analyst earlier on
Speaker:
00:24:06
and say, what does this look like,
Speaker:
00:24:08
what do I need to have in place
Speaker:
00:24:09
in order to prove that what I've said there works.
Speaker:
00:24:13
The harder bit is on the established businesses,
Speaker:
00:24:15
where they're just making incremental changes.
Speaker:
00:24:16
And not in any way blaming dev teams,
Speaker:
00:24:19
but quite often, analytical implementations are thrown in
Speaker:
00:24:25
with third-party services, heavy JavaScript based stuff.
Speaker:
00:24:29
Developers don't like the fact that
Speaker:
00:24:30
you've just installed 50 or 60 different types of service
Speaker:
00:24:35
or tag that runs alongside
Speaker:
00:24:37
their beautiful hand-coded JavaScript.
Speaker:
00:24:40
So, you know, slowing stuff down,
Speaker:
00:24:43
making stuff potentially fail for some reason,
Speaker:
00:24:45
generating errors, all that kinda stuff.
Speaker:
00:24:48
If you don't have a relationship with that team,
Speaker:
00:24:52
then it's very easy for them
Speaker:
00:24:53
to just start not engaging with you.
Speaker:
00:24:56
And then that's when things will sort of start to fall down.
Speaker:
00:24:59
So it's about sorta solid project management stuff,
Speaker:
00:25:02
making sure you're engaged and involved
Speaker:
00:25:03
in the business as you should be.
Speaker:
00:25:05
But then relationship building,
Speaker:
00:25:08
being out there and chatting to everyone,
Speaker:
00:25:09
making sure you know what people are trying to do,
Speaker:
00:25:12
understanding why they're trying to do it,
Speaker:
00:25:13
more than anything else.
Speaker:
00:25:15
- Would you say, internally and externally,
Speaker:
00:25:17
that data is the new marketing currency?
Speaker:
00:25:20
- The new currency is almost driven by the velocity
Speaker:
00:25:24
at which point you can get that information now.
Speaker:
00:25:26
I used to work on clustering exercises,
Speaker:
00:25:28
maybe take a couple of weeks to run.
Speaker:
00:25:30
You'd put in something, you may need an analyst then
Speaker:
00:25:32
to go and spend some time looking at it
Speaker:
00:25:34
and figure it through.
Speaker:
00:25:35
And tools and techniques have changed now,
Speaker:
00:25:37
so you can run almost in constant, real time,
Speaker:
00:25:41
leads going classification
Speaker:
00:25:43
of every single individual person that comes your way,
Speaker:
00:25:46
rather than trying to then take something offline,
Speaker:
00:25:49
work out how everything fits together.
Speaker:
00:25:51
That's where the difference is.
Speaker:
00:25:53
I would say it's less data is the new currency,
Speaker:
00:25:55
and it's more data literacy is the new currency.
Speaker:
00:25:59
When marketing automation came about,
Speaker:
00:26:00
I think it was, to some degree, everyone thought,
Speaker:
00:26:04
oh great, I'll automate this.
Speaker:
00:26:06
Automate equals less work, right?
Speaker:
00:26:08
So, not so much to do.
Speaker:
00:26:10
Whereas actually automation means
Speaker:
00:26:13
massively increasing your level of data literacy.
Speaker:
00:26:15
How many marketers have ever been
Speaker:
00:26:17
on the data literacy course?
Speaker:
00:26:18
How many marketers understand what their data literacy is?
Speaker:
00:26:21
Do they really understand
Speaker:
00:26:23
the intricacies of all of the various ways
Speaker:
00:26:26
that a marketing technology platform could be used
Speaker:
00:26:29
and harnessed, you know.
Speaker:
00:26:31
Centaur is massively guilty
Speaker:
00:26:32
of buying into some big, big packages,
Speaker:
00:26:35
and not necessarily then following up with
Speaker:
00:26:37
using all the benefits of those packages bring.
Speaker:
00:26:40
So, I think data is the new currency
Speaker:
00:26:44
in as much as it's the understanding
Speaker:
00:26:45
and the use of that data
Speaker:
00:26:47
within the technology that is now available to people.
Speaker:
00:26:51
If you can find those people,
Speaker:
00:26:52
those people that really understand that,
Speaker:
00:26:54
then there's some really
Speaker:
00:26:56
forward-thinking marketers at Centaur
Speaker:
00:26:58
who are quite happy to pick up on projects
Speaker:
00:27:01
that should be data team projects.
Speaker:
00:27:03
They're quite happy to pick up
Speaker:
00:27:04
and run with that kind of information in that.
Speaker:
00:27:07
They're asking very specific questions of data.
Speaker:
00:27:10
They know where things are falling over,
Speaker:
00:27:12
and they're pulling you up on it
Speaker:
00:27:14
as if you should be the people
Speaker:
00:27:15
that are supplying this kind of information
Speaker:
00:27:17
in that way to this product.
Speaker:
00:27:18
And that in itself makes life a lot easier for a data team.
Speaker:
00:27:22
From a data literacy level,
Speaker:
00:27:23
if you've got people
Speaker:
00:27:24
that are able to talk that kinda language
Speaker:
00:27:25
and engage with you,
Speaker:
00:27:27
they can really share with
Speaker:
00:27:28
what the business is trying to achieve,
Speaker:
00:27:30
and ultimately how they want it to work
Speaker:
00:27:32
within that piece of technology,
Speaker:
00:27:33
then that makes life a lot easier.
Speaker:
00:27:36
- That sorta brings me on nicely
Speaker:
00:27:37
to a sort of question that I would like to ask,
Speaker:
00:27:39
which is if somebody's trying to get into the industry,
Speaker:
00:27:41
what sort of skills or experience
Speaker:
00:27:43
do you think they should have?
Speaker:
00:27:45
Or what kinda things would you be looking for?
Speaker:
00:27:47
- We've looked to put in place a number of hiring strategies
Speaker:
00:27:51
across for the last few years especially.
Speaker:
00:27:52
I think we've seen, everyone's seen
Speaker:
00:27:54
a scarcity of resource across the business.
Speaker:
00:27:57
I think the key thing, when it comes to skills,
Speaker:
00:28:00
if we're looking to hire very specific skillsets,
Speaker:
00:28:04
we have to round that out quite a lot.
Speaker:
00:28:06
We're looking for actually
Speaker:
00:28:09
what are the transferable skills.
Speaker:
00:28:10
What are the industry areas
Speaker:
00:28:12
or types of businesses and things like that
Speaker:
00:28:15
that people may have worked in before
Speaker:
00:28:16
that might have experience that is relevant to us.
Speaker:
00:28:19
We've brought in maths grads in the past,
Speaker:
00:28:21
and that's been really useful.
Speaker:
00:28:23
They're quick learners.
Speaker:
00:28:24
They don't necessarily know the ins and outs
Speaker:
00:28:27
of all the pieces of marketing technology
Speaker:
00:28:28
and how to get the data out,
Speaker:
00:28:29
or, you know, they're blank slates effectively.
Speaker:
00:28:32
Might've done a bit of coding or something in university.
Speaker:
00:28:35
Have equal success with people that are sociology graduates,
Speaker:
00:28:39
that have got a really nice way of talking to people
Speaker:
00:28:43
and getting information out of people and are keen to learn.
Speaker:
00:28:46
You know if someone's quick, if they've got it,
Speaker:
00:28:49
if they understand.
Speaker:
00:28:50
They're good attention to detail, they're willing to learn,
Speaker:
00:28:53
they're interested in the industry.
Speaker:
00:28:56
You figure it out.
Speaker:
00:28:56
You kind of sit down and work out what's happening.
Speaker:
00:29:00
You know, you then look at what the causes of that could be.
Speaker:
00:29:02
Then you look into the sort of the issue
Speaker:
00:29:04
that's surrounding it.
Speaker:
00:29:05
And then, you know, you look to put in
Speaker:
00:29:06
some sort of resolution.
Speaker:
00:29:07
It's that kind of mindset that you're looking for
Speaker:
00:29:10
more than anything else.
Speaker:
00:29:11
Because ultimately, skills can be trained.
Speaker:
00:29:14
If they're not interested, they're not gonna bother.
Speaker:
00:29:17
You're just wasting everyone's time, at that point,
Speaker:
00:29:19
- It's people are passionate about data
Speaker:
00:29:21
rather than just thinking of it as a day job.
Speaker:
00:29:23
- The people that are good,
Speaker:
00:29:24
they're still talked about at Centaur.
Speaker:
00:29:26
You know, these are grads
Speaker:
00:29:27
that came and spent two, three years with us.
Speaker:
00:29:29
Did some stuff, really made an impact, and now have gone on,
Speaker:
00:29:33
I mean, they're (chuckle) earning more than I am now,
Speaker:
00:29:35
but you know. (laughter)
Speaker:
00:29:36
Sort of three years later.
Speaker:
00:29:38
But, you know, they've got that passion for it,
Speaker:
00:29:40
but that's what shows through.
Speaker:
00:29:41
So, they're remembered by people.
Speaker:
00:29:44
One of the managing directors
Speaker:
00:29:45
in particular parts of the businesses,
Speaker:
00:29:46
they've gone on and done something else somewhere else.
Speaker:
00:29:49
You know, you start to get those phone calls come around,
Speaker:
00:29:51
oh, we're looking for someone,
Speaker:
00:29:52
or, you know, we've got an opening for this particular role.
Speaker:
00:29:55
Who are you gonna recommend?
Speaker:
00:29:57
Oh, we had that grad in.
Speaker:
00:29:57
They were amazing.
Speaker:
00:29:58
You know, it doesn't really matter
Speaker:
00:29:59
if they didn't have the direct skills,
Speaker:
00:30:01
they picked up this thing really, really quickly.
Speaker:
00:30:03
I'll happily recommend them to you, you know.
Speaker:
00:30:05
And that sorta thing is invaluable.
Speaker:
00:30:08
I think, for any graduate, that networking side,
Speaker:
00:30:12
listening to what the business wants,
Speaker:
00:30:14
not trying to over-deliver on everything,
Speaker:
00:30:16
just getting known for a few core things,
Speaker:
00:30:19
and then, you know, you're sorta set for life,
Speaker:
00:30:21
practically, in the data world, aren't you?
Speaker:
00:30:23
That's it for them, I mean.
Speaker:
00:30:24
- It's a smaller industry than people would learn,
Speaker:
00:30:26
isn't it? (laughter)
Speaker:
00:30:28
- Absolutely.
Speaker:
00:30:29
- My last question, just before we finish this,
Speaker:
00:30:31
I just wondered about the sort of moving to the cloud space.
Speaker:
00:30:34
What are sort of the big business drivers
Speaker:
00:30:36
that you've seen for that?
Speaker:
00:30:37
How do you even empower an organisation
Speaker:
00:30:39
to kind of really embrace that?
Speaker:
00:30:40
We're all working in the same direction.
Speaker:
00:30:42
- I don't know why anyone
Speaker:
00:30:43
would ever wanna see a server room again.
Speaker:
00:30:45
(laughter)
Speaker:
00:30:46
It's allowed us to start to really kind of experiment
Speaker:
00:30:50
with different techniques,
Speaker:
00:30:51
and the things that we can then potentially
Speaker:
00:30:53
bring into production.
Speaker:
00:30:54
So some of the stuff that Red Olive are working with us,
Speaker:
00:30:57
around data cleansing and processing,
Speaker:
00:30:59
where we're trying to really make sense of
Speaker:
00:31:02
the first party data that we've got, for example.
Speaker:
00:31:04
We'll use Red Olive to help us to create
Speaker:
00:31:07
a sort of an end-to-end process for that.
Speaker:
00:31:09
Cleansing, working through data in a sort of data pipeline.
Speaker:
00:31:13
It's fairly standard stuff, right?
Speaker:
00:31:14
There's nothing particularly exciting about that in itself.
Speaker:
00:31:19
But having the availability of the sort of AWS tools
Speaker:
00:31:23
or other providers tools
Speaker:
00:31:24
allows us to maybe do some of the stuff
Speaker:
00:31:26
that was manual in a different way.
Speaker:
00:31:28
So, we're looking at potentially using some AI approaches
Speaker:
00:31:33
to even data cleansing.
Speaker:
00:31:35
You know, handling our job title classifications.
Speaker:
00:31:38
We've used it quite successfully
Speaker:
00:31:40
for classifying editorial.
Speaker:
00:31:43
So, training models to understand
Speaker:
00:31:46
how to bucket certain pieces of content,
Speaker:
00:31:48
so that you don't have to then worry about
Speaker:
00:31:50
editorial teams doing what they should be doing
Speaker:
00:31:53
from a data perspective.
Speaker:
00:31:54
And for being able to sort of organise
Speaker:
00:31:56
and manage most of the metadata
Speaker:
00:31:59
that sits behind the information that we gather.
Speaker:
00:32:01
Using these sort of AI type machine learning tools
Speaker:
00:32:05
allows us to really sort of move away
Speaker:
00:32:08
from those manual jobs.
Speaker:
00:32:11
- Would you say, is that the thing that's most exciting
Speaker:
00:32:13
about kind of being able to do stuff
Speaker:
00:32:14
that quickly with the AI space?
Speaker:
00:32:17
- I think so.
Speaker:
00:32:18
My background is not analysis.
Speaker:
00:32:19
The kind of using machine learning
Speaker:
00:32:21
for generating certain types of fancy analysis
Speaker:
00:32:25
or stuff like that, I have to leave that to the specialists.
Speaker:
00:32:28
You know, I'm a man of certain age.
Speaker:
00:32:30
I have to sort of respect the fact that
Speaker:
00:32:32
I've only got a certain amount of capacity
Speaker:
00:32:35
to really get to grips with this stuff.
Speaker:
00:32:37
But when it comes to the nuts and bolts stuff
Speaker:
00:32:38
that I have been doing over the last 20 years,
Speaker:
00:32:41
that I have experience in,
Speaker:
00:32:42
data cleansing, integration work, all that kinda stuff,
Speaker:
00:32:45
then finding opportunities in the cloud tools
Speaker:
00:32:49
to really sorta leverage
Speaker:
00:32:50
how that makes my life a lot easier,
Speaker:
00:32:52
then I'm very interested in.
Speaker:
00:32:56
- An interesting take from Ben there.
Speaker:
00:32:57
Join us for the next episode
Speaker:
00:32:58
of The Red Olive Fibonacci podcast,
Speaker:
00:33:00
where we'll be joined by
Speaker:
00:33:01
another data expert sharing their thoughts
Speaker:
00:33:03
on the latest trends in AI and big data,
Speaker:
00:33:06
along with some great hints and tips.
Speaker:
00:33:08
Make sure you subscribe to The Red Olive Fibonacci podcast
Speaker:
00:33:11
from wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker:
00:33:13
to make sure you don't miss it.
Speaker:
00:33:15
That's all for today.
Speaker:
00:33:16
Thanks for listening.
Speaker:
00:33:17
I've been your host, Nicky Rudd.
Speaker:
00:33:19
See you next time.
00:00:00
- Hello, and welcome to The Red Olive Fibonacci Podcast.
Speaker:
00:00:04
The podcast all about data and analytics,
Speaker:
00:00:06
where we hear from leading specialists
Speaker:
00:00:08
and get their take on the industry.
Speaker:
00:00:10
I'm your host, Nicky Rudd.
Speaker:
00:00:12
Today, I'm joined by Ben Barrass,
Speaker:
00:00:14
Group Head of Data at Centaur Media,
Speaker:
00:00:16
a provider of market intelligence
Speaker:
00:00:18
and publisher of publications such as, Econsultancy,
Speaker:
00:00:21
Design Week, and The Lawyer.
Speaker:
00:00:23
Ben is responsible for planning
Speaker:
00:00:25
and execution of the data strategy
Speaker:
00:00:27
across all of the digital subscription products
Speaker:
00:00:30
that the company runs.
Speaker:
00:00:31
He has nearly two decades of experience
Speaker:
00:00:33
working in a range of digital business operations.
Speaker:
00:00:36
He's a marketing technology expert
Speaker:
00:00:38
and a specialist in using data
Speaker:
00:00:40
to transform digital processes
Speaker:
00:00:42
in both large and small business environments.
Speaker:
00:00:45
Our conversation covers the importance
Speaker:
00:00:46
of building data collection in a project from the outset,
Speaker:
00:00:49
why it's crucial to really understand your audience,
Speaker:
00:00:52
and a new way to think about what data we collect
Speaker:
00:00:55
and whether it's worth sending email
Speaker:
00:00:56
to the people on your email list that never open it.
Speaker:
00:00:59
What are we waiting for?
Speaker:
00:01:00
Let's go.
Speaker:
00:01:02
(upbeat music)
Speaker:
00:01:08
- I started off as a service side developer,
Speaker:
00:01:10
a back-end developer back in the day,
Speaker:
00:01:12
and got more into analytics,
Speaker:
00:01:14
and controlling data flows between systems,
Speaker:
00:01:18
and various sorts of integration work.
Speaker:
00:01:20
So when I left,
Speaker:
00:01:22
worked in a small company as a temp director,
Speaker:
00:01:25
pretty much every single aspect of the business
Speaker:
00:01:27
was data-led in some way.
Speaker:
00:01:29
It was effectively an affiliate marketing organisation,
Speaker:
00:01:32
so all the revenue came through digital tracking
Speaker:
00:01:34
and everything else.
Speaker:
00:01:35
So, my journey into data was more led by
Speaker:
00:01:39
the need for me to make stuff work.
Speaker:
00:01:43
So, hooking up various types of systems,
Speaker:
00:01:45
and then making sure things spoke to each other,
Speaker:
00:01:47
and the clients and suppliers and contractors
Speaker:
00:01:51
all knew kind of what we were billing
Speaker:
00:01:53
or why we were billing,
Speaker:
00:01:54
and make sure the right messages
Speaker:
00:01:56
went out to the right people.
Speaker:
00:01:57
My experience then mainly got involved with
Speaker:
00:01:59
making sure everything was hooked up and working together,
Speaker:
00:02:02
and the various robots of data
Speaker:
00:02:03
were connected into the right systems.
Speaker:
00:02:05
And I moved on to Econsultancy
Speaker:
00:02:07
very much along those same lines,
Speaker:
00:02:09
joining their marketing team to help really drive
Speaker:
00:02:11
their marketing segmentation and messaging.
Speaker:
00:02:13
I remember Ashley, on my first day at the job,
Speaker:
00:02:15
one of their events, he announced me to the room,
Speaker:
00:02:18
one of his speeches he was doing,
Speaker:
00:02:20
they've made their first data hire within the organisation.
Speaker:
00:02:23
And I think it was telling for Econsultancy
Speaker:
00:02:27
that they saw the need to put their first data hire
Speaker:
00:02:30
into the marketing team.
Speaker:
00:02:31
I wasn't joining finance or sales or backend devs.
Speaker:
00:02:34
It was very much focused around the marketing efforts.
Speaker:
00:02:38
And from there, I've moved from marketing
Speaker:
00:02:40
into sort of core central systems,
Speaker:
00:02:42
and then trying to organise
Speaker:
00:02:44
what is effectively a transitioning publisher
Speaker:
00:02:47
from an old sorta print model,
Speaker:
00:02:49
into a digital transformed online content
Speaker:
00:02:52
subscription business,
Speaker:
00:02:54
and all the associated systems and services
Speaker:
00:02:56
that go along with that.
Speaker:
00:02:57
- What's the steps that Centaur has gone through
Speaker:
00:02:59
in moving from that sorta traditional print publishing
Speaker:
00:03:02
into a fully digital online publisher,
Speaker:
00:03:05
and also events and trainer as well, I think.
Speaker:
00:03:07
You do training as well, don't you.
Speaker:
00:03:09
- Well effectively, all of those businesses,
Speaker:
00:03:11
the events, the training, you know, the webinars,
Speaker:
00:03:14
the reporting, all comes from valued content.
Speaker:
00:03:17
So, whether you're a publisher
Speaker:
00:03:19
that sticks words out on print,
Speaker:
00:03:21
or you're a publisher that sticks words out on the screen,
Speaker:
00:03:24
or talks words at events, or, you know,
Speaker:
00:03:26
it's that expert knowledge and understanding
Speaker:
00:03:29
that people are coming to you for.
Speaker:
00:03:32
And I think, to some degree,
Speaker:
00:03:34
the business to business market
Speaker:
00:03:36
obviously is transitioning more easily
Speaker:
00:03:40
than maybe the B to C market will,
Speaker:
00:03:42
because obviously you've got very distinct niche audiences
Speaker:
00:03:46
that are coming to you for that kind of expertise.
Speaker:
00:03:49
The whole sort of digital transformation experience
Speaker:
00:03:53
obviously isn't limited to publishing,
Speaker:
00:03:55
and has been part of the core ethos of the business
Speaker:
00:03:58
for the last few years,
Speaker:
00:04:00
in the way that it's helped other businesses
Speaker:
00:04:02
through their digital transformation efforts as well.
Speaker:
00:04:04
So it's been a really interesting learning curve
Speaker:
00:04:08
to see how different industries
Speaker:
00:04:11
are tackling some common transformational problems, really,
Speaker:
00:04:14
that I know that we've gone through,
Speaker:
00:04:15
that you see them facing.
Speaker:
00:04:17
And it is sometimes difficult for our business.
Speaker:
00:04:19
And as much as we talk about how people should be doing it,
Speaker:
00:04:22
and then behind the scenes,
Speaker:
00:04:23
you do see some of the situations where actually
Speaker:
00:04:25
that's quite a challenging thing to do for organisations.
Speaker:
00:04:28
- With all of the publications
Speaker:
00:04:30
that were in Centaur's portfolio, if you like,
Speaker:
00:04:32
how did you go about it?
Speaker:
00:04:34
Have you sort of taken it
Speaker:
00:04:35
so that you've taken certain publications
Speaker:
00:04:37
and then moved them on,
Speaker:
00:04:37
or has it been a company-wide thing?
Speaker:
00:04:40
What are the steps that you've sort of taken
Speaker:
00:04:42
to get to where you are now?
Speaker:
00:04:44
- A lot of the transformation
Speaker:
00:04:46
has been mostly around standardisation of services.
Speaker:
00:04:49
So, the portfolios,
Speaker:
00:04:51
obviously we're all effectively individual businesses,
Speaker:
00:04:53
all run as individual businesses in their own way,
Speaker:
00:04:55
have their own reason for doing their own events,
Speaker:
00:04:57
their own magazines.
Speaker:
00:04:59
And I think the way we've approached it
Speaker:
00:05:01
is through a certain level of standardisation.
Speaker:
00:05:03
So especially around the marketing technology,
Speaker:
00:05:06
make sure we're using single services across the business,
Speaker:
00:05:09
and harmonising a lot of data systems and integrations.
Speaker:
00:05:12
It's about making businesses aware
Speaker:
00:05:14
of the opportunity they've got
Speaker:
00:05:16
from the services that are available to them,
Speaker:
00:05:18
by creating almost like a standard approach
Speaker:
00:05:21
to how they can then manage their business online.
Speaker:
00:05:25
Some businesses transitioned much better than others.
Speaker:
00:05:28
We've gone through a kind of
Speaker:
00:05:29
a phase withdrawal of the print publications,
Speaker:
00:05:32
a more sort of effective push of online events
Speaker:
00:05:35
and face-to-face type expertise,
Speaker:
00:05:38
sharing, networking type events,
Speaker:
00:05:40
and really a big push around
Speaker:
00:05:43
bringing our corporate clients into an online environment.
Speaker:
00:05:47
So, getting people more used to changing their habits
Speaker:
00:05:50
from expecting to pick up
Speaker:
00:05:51
a corporate magazine on a reception desk,
Speaker:
00:05:54
through to actually them logging in,
Speaker:
00:05:57
or viewing a set of blog articles,
Speaker:
00:05:59
or something on a phone on the train
Speaker:
00:06:01
on the way in in the morning.
Speaker:
00:06:02
And it's that sorta habitual change, I think,
Speaker:
00:06:04
that has been slow and gradual
Speaker:
00:06:07
over the course of the sort of last five years,
Speaker:
00:06:10
where we've been able to sort of,
Speaker:
00:06:12
not slowly substitute one for the other,
Speaker:
00:06:14
but as people get more used to consuming content online,
Speaker:
00:06:16
we've ridden that wave
Speaker:
00:06:18
along with the sort of the audience that we've got.
Speaker:
00:06:20
You can offer more value services online
Speaker:
00:06:24
than you can in a magazine.
Speaker:
00:06:25
And it's about trying to supply valued content
Speaker:
00:06:28
in a mechanism that works for consumer
Speaker:
00:06:30
that maybe a magazine can't.
Speaker:
00:06:32
There are certain publications that,
Speaker:
00:06:34
I can't say should never transition,
Speaker:
00:06:36
but you look at Creative Review, for example.
Speaker:
00:06:38
It's a beautiful magazine.
Speaker:
00:06:40
It's beautifully printed, the artwork's amazing,
Speaker:
00:06:42
it's for a creative audience.
Speaker:
00:06:44
You can only supplement that experience online.
Speaker:
00:06:47
You can't necessarily replace
Speaker:
00:06:48
that tangible feeling of holding that beautiful thing,
Speaker:
00:06:51
if you see what I mean.
Speaker:
00:06:52
It is easier with a smaller number of publications.
Speaker:
00:06:54
We were 50, 48 brands or something along those lines.
Speaker:
00:06:58
We've cut that down to two main portfolios now,
Speaker:
00:07:01
which we can really support.
Speaker:
00:07:03
- That's a massive task, isn't it? (laugh)
Speaker:
00:07:05
- Yeah, so I mean, from a data perspective
Speaker:
00:07:07
on the transformation side,
Speaker:
00:07:08
there's a whole lotta work
Speaker:
00:07:09
around just managing those portfolios,
Speaker:
00:07:11
and sort of standardising stuff,
Speaker:
00:07:13
making sure everyone's got the associated data they need.
Speaker:
00:07:16
But there're also a lot of massive similarities
Speaker:
00:07:19
in the way the specific B to B audience operates,
Speaker:
00:07:22
how you target them from a marketing perspective,
Speaker:
00:07:25
how you understand what the market sizing is.
Speaker:
00:07:27
From that side of things, the whole B to B data environment,
Speaker:
00:07:31
I can't say it's easier,
Speaker:
00:07:32
but (laugh) you've got some pointers
Speaker:
00:07:36
with some fairly standardised variables there
Speaker:
00:07:39
that you can work with.
Speaker:
00:07:40
- Obviously, when the publications were print,
Speaker:
00:07:43
there was a subscription model.
Speaker:
00:07:45
With the online, how many questions have you asked
Speaker:
00:07:48
of the people who are subscribing
Speaker:
00:07:50
about what they actually want?
Speaker:
00:07:52
How do you manage that?
Speaker:
00:07:53
- The registration systems
Speaker:
00:07:54
that we've got across the various products,
Speaker:
00:07:57
it's a balance of getting a level of information out
Speaker:
00:08:01
that you'd need in order to be able to operate the service.
Speaker:
00:08:05
By operating the service, I include marketing.
Speaker:
00:08:08
It's not ops, though, it's about delivering value content.
Speaker:
00:08:11
So, there's certain standardised fields
Speaker:
00:08:13
that you kinda need to have available,
Speaker:
00:08:15
understanding someone's level of seniority, for example,
Speaker:
00:08:18
or, you know, the actual company they work for,
Speaker:
00:08:20
the industry they're in, that sorta stuff.
Speaker:
00:08:23
That's all fairly required.
Speaker:
00:08:25
But at the same time,
Speaker:
00:08:27
we've shied away from asking more questions than that.
Speaker:
00:08:31
The reason for that is
Speaker:
00:08:32
we probably became a bit more sophisticated
Speaker:
00:08:34
in the way that we understand user behaviour
Speaker:
00:08:36
behind the scenes.
Speaker:
00:08:37
So the idea was we could trim down our data collection forms
Speaker:
00:08:41
in order to supplement it
Speaker:
00:08:42
with specific behavioural information.
Speaker:
00:08:44
I think, to some degree,
Speaker:
00:08:47
the issues that we have around data collection
Speaker:
00:08:50
tend to be ownership of forms.
Speaker:
00:08:53
Is it the product teams that own the forms,
Speaker:
00:08:55
'cause they wanna churn the people through the forms
Speaker:
00:08:57
as quickly as possible with as least barriers as possible?
Speaker:
00:09:00
We try things like progressive profiling,
Speaker:
00:09:03
you know, other types of ways
Speaker:
00:09:04
of extracting other types of information out
Speaker:
00:09:07
during the course of a visit.
Speaker:
00:09:08
The move to first party data being powerful,
Speaker:
00:09:13
it's not news to us.
Speaker:
00:09:15
We've always had payables, gateways,
Speaker:
00:09:19
soft or hard payables to force people to pay
Speaker:
00:09:21
or to register before they can view our content.
Speaker:
00:09:23
So for us, we've always dealt in first party data.
Speaker:
00:09:26
We do very little in third party data.
Speaker:
00:09:28
But the ability to be able to
Speaker:
00:09:31
really judge someone's intention via their behaviour
Speaker:
00:09:36
then requires a massive amount of work behind the scenes
Speaker:
00:09:40
to ensure the content they're viewing
Speaker:
00:09:41
is appropriately tagged
Speaker:
00:09:44
so that you can really draw
Speaker:
00:09:46
some strong conclusions for that.
Speaker:
00:09:47
If you've got an editorial team
Speaker:
00:09:49
more and more favouring the idea of
Speaker:
00:09:52
a sort of a transparent value exchanges
Speaker:
00:09:54
or zero party data approach,
Speaker:
00:09:56
where you just literally go and say to someone,
Speaker:
00:09:58
(chuckle) well, why do you wanna use us?
Speaker:
00:10:00
What is it we can deliver for you
Speaker:
00:10:01
that's actually gonna be of value?
Speaker:
00:10:03
Okay, we'll just stick to that,
Speaker:
00:10:04
and we won't do any of the other stuff around the sides.
Speaker:
00:10:06
If you tell us you're not interested in it,
Speaker:
00:10:08
we just won't do that.
Speaker:
00:10:09
I think just how you convert that
Speaker:
00:10:11
into some sort of tangible data collection thing that works,
Speaker:
00:10:15
it'd be very straightforward
Speaker:
00:10:16
for us as a data team to implement that.
Speaker:
00:10:18
It would be very hard for a business
Speaker:
00:10:20
to turn down the opportunity to sell someone something
Speaker:
00:10:26
that maybe they've implied they weren't that interested in.
Speaker:
00:10:29
I think that's probably
Speaker:
00:10:31
the hardest battle across the business.
Speaker:
00:10:33
It's like you send an email, right.
Speaker:
00:10:36
(laugh) What have you ever seen email open rates
Speaker:
00:10:39
that vary massively away
Speaker:
00:10:40
from what generally they always are?
Speaker:
00:10:42
You know, if you look at, what's it,
Speaker:
00:10:43
25% open rate on an email,
Speaker:
00:10:45
you send it to 75% of the people that aren't interested.
Speaker:
00:10:49
But yet you've got 100% of a list.
Speaker:
00:10:50
You're gonna use that list every time.
Speaker:
00:10:52
And every time, you get 25% open rate for it.
Speaker:
00:10:54
(chuckle) It's like, well, why are we sending it
Speaker:
00:10:57
to the other 75% of people all the time?
Speaker:
00:10:58
It's 'cause the business can't let go of the fact
Speaker:
00:11:00
that their list is this big,
Speaker:
00:11:03
and they have to use their list.
Speaker:
00:11:04
Because if they don't use their list,
Speaker:
00:11:06
they're not exploiting the value of their data.
Speaker:
00:11:08
When in reality, 75% of the people,
Speaker:
00:11:10
they just don't care less anyway.
Speaker:
00:11:13
- I was gonna say,
Speaker:
00:11:13
it's obviously there's changes in cookie law and, you know,
Speaker:
00:11:16
how you can re-market stuff and what people are looking at.
Speaker:
00:11:19
And that's sort of a whole intent data.
Speaker:
00:11:21
Is that something that you are looking at
Speaker:
00:11:23
as a business for kind of future,
Speaker:
00:11:25
as in what you could predict somebody would be interested in
Speaker:
00:11:28
to make sure that you're tailoring that experience for them?
Speaker:
00:11:31
- I think that intent data will be more important
Speaker:
00:11:34
when we look to associate with new markets.
Speaker:
00:11:39
It's difficult to some degree in some of our markets,
Speaker:
00:11:41
because we have got great coverage.
Speaker:
00:11:45
They're not big pools.
Speaker:
00:11:46
You can pretty much identify
Speaker:
00:11:48
all the people that are in the pool already.
Speaker:
00:11:51
You know, the account managers know the market.
Speaker:
00:11:54
They know the people they're dealing with.
Speaker:
00:11:55
They know why person X isn't buying.
Speaker:
00:11:58
We're not talking trying to sell 3 million widgets a year
Speaker:
00:12:02
to 10 pence each, or whatever.
Speaker:
00:12:04
It's high value sales, high value corporate subscriptions
Speaker:
00:12:08
to big companies who work in established markets.
Speaker:
00:12:11
To some degree, we're always fishing in the same pools.
Speaker:
00:12:14
And that's only gonna work for so long.
Speaker:
00:12:17
When we have exhausted those pools,
Speaker:
00:12:20
that's when we look to extend out into other areas, I guess.
Speaker:
00:12:23
That's when we start to really leverage
Speaker:
00:12:25
on building out regionally diverse audiences,
Speaker:
00:12:29
changing our editorial content approaches,
Speaker:
00:12:32
looking to find lookalikes,
Speaker:
00:12:34
all that kinda stuff will start to really come into its own.
Speaker:
00:12:36
It does to some degree in some parts of our business,
Speaker:
00:12:39
and those parts of the business tend to be the ones
Speaker:
00:12:41
that are more e-commerce focused at the moment.
Speaker:
00:12:44
Whether they're selling events, or training products,
Speaker:
00:12:46
or something like that,
Speaker:
00:12:47
that are separate to sorta maybe a corporate subscription.
Speaker:
00:12:50
We'll pick out specific product areas of the business to do,
Speaker:
00:12:53
not like stunk works, but you know,
Speaker:
00:12:54
sort of adopt certain levels of new approaches,
Speaker:
00:12:56
different ways to approach new challenges.
Speaker:
00:12:59
And they'll take it on in a little structured way
Speaker:
00:13:01
and then bring that back to the business as a case study.
Speaker:
00:13:04
That's kind of how we adopt new technology now.
Speaker:
00:13:06
So, if one part of the business starts to use something
Speaker:
00:13:08
and it really sort of works,
Speaker:
00:13:09
we'll then introduce that out
Speaker:
00:13:11
to other parts of the business,
Speaker:
00:13:12
or maybe look to remove
Speaker:
00:13:14
a couple of existing ways of doing business
Speaker:
00:13:16
and replacing it with a new structure
Speaker:
00:13:18
that's been proven in one smaller area of the business.
Speaker:
00:13:20
We can be a lot more agile that way.
Speaker:
00:13:22
We can resource for it a lot better as well,
Speaker:
00:13:24
because you don't then have a cross-portfolio project group
Speaker:
00:13:29
trying to administer, you know, an 18-month project.
Speaker:
00:13:33
You're dealing with a couple of brand managers
Speaker:
00:13:35
and a product team, or, you know, a marketing team.
Speaker:
00:13:38
Everyone's getting involved,
Speaker:
00:13:39
everyone learns how to use the products.
Speaker:
00:13:41
You can really make some changes quite quickly that way.
Speaker:
00:13:43
The approach to marketing segmentation (chuckle)
Speaker:
00:13:46
is kind of my background, more than anything else.
Speaker:
00:13:48
All the old sorta standard marketing approaches,
Speaker:
00:13:51
clustering, you know, segmentation analysis,
Speaker:
00:13:54
all that kinda stuff,
Speaker:
00:13:55
they're the same as they ever have been.
Speaker:
00:13:56
There's different tools and things
Speaker:
00:13:57
available to do 'em all now,
Speaker:
00:13:58
but that kind of approach and things
Speaker:
00:13:59
is very much the same as it always has been.
Speaker:
00:14:03
In a business that's so led
Speaker:
00:14:05
by people that've been in the industry for a while,
Speaker:
00:14:08
people that understand the customers so well,
Speaker:
00:14:10
the role of data to challenge their belief,
Speaker:
00:14:15
if you're coming at someone
Speaker:
00:14:16
with a fresh report I certainly don't know about,
Speaker:
00:14:18
it's very easy to gain their trust and bring them on board
Speaker:
00:14:22
with what you're trying to tell them.
Speaker:
00:14:23
If you're dealing with someone
Speaker:
00:14:24
who's been an account manager in the industry
Speaker:
00:14:26
for 10, 15 years,
Speaker:
00:14:28
and they've spoken to all the people,
Speaker:
00:14:29
and they're very clear on why people buy
Speaker:
00:14:31
and why they don't buy,
Speaker:
00:14:32
what role is there for data?
Speaker:
00:14:34
What can you offer them
Speaker:
00:14:35
that potentially they don't already know?
Speaker:
00:14:37
So, you're kind of setting yourselves up
Speaker:
00:14:40
almost like an antithesis of their belief
Speaker:
00:14:43
in order to try and push them in a different direction.
Speaker:
00:14:45
You're almost getting involved in psychology
Speaker:
00:14:47
in order to do your day-to-day work.
Speaker:
00:14:50
You kind of have to position everything that you're doing
Speaker:
00:14:53
in such a way that it allows people
Speaker:
00:14:56
to change their worldview.
Speaker:
00:14:58
- It's quite interesting,
Speaker:
00:14:59
because when we're talking about kinda subscription models
Speaker:
00:15:01
and stuff like that,
Speaker:
00:15:02
you're always thinking about prospects or customers,
Speaker:
00:15:05
and it being an external thing.
Speaker:
00:15:06
But it sounds though that actually
Speaker:
00:15:07
you're using your data strategy as well
Speaker:
00:15:10
to actually help and change behaviour internally as well.
Speaker:
00:15:14
Would you say that's true?
Speaker:
00:15:16
- Yeah, I would say that's probably more true
Speaker:
00:15:19
than it is us providing our data
Speaker:
00:15:22
to assist the external part of the business
Speaker:
00:15:24
and the customer part of the business, in as much as,
Speaker:
00:15:27
you know, data's the only way
Speaker:
00:15:29
you will change people's (chuckle) minds.
Speaker:
00:15:31
With digital transformation,
Speaker:
00:15:33
data transformation is always a subset of it.
Speaker:
00:15:36
It shouldn't be, but digital transformation,
Speaker:
00:15:39
all the gloss gets put into the website,
Speaker:
00:15:42
the process, the conversion rates, the e-commerce,
Speaker:
00:15:46
you know, all the flashy stuff,
Speaker:
00:15:47
and the, you know, we're gonna be remarketing this,
Speaker:
00:15:49
and we're gonna be, you know, using LinkedIn,
Speaker:
00:15:51
and it's gonna be great.
Speaker:
00:15:53
You're gonna see our adverts everywhere and all that stuff.
Speaker:
00:15:55
And then when it comes to actually
Speaker:
00:15:56
the nuts and bolts of the data transformation,
Speaker:
00:15:58
people forget that actually,
Speaker:
00:16:00
there's a very different set of skills
Speaker:
00:16:03
involved in a business with regards to how it uses data,
Speaker:
00:16:06
how it understands data, and how it processes data.
Speaker:
00:16:08
At Centaur, we're really, really lucky,
Speaker:
00:16:10
'cause everyone promptly brought into I want data.
Speaker:
00:16:14
You know, I know I need this data
Speaker:
00:16:15
in order to make these decisions.
Speaker:
00:16:17
It's just making sure that
Speaker:
00:16:19
the systems are there in such a way
Speaker:
00:16:21
to be able to deliver that information to them.
Speaker:
00:16:23
Because what you do tend to lose quite quickly,
Speaker:
00:16:26
without all of that really boring stuff,
Speaker:
00:16:29
to most people, not necessarily me,
Speaker:
00:16:31
but all that stuff around governance, trust, reliability,
Speaker:
00:16:36
you know, being able to put a number out to the business
Speaker:
00:16:39
and stand hand on heart and say, that is true
Speaker:
00:16:42
that is accurate, that won't change,
Speaker:
00:16:44
you only need a few disasters along the way,
Speaker:
00:16:47
where, oh, sorry, no, that's wrong. (laugh)
Speaker:
00:16:50
Can we have that back, please?
Speaker:
00:16:51
We've gotta do that again.
Speaker:
00:16:52
Or, you know, something else happens
Speaker:
00:16:54
and maybe you lose a bit of data here, there,
Speaker:
00:16:56
or everywhere where something wasn't quite tracked properly,
Speaker:
00:16:59
or, you know.
Speaker:
00:17:00
Without that sort of governance
Speaker:
00:17:01
and that rigour around the team,
Speaker:
00:17:03
all of a sudden you lose a lot of trust and reliability.
Speaker:
00:17:06
It sets your data transformation efforts back massively.
Speaker:
00:17:10
And I think that's probably the biggest challenge,
Speaker:
00:17:13
that kinda trust, building trust within the business.
Speaker:
00:17:17
Being there when they need you in such a form that allows,
Speaker:
00:17:21
you've gotta effectually be a mind reader.
Speaker:
00:17:22
You need to know what they're gonna be asking for
Speaker:
00:17:24
in six months time,
Speaker:
00:17:25
so you can make sure that it's available for them
Speaker:
00:17:27
when they get around to needing that piece of information.
Speaker:
00:17:30
- How important is it
Speaker:
00:17:31
to have the visualisation of that right,
Speaker:
00:17:35
so that it's accessible for everybody who needs it
Speaker:
00:17:37
do you think?
Speaker:
00:17:38
Is that a big part of a project, do you think,
Speaker:
00:17:41
of that transformation?
Speaker:
00:17:42
- Yeah, no, it is definitely.
Speaker:
00:17:43
I think we've been through various phases of this.
Speaker:
00:17:45
So, you know, your initial phase of migrating
Speaker:
00:17:48
from massive Excel sheets of information
Speaker:
00:17:51
that you're sending out, and going, look, isn't it great.
Speaker:
00:17:53
And everyone's looking at an Excel sheet going,
Speaker:
00:17:54
no, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker:
00:17:56
Through to some standard visualisations,
Speaker:
00:17:59
where people go to, you know, a handful of times,
Speaker:
00:18:03
see things are going in
Speaker:
00:18:04
kinda the direction they want them to do,
Speaker:
00:18:05
and then never revisit them again,
Speaker:
00:18:07
to maybe trying to get it to that next sort of level
Speaker:
00:18:09
of how do you actually present that information
Speaker:
00:18:11
back to people to keep them interested
Speaker:
00:18:13
is a massive challenge.
Speaker:
00:18:14
I know a lotta companies talk about things like,
Speaker:
00:18:16
you know, lunch and learn sessions,
Speaker:
00:18:18
and getting the analyst out into the business.
Speaker:
00:18:21
We're not blessed with a massive data team
Speaker:
00:18:23
of thousands of analysts and, you know, massive budgets.
Speaker:
00:18:26
So what does make the difference
Speaker:
00:18:29
is just making you publicly available to talk through stuff,
Speaker:
00:18:34
to almost be the voice of the report,
Speaker:
00:18:37
and being able to recall that information
Speaker:
00:18:40
on demand (chuckle) in a meeting at the drop of a hat.
Speaker:
00:18:43
To be fair, lockdown's been a blessing for that,
Speaker:
00:18:45
'cause you can have a million windows open, right?
Speaker:
00:18:47
(laugh) And you can just be, like,
Speaker:
00:18:49
how many subscribers have you got on product H?
Speaker:
00:18:51
You'd be like, yeah, of course we've got 647 as of last.
Speaker:
00:18:56
You know, you can't do that in a meeting, really,
Speaker:
00:18:58
you'd look like a fool.
Speaker:
00:18:59
That sort of data literacy,
Speaker:
00:19:00
that understanding of what your business is
Speaker:
00:19:03
is something we're really trying to promote.
Speaker:
00:19:04
We call it know your business.
Speaker:
00:19:06
But it's just a one-pager, all the top numbers.
Speaker:
00:19:09
You know, how many subscribers have you got,
Speaker:
00:19:11
what's your average renewal rate,
Speaker:
00:19:13
what's your newsletter sizes, that sorta thing.
Speaker:
00:19:16
The most basic kind of information possible.
Speaker:
00:19:18
So I kind of go on (chuckle) the basis of
Speaker:
00:19:20
what can we do to make things easier.
Speaker:
00:19:22
So, when it comes to the analyst,
Speaker:
00:19:24
I'm trying to get those guys to be embedded within the team.
Speaker:
00:19:28
So when the project teams are starting to look at stuff,
Speaker:
00:19:30
they're infusing that understanding into the product
Speaker:
00:19:33
or project delivery.
Speaker:
00:19:34
They're bringing back the understanding
Speaker:
00:19:36
of what the business is actually trying to do.
Speaker:
00:19:38
And we can then make incremental changes to what we're doing
Speaker:
00:19:44
in order to make sure that we can answer
Speaker:
00:19:45
some of those questions,
Speaker:
00:19:46
or at least expectations are being met across the business.
Speaker:
00:19:49
That you're gonna be fine doing that,
Speaker:
00:19:50
but you're absolutely not gonna get
Speaker:
00:19:52
any more information around there
Speaker:
00:19:54
unless you wanna put this massive project in
Speaker:
00:19:56
and do this piece of work.
Speaker:
00:19:57
And we do do some fairly wide-ranging technology changes.
Speaker:
00:20:03
We've done quite a few over the past few years.
Speaker:
00:20:06
And they're not a lot of fun.
Speaker:
00:20:08
They tend to suck up all the resource.
Speaker:
00:20:10
So what happens then is you get this void of
Speaker:
00:20:13
I can't do anything now because the central teams are busy
Speaker:
00:20:15
doing this particular type of technical implementation.
Speaker:
00:20:18
So the business almost has to stop
Speaker:
00:20:20
and wait for that to all finish.
Speaker:
00:20:22
And then as soon as that finish,
Speaker:
00:20:23
you get the tsunami of data requests come in,
Speaker:
00:20:25
which you're not prepared to deal with
Speaker:
00:20:27
'cause you're still mopping up
Speaker:
00:20:28
from the end of the last project.
Speaker:
00:20:30
That's again where trust and everything starts to fall down.
Speaker:
00:20:32
So pretty much, and this is where my background
Speaker:
00:20:35
around business and marketing kinda come in,
Speaker:
00:20:39
is I tend to sit more as an interface to the business
Speaker:
00:20:43
than I do as an interface to the data.
Speaker:
00:20:45
Is translating what the projects and things are doing,
Speaker:
00:20:48
what volumes we have,
Speaker:
00:20:49
what approaches we can take
Speaker:
00:20:51
in order to answer the questions.
Speaker:
00:20:52
- Yeah, it sounds like,
Speaker:
00:20:54
with some of the things that you've mentioned there,
Speaker:
00:20:55
that that has been a hard lesson to learn,
Speaker:
00:20:57
but you've been in that situation,
Speaker:
00:20:59
and things have gone pear-shaped,
Speaker:
00:21:01
let's not go there again.
Speaker:
00:21:03
Has it been a baptism by fire over the last five years,
Speaker:
00:21:05
would you say?
Speaker:
00:21:06
- The baptism of fire is more around
Speaker:
00:21:07
understanding the prioritisation
Speaker:
00:21:09
of where you sit within a business.
Speaker:
00:21:11
Now, I had this thing where, you know,
Speaker:
00:21:12
phase two never happens in a project.
Speaker:
00:21:14
So, when you're walking through something
Speaker:
00:21:17
and they're like, yeah, that's great,
Speaker:
00:21:18
but we'll put that in phase two.
Speaker:
00:21:20
We originally had it put in phase one,
Speaker:
00:21:22
but we're not gonna quite hit that,
Speaker:
00:21:23
so we're gonna move that out.
Speaker:
00:21:25
That tends to be more of the analytic type jobs
Speaker:
00:21:30
in favour of the front end working properly.
Speaker:
00:21:33
Obviously people have to buy stuff,
Speaker:
00:21:34
people have to register, and that user experience,
Speaker:
00:21:37
which is absolutely right.
Speaker:
00:21:40
The frustrations tend to come from the fact that
Speaker:
00:21:42
you always feel, to some degree, second fiddle.
Speaker:
00:21:45
I think it's
Speaker:
00:21:47
you know you're gonna get asked questions on this later,
Speaker:
00:21:49
and you know you're gonna have to say,
Speaker:
00:21:50
I'm sorry, we can't deliver that because it's actually,
Speaker:
00:21:53
it wasn't included as part of the project,
Speaker:
00:21:55
or we weren't able to get that in on time.
Speaker:
00:21:59
- I was gonna ask a little bit about shoring up.
Speaker:
00:22:02
Sometimes you haven't got the information,
Speaker:
00:22:04
because either it's gone into, you know,
Speaker:
00:22:06
sort of it's the next phase
Speaker:
00:22:07
or you get to the end of it and somebody says,
Speaker:
00:22:08
well, we really could have done with that.
Speaker:
00:22:10
And how do you go about
Speaker:
00:22:12
scoping out a project as best you can
Speaker:
00:22:15
to make sure that you have, you know, shored that all up
Speaker:
00:22:17
so that you've got as much information as you can.
Speaker:
00:22:19
Is there a process that you go through to ensure that
Speaker:
00:22:22
when you're scoping out those individual projects,
Speaker:
00:22:24
that they are gonna deliver on what you're gonna need
Speaker:
00:22:26
or what you're gonna be asked for?
Speaker:
00:22:28
- There are control mechanisms
Speaker:
00:22:30
and things in place with project management techniques
Speaker:
00:22:33
that allow you to ensure that
Speaker:
00:22:34
certain things get picked up at certain times.
Speaker:
00:22:36
And I think data is no different.
Speaker:
00:22:39
It's the same as any other part of the business
Speaker:
00:22:41
trying to deploy something,
Speaker:
00:22:42
making sure that business requirements are met
Speaker:
00:22:45
from an early time.
Speaker:
00:22:46
That being said, I'd be a complete liar if I said
Speaker:
00:22:50
that that happened in every single case.
Speaker:
00:22:53
(laugh) Works in a very similar role will understand,
Speaker:
00:22:56
the day before something goes live,
Speaker:
00:22:57
you get the email that says,
Speaker:
00:22:58
oh, we're launching this tomorrow.
Speaker:
00:23:00
And you're, okay, I know I'm gonna be asked
Speaker:
00:23:03
for some stats on that.
Speaker:
00:23:04
What have you put in place?
Speaker:
00:23:05
Yeah, phase two.
Speaker:
00:23:07
Okay, so I've got no data for it.
Speaker:
00:23:11
Everyone's gonna start looking at me like I'm an idiot.
Speaker:
00:23:13
I can't answer any questions on what you've done.
Speaker:
00:23:16
That's just the way of life.
Speaker:
00:23:17
But by pushing people out into the product teams,
Speaker:
00:23:21
you know, you get those early warning signals.
Speaker:
00:23:22
That's all you can do.
Speaker:
00:23:23
Just make sure you're engaged.
Speaker:
00:23:25
And I think if someone's putting a new product in,
Speaker:
00:23:29
it's gonna be based on a business goal, right.
Speaker:
00:23:31
There'll be a very specific forecast
Speaker:
00:23:33
that we generate for that.
Speaker:
00:23:33
Centaur doesn't spend money on stuff on a whim.
Speaker:
00:23:37
If it's gonna throw some cash at something,
Speaker:
00:23:39
then you can believe there's a very good reason behind it,
Speaker:
00:23:42
why it's being done.
Speaker:
00:23:43
So, by engaging earlier in that process on any new project
Speaker:
00:23:48
or any new piece of work that gets done,
Speaker:
00:23:50
that's probably easier.
Speaker:
00:23:52
Because people wanna know
Speaker:
00:23:54
whether their business goals being hit.
Speaker:
00:23:55
Because ultimately
Speaker:
00:23:56
that's how they're gonna increase their budgets next year,
Speaker:
00:23:58
that's gonna lead them to spend more money on marketing,
Speaker:
00:24:00
that's gonna grow their own side of the business.
Speaker:
00:24:03
So, they are more likely
Speaker:
00:24:04
to engage with an analyst earlier on
Speaker:
00:24:06
and say, what does this look like,
Speaker:
00:24:08
what do I need to have in place
Speaker:
00:24:09
in order to prove that what I've said there works.
Speaker:
00:24:13
The harder bit is on the established businesses,
Speaker:
00:24:15
where they're just making incremental changes.
Speaker:
00:24:16
And not in any way blaming dev teams,
Speaker:
00:24:19
but quite often, analytical implementations are thrown in
Speaker:
00:24:25
with third-party services, heavy JavaScript based stuff.
Speaker:
00:24:29
Developers don't like the fact that
Speaker:
00:24:30
you've just installed 50 or 60 different types of service
Speaker:
00:24:35
or tag that runs alongside
Speaker:
00:24:37
their beautiful hand-coded JavaScript.
Speaker:
00:24:40
So, you know, slowing stuff down,
Speaker:
00:24:43
making stuff potentially fail for some reason,
Speaker:
00:24:45
generating errors, all that kinda stuff.
Speaker:
00:24:48
If you don't have a relationship with that team,
Speaker:
00:24:52
then it's very easy for them
Speaker:
00:24:53
to just start not engaging with you.
Speaker:
00:24:56
And then that's when things will sort of start to fall down.
Speaker:
00:24:59
So it's about sorta solid project management stuff,
Speaker:
00:25:02
making sure you're engaged and involved
Speaker:
00:25:03
in the business as you should be.
Speaker:
00:25:05
But then relationship building,
Speaker:
00:25:08
being out there and chatting to everyone,
Speaker:
00:25:09
making sure you know what people are trying to do,
Speaker:
00:25:12
understanding why they're trying to do it,
Speaker:
00:25:13
more than anything else.
Speaker:
00:25:15
- Would you say, internally and externally,
Speaker:
00:25:17
that data is the new marketing currency?
Speaker:
00:25:20
- The new currency is almost driven by the velocity
Speaker:
00:25:24
at which point you can get that information now.
Speaker:
00:25:26
I used to work on clustering exercises,
Speaker:
00:25:28
maybe take a couple of weeks to run.
Speaker:
00:25:30
You'd put in something, you may need an analyst then
Speaker:
00:25:32
to go and spend some time looking at it
Speaker:
00:25:34
and figure it through.
Speaker:
00:25:35
And tools and techniques have changed now,
Speaker:
00:25:37
so you can run almost in constant, real time,
Speaker:
00:25:41
leads going classification
Speaker:
00:25:43
of every single individual person that comes your way,
Speaker:
00:25:46
rather than trying to then take something offline,
Speaker:
00:25:49
work out how everything fits together.
Speaker:
00:25:51
That's where the difference is.
Speaker:
00:25:53
I would say it's less data is the new currency,
Speaker:
00:25:55
and it's more data literacy is the new currency.
Speaker:
00:25:59
When marketing automation came about,
Speaker:
00:26:00
I think it was, to some degree, everyone thought,
Speaker:
00:26:04
oh great, I'll automate this.
Speaker:
00:26:06
Automate equals less work, right?
Speaker:
00:26:08
So, not so much to do.
Speaker:
00:26:10
Whereas actually automation means
Speaker:
00:26:13
massively increasing your level of data literacy.
Speaker:
00:26:15
How many marketers have ever been
Speaker:
00:26:17
on the data literacy course?
Speaker:
00:26:18
How many marketers understand what their data literacy is?
Speaker:
00:26:21
Do they really understand
Speaker:
00:26:23
the intricacies of all of the various ways
Speaker:
00:26:26
that a marketing technology platform could be used
Speaker:
00:26:29
and harnessed, you know.
Speaker:
00:26:31
Centaur is massively guilty
Speaker:
00:26:32
of buying into some big, big packages,
Speaker:
00:26:35
and not necessarily then following up with
Speaker:
00:26:37
using all the benefits of those packages bring.
Speaker:
00:26:40
So, I think data is the new currency
Speaker:
00:26:44
in as much as it's the understanding
Speaker:
00:26:45
and the use of that data
Speaker:
00:26:47
within the technology that is now available to people.
Speaker:
00:26:51
If you can find those people,
Speaker:
00:26:52
those people that really understand that,
Speaker:
00:26:54
then there's some really
Speaker:
00:26:56
forward-thinking marketers at Centaur
Speaker:
00:26:58
who are quite happy to pick up on projects
Speaker:
00:27:01
that should be data team projects.
Speaker:
00:27:03
They're quite happy to pick up
Speaker:
00:27:04
and run with that kind of information in that.
Speaker:
00:27:07
They're asking very specific questions of data.
Speaker:
00:27:10
They know where things are falling over,
Speaker:
00:27:12
and they're pulling you up on it
Speaker:
00:27:14
as if you should be the people
Speaker:
00:27:15
that are supplying this kind of information
Speaker:
00:27:17
in that way to this product.
Speaker:
00:27:18
And that in itself makes life a lot easier for a data team.
Speaker:
00:27:22
From a data literacy level,
Speaker:
00:27:23
if you've got people
Speaker:
00:27:24
that are able to talk that kinda language
Speaker:
00:27:25
and engage with you,
Speaker:
00:27:27
they can really share with
Speaker:
00:27:28
what the business is trying to achieve,
Speaker:
00:27:30
and ultimately how they want it to work
Speaker:
00:27:32
within that piece of technology,
Speaker:
00:27:33
then that makes life a lot easier.
Speaker:
00:27:36
- That sorta brings me on nicely
Speaker:
00:27:37
to a sort of question that I would like to ask,
Speaker:
00:27:39
which is if somebody's trying to get into the industry,
Speaker:
00:27:41
what sort of skills or experience
Speaker:
00:27:43
do you think they should have?
Speaker:
00:27:45
Or what kinda things would you be looking for?
Speaker:
00:27:47
- We've looked to put in place a number of hiring strategies
Speaker:
00:27:51
across for the last few years especially.
Speaker:
00:27:52
I think we've seen, everyone's seen
Speaker:
00:27:54
a scarcity of resource across the business.
Speaker:
00:27:57
I think the key thing, when it comes to skills,
Speaker:
00:28:00
if we're looking to hire very specific skillsets,
Speaker:
00:28:04
we have to round that out quite a lot.
Speaker:
00:28:06
We're looking for actually
Speaker:
00:28:09
what are the transferable skills.
Speaker:
00:28:10
What are the industry areas
Speaker:
00:28:12
or types of businesses and things like that
Speaker:
00:28:15
that people may have worked in before
Speaker:
00:28:16
that might have experience that is relevant to us.
Speaker:
00:28:19
We've brought in maths grads in the past,
Speaker:
00:28:21
and that's been really useful.
Speaker:
00:28:23
They're quick learners.
Speaker:
00:28:24
They don't necessarily know the ins and outs
Speaker:
00:28:27
of all the pieces of marketing technology
Speaker:
00:28:28
and how to get the data out,
Speaker:
00:28:29
or, you know, they're blank slates effectively.
Speaker:
00:28:32
Might've done a bit of coding or something in university.
Speaker:
00:28:35
Have equal success with people that are sociology graduates,
Speaker:
00:28:39
that have got a really nice way of talking to people
Speaker:
00:28:43
and getting information out of people and are keen to learn.
Speaker:
00:28:46
You know if someone's quick, if they've got it,
Speaker:
00:28:49
if they understand.
Speaker:
00:28:50
They're good attention to detail, they're willing to learn,
Speaker:
00:28:53
they're interested in the industry.
Speaker:
00:28:56
You figure it out.
Speaker:
00:28:56
You kind of sit down and work out what's happening.
Speaker:
00:29:00
You know, you then look at what the causes of that could be.
Speaker:
00:29:02
Then you look into the sort of the issue
Speaker:
00:29:04
that's surrounding it.
Speaker:
00:29:05
And then, you know, you look to put in
Speaker:
00:29:06
some sort of resolution.
Speaker:
00:29:07
It's that kind of mindset that you're looking for
Speaker:
00:29:10
more than anything else.
Speaker:
00:29:11
Because ultimately, skills can be trained.
Speaker:
00:29:14
If they're not interested, they're not gonna bother.
Speaker:
00:29:17
You're just wasting everyone's time, at that point,
Speaker:
00:29:19
- It's people are passionate about data
Speaker:
00:29:21
rather than just thinking of it as a day job.
Speaker:
00:29:23
- The people that are good,
Speaker:
00:29:24
they're still talked about at Centaur.
Speaker:
00:29:26
You know, these are grads
Speaker:
00:29:27
that came and spent two, three years with us.
Speaker:
00:29:29
Did some stuff, really made an impact, and now have gone on,
Speaker:
00:29:33
I mean, they're (chuckle) earning more than I am now,
Speaker:
00:29:35
but you know. (laughter)
Speaker:
00:29:36
Sort of three years later.
Speaker:
00:29:38
But, you know, they've got that passion for it,
Speaker:
00:29:40
but that's what shows through.
Speaker:
00:29:41
So, they're remembered by people.
Speaker:
00:29:44
One of the managing directors
Speaker:
00:29:45
in particular parts of the businesses,
Speaker:
00:29:46
they've gone on and done something else somewhere else.
Speaker:
00:29:49
You know, you start to get those phone calls come around,
Speaker:
00:29:51
oh, we're looking for someone,
Speaker:
00:29:52
or, you know, we've got an opening for this particular role.
Speaker:
00:29:55
Who are you gonna recommend?
Speaker:
00:29:57
Oh, we had that grad in.
Speaker:
00:29:57
They were amazing.
Speaker:
00:29:58
You know, it doesn't really matter
Speaker:
00:29:59
if they didn't have the direct skills,
Speaker:
00:30:01
they picked up this thing really, really quickly.
Speaker:
00:30:03
I'll happily recommend them to you, you know.
Speaker:
00:30:05
And that sorta thing is invaluable.
Speaker:
00:30:08
I think, for any graduate, that networking side,
Speaker:
00:30:12
listening to what the business wants,
Speaker:
00:30:14
not trying to over-deliver on everything,
Speaker:
00:30:16
just getting known for a few core things,
Speaker:
00:30:19
and then, you know, you're sorta set for life,
Speaker:
00:30:21
practically, in the data world, aren't you?
Speaker:
00:30:23
That's it for them, I mean.
Speaker:
00:30:24
- It's a smaller industry than people would learn,
Speaker:
00:30:26
isn't it? (laughter)
Speaker:
00:30:28
- Absolutely.
Speaker:
00:30:29
- My last question, just before we finish this,
Speaker:
00:30:31
I just wondered about the sort of moving to the cloud space.
Speaker:
00:30:34
What are sort of the big business drivers
Speaker:
00:30:36
that you've seen for that?
Speaker:
00:30:37
How do you even empower an organisation
Speaker:
00:30:39
to kind of really embrace that?
Speaker:
00:30:40
We're all working in the same direction.
Speaker:
00:30:42
- I don't know why anyone
Speaker:
00:30:43
would ever wanna see a server room again.
Speaker:
00:30:45
(laughter)
Speaker:
00:30:46
It's allowed us to start to really kind of experiment
Speaker:
00:30:50
with different techniques,
Speaker:
00:30:51
and the things that we can then potentially
Speaker:
00:30:53
bring into production.
Speaker:
00:30:54
So some of the stuff that Red Olive are working with us,
Speaker:
00:30:57
around data cleansing and processing,
Speaker:
00:30:59
where we're trying to really make sense of
Speaker:
00:31:02
the first party data that we've got, for example.
Speaker:
00:31:04
We'll use Red Olive to help us to create
Speaker:
00:31:07
a sort of an end-to-end process for that.
Speaker:
00:31:09
Cleansing, working through data in a sort of data pipeline.
Speaker:
00:31:13
It's fairly standard stuff, right?
Speaker:
00:31:14
There's nothing particularly exciting about that in itself.
Speaker:
00:31:19
But having the availability of the sort of AWS tools
Speaker:
00:31:23
or other providers tools
Speaker:
00:31:24
allows us to maybe do some of the stuff
Speaker:
00:31:26
that was manual in a different way.
Speaker:
00:31:28
So, we're looking at potentially using some AI approaches
Speaker:
00:31:33
to even data cleansing.
Speaker:
00:31:35
You know, handling our job title classifications.
Speaker:
00:31:38
We've used it quite successfully
Speaker:
00:31:40
for classifying editorial.
Speaker:
00:31:43
So, training models to understand
Speaker:
00:31:46
how to bucket certain pieces of content,
Speaker:
00:31:48
so that you don't have to then worry about
Speaker:
00:31:50
editorial teams doing what they should be doing
Speaker:
00:31:53
from a data perspective.
Speaker:
00:31:54
And for being able to sort of organise
Speaker:
00:31:56
and manage most of the metadata
Speaker:
00:31:59
that sits behind the information that we gather.
Speaker:
00:32:01
Using these sort of AI type machine learning tools
Speaker:
00:32:05
allows us to really sort of move away
Speaker:
00:32:08
from those manual jobs.
Speaker:
00:32:11
- Would you say, is that the thing that's most exciting
Speaker:
00:32:13
about kind of being able to do stuff
Speaker:
00:32:14
that quickly with the AI space?
Speaker:
00:32:17
- I think so.
Speaker:
00:32:18
My background is not analysis.
Speaker:
00:32:19
The kind of using machine learning
Speaker:
00:32:21
for generating certain types of fancy analysis
Speaker:
00:32:25
or stuff like that, I have to leave that to the specialists.
Speaker:
00:32:28
You know, I'm a man of certain age.
Speaker:
00:32:30
I have to sort of respect the fact that
Speaker:
00:32:32
I've only got a certain amount of capacity
Speaker:
00:32:35
to really get to grips with this stuff.
Speaker:
00:32:37
But when it comes to the nuts and bolts stuff
Speaker:
00:32:38
that I have been doing over the last 20 years,
Speaker:
00:32:41
that I have experience in,
Speaker:
00:32:42
data cleansing, integration work, all that kinda stuff,
Speaker:
00:32:45
then finding opportunities in the cloud tools
Speaker:
00:32:49
to really sorta leverage
Speaker:
00:32:50
how that makes my life a lot easier,
Speaker:
00:32:52
then I'm very interested in.
Speaker:
00:32:56
- An interesting take from Ben there.
Speaker:
00:32:57
Join us for the next episode
Speaker:
00:32:58
of The Red Olive Fibonacci podcast,
Speaker:
00:33:00
where we'll be joined by
Speaker:
00:33:01
another data expert sharing their thoughts
Speaker:
00:33:03
on the latest trends in AI and big data,
Speaker:
00:33:06
along with some great hints and tips.
Speaker:
00:33:08
Make sure you subscribe to The Red Olive Fibonacci podcast
Speaker:
00:33:11
from wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker:
00:33:13
to make sure you don't miss it.
Speaker:
00:33:15
That's all for today.
Speaker:
00:33:16
Thanks for listening.
Speaker:
00:33:17
I've been your host, Nicky Rudd.
Speaker:
00:33:19
See you next time.
