data strategy

In this episode, we talk to two executives at the opposite ends of the spectrum: Matthieu Houle, VP of IT and Digital Tech at ALDO Group, a half-century old retailer, and Pierre-Luc Bisaillon, CIO at AppDirect, a cloud-born tech company. Despite coming from different IT landscapes, Matthieu and Pierre-Luc share a similar approach to future-proofing their companies’ IT. You’ll hear insights into staying ahead of the curve, like how to leverage data, prioritize projects, and more.

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Quotes

“If you look at the corporate employee, look at [IT] as a product… Where is the value? How much are we willing to invest? What are the usage metrics? The growth metrics? Where do we need to remove friction? A lot of IT is about removing friction.” - Matthieu Houle, VP of IT and Digital Tech at ALDO Group

“The good news is that over the years we've been able to abstract more and more of the work that IT does and rely on cloud providers, whether they’re infrastructure or software as a service. Meanwhile, the core of our efforts do not have to be managing the low-level anymore, and that allows us to be technology experts, but framed as ‘how does technology actually help business?’ - Pierre-Luc Bisaillon, CIO at AppDirect

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Time Stamps:

* (1:47) Matthieu’s role at Aldo and Pierre-Luc’s role at AppDirect

* (5:09) The changing scope of the CIO’s role across industries

* (14:27) Matthieu’s product approach to IT leadership

* (18:15) What data-driven business alignment looks like at AppDirect

* (20:12) Building agility and resilience into a tech stack 

* (23:32) Aldo and AppDirect’s next big projects 

* (26:30) Matthieu and Pierre-Luc share their CIO secrets 

* (28:51) The future of digital IT and shadow IT

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Sponsor

This podcast is brought to you by Asana. Asana is a leading work management platform that empowers teams to orchestrate their work — from daily tasks to big strategic initiatives — all in one place. By enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly, Asana helps organizations of all sizes and industries achieve their goals, faster. Learn more at Asana.com.

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Links

• Connect with Matthieu on LinkedIn
• Connect with Pierre-Luc on LinkedIn
• Learn more about TELUS International
• Learn more about the ALDO Group

The innovation we see in systems permeating every industry so often originates with the manufacturing sector, and Fulcrum are pushing their clients to achieve more through their ERP offering.

Their Founder & CEO, Sunny Han, is bringing digitisation and acceleration to Fulcrum’s customers. We chat to Sunny on the latest episode of Tied Together to hear how he sees the parallels between machine learning and human intuition, their ambitions to connect businesses together, and the power of system integration.

This episode of Tied Together covers:

• Trust in intuition, and how machine learning algorithms follow similar principles
• Fulcrum’s approach to understanding the end user & customer’s needs
• The future potential for Fulcrum to link an entire supply chain
• Why bespoke solutions might not always be better for the user
• The power of integrating with other, purpose-built systems

Links and references: https://bit.ly/3jAo8bD

On Tied Together we’re always looking at the future of digital, and one of the most unique implementations of Artificial Intelligence might come from an unexpected source - psychics.

We’re joined by Raven Storm, an expert in extrasensory perception (ESP), whose work with AI is making readings more accessible to us at home. Raven shares all, from the prospect of new, novel expressions of our aura in the Metaverse, to creating the ‘Uber for Psychics’.

This episode of Tied Together covers:

• How technology has developed since its early adoption in psychic readings
• The microservices architecture behind Raven’s psychic database
• Accessing wider markets through social media integration
• Potential enhancement of the Metaverse interface through innovative representations of ‘aura’

Links and references: https://bit.ly/3tWYSlV

Three Alteryx success stories in one podcast episode - yes please! Alteryx President and Chief Revenue Officer, Paula Hansen, sat down with Alteryx users Jet Lali (State Street Global Advisors), Laura Anderson (Siemens Energy), and Nathan Patrick Taylor (Symphony Care), to chat about their Alteryx journeys and the importance of having a vision for digital transformation at scale.

Topics:

• Alteryx Inspire 2022
• Alteryx Analytics Cloud
• Alteryx Auto Insights
• Trifacta
• Alteryx Community

Interested in sharing your feedback with the Alter Everything team? Take our feedback survey here!

This episode was produced by Megan Dibble, Mike Cusic, and Matt Rotundo. Special thanks to Andy Uttley for the theme music and Mike Cusic for the for our album artwork.

Follow Wouter here

Check out Xudo.be

Check out the Medium article that started it all: https://medium.com/p/8cbf0497d5a6 

From The_Link:

• Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/data-in-construction/id1604092908
• Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUUpaT0yYueyah826JOOQ?si=a34ca4e3acf24835
• Sign up for the Data in Construction Book: http://eepurl.com/hTtFPH
• Sign up for Data in Construction skills webinars
• Buy The Construction Technology Handbook here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08PNHBB1M/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Follow Asif Sharif here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asif-sharif-9884885/

Learn more about Loadspring here: https://www.loadspring.com/

From The_Link:

• Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/data-in-construction/id1604092908
• Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AUUpaT0yYueyah826JOOQ?si=a34ca4e3acf24835
• Sign up for the Data in Construction Book: http://eepurl.com/hTtFPH
• Sign up for Data in Construction skills webinars
• Buy The Construction Technology Handbook here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08PNHBB1M/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

We speak to fellow podcaster Kristian Lupinski - the host of The Hoteliers podcast - and event lead of I Meet Hotel, to discuss the role of events in sales and procurement in hospitality technology. 

I Meet Hotel is a global industry event connecting hoteliers to the future of hospitality providing audiences with the keys to higher revenue and a customer loyalty approach through insightful conferences.

In this episode we discuss

• The value and expectation of inperson events today for buyers and sellers
• The role of collaboration in B2B sales
• Why  education is so important now
• And measuring impact and engagement across all marketing, event and sales initiatives. 

Kristian also runs Hospitality Partnerships @ Bidroom

Listen to more episodes of the hospitality industry podcast Travel Market Life and subscribe for the latest news at http://travelmarket.life/

Follow us on LinkedIn for more thought-provoking content: https://www.linkedin.com/company/travel-market-life/

Do you have a story to share about technology, digitalisation or culture changes within the hospitality and travel industry? We'd love to hear what your company is doing and the impact it is having. Please contact us through http://travelmarket.life/

Whether or not they’re aware of it, businesses of all sizes are gathering a wealth of data with which they can make invaluable observations. 

Joining us on Tied Together this week to discuss how organisations are maximising this data to their benefit is Matt Nixon, Founder of data & analytics consultancy Molzana, who recently became the latest, exciting addition to the Cohaesus Group!

We dive into the origin of Matt’s expertise in data analysis, the channel agnostic approach that allows Molzana to work effectively in diverse sectors, and how they make such an influential impact through the insights they provide.

This episode of Tied Together covers:

• The source of Matt’s keen focus on data analytics
• Handling the breadth of clients’ challenges and their unique tech stacks
• The differences between trusting gut instinct and following the data
• How Molzana bridges the gap between creative marketers and data analytics professionals
• Staying flexible and channel agnostic to work with clients in varied industries

Links and references: https://bit.ly/34pAO0L

Dave is joined by Dave DeLorenzo, COO at Association Analytics, for a discussion about, well, everything data! DelCor data strategy and governance info here.

This is a story of data and business intelligence, and how and where hotels can gather data to underpin the revenue strategy. Paolo Dona, CIO of StayCity Group explains the importance of data and business intelligence within its tech stack to gain essential insights to establish the revenue strategy and identify the most valuable guests.

Key points include:

• Adapting to changes in booking behaviour as the market shifts from business to leisure. 
• Reinventing the booking strategy by moving away from aggregators
• Developing the guest experience and how StayCity Group is implementing hyper-personalisation and optimising upselling
• Building a data strategy and culture and the role of the Customer Data Platform 
• Key criteria in the procurement process, and the importance of connectivity

StayCity Group uses Oracle Opera and works with HotelRes.

Listen to more episodes of the hospitality industry podcast Travel Market Life and subscribe for the latest news at http://travelmarket.life/

Follow us on LinkedIn for more thought-provoking content: https://www.linkedin.com/company/travel-market-life/

Do you have a story to share about technology, digitalisation or culture changes within the hospitality and travel industry? We'd love to hear what your company is doing and the impact it is having. Please contact us through http://travelmarket.life/

Tom Vargo, Vice President of Keller Schroeder's Data Strategy Group is back in this episode of Technically Speaking to answer why although his group's work does involve doing data strategy, most often his conversations with organizations surround corporate strategy and culture. 

Don't miss out on the next #womenintech podcast episode, get notified by signing up here http://womenintechshow.com. 

Be featured in the Women in Tech Community by creating your profile here http://womenintechvip.com/

“Helena Ronis of AllFactors, Case Study”

#womenintech Show is a WeAreTech.fm production.

To support the Women in Tech podcast go to https://www.patreon.com/womenintech

To be featured on the podcast go to http://womenintechshow.com/feature

Host, Espree Devora

https://twitter.com/espreedevora

https://www.linkedin.com/in/espree

Guest,

Helena Ronis

https://twitter.com/curiousleyne

https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenaronis/

Be featured in the Women in Tech Community by creating your profile here http://womenintechvip.com/

Listener Spotlight,

Jam Pilarca

https://www.instagram.com/jampilarca/

In LA? Here’s some awesome resources for you to become immersed in the LA Tech scene -

For a calendar of all LA Startup events go to, http://WeAreLATech.com

Get Podcast Listeners, http://getpodcastlisteners.com/

Resources Mentioned:

• AllFactors, https://allfactors.com
• Hotjar, https://www.hotjar.com
• Basecamp,https://basecamp.com
• Flodesk, https://flodesk.com

Credits:

• Produced and Hosted by Espree Devora, http://espreedevora.com
• Story Produced, Edited and Mastered by Cory Jennings, https://www.coryjennings.com/
• Production and Voiceover by Adam Carroll, http://www.ariacreative.ca/
• Team support by Janice Geronimo
• Music by Jay Huffman, https://soundcloud.com/jayhuffman

Short Title: Helena Ronis

Don't miss out on the next #womenintech podcast episode, get notified by signing up here http://womenintechshow.com. 

Be featured in the Women in Tech Community by creating your profile here http://womenintechvip.com/

“Helena Ronis of AllFactors, All In One Web Marketing Analytics”

#womenintech Show is a WeAreTech.fm production.

To support the Women in Tech podcast go to https://www.patreon.com/womenintech

To be featured on the podcast go to http://womenintechshow.com/feature

Host, Espree Devora

https://twitter.com/espreedevora

https://www.linkedin.com/in/espree

Guest,

Helena Ronis

https://twitter.com/curiousleyne

https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenaronis/

Be featured in the Women in Tech Community by creating your profile here http://womenintechvip.com/

Listener Spotlight,

Jo Peterson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jopeterson1/

In LA? Here’s some awesome resources for you to become immersed in the LA Tech scene -

For a calendar of all LA Startup events go to, http://WeAreLATech.com

Get Podcast Listeners, http://getpodcastlisteners.com/

Resources Mentioned:

• Women Founders Community, https://www.facebook.com/groups/FemaleFoundersCommunity
• AllFactors, https://allfactors.com
• Y Combinator, https://www.ycombinator.com
• Elpha, elpha.com
• Startup School, https://www.startupschool.org
• Slack, https://slack.com
• Voice Memos App, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/voice-memos/id1069512134
• VoxSnap, https://voxsnap.com
• Startups For The Rest Of Us Podcast, https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com
• Product People Podcast, https://www.productpeople.tv
• Google Analytics, https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/provision/#/provision
• Adobe Analytics, https://www.adobe.com/analytics/adobe-analytics.html
• Quibi, https://quibi.com
• Cameo, https://www.cameo.com
• TaskRabbit, https://www.taskrabbit.com
• Atomic Habits, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/atomic-habits-james-clear/1129201155

People Mentioned:

• Justin Jackson, https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinijackson/
• Daniel Vassallo, https://twitter.com/dvassallo
• James Clear, https://jamesclear.com/about

Credits:

• Produced and Hosted by Espree Devora, http://espreedevora.com
• Story Produced, Edited and Mastered by Cory Jennings, https://www.coryjennings.com/
• Production and Voiceover by Adam Carroll, http://www.ariacreative.ca/
• Team support by Janice Geronimo
• Music by Jay Huffman, https://soundcloud.com/jayhuffman

Short Title: Helena Ronis 

Businesses now produce and store a huge amount of data, but unlocking the knowledge it holds can be a challenge. Implementing a data analytics strategy is the key to finding out what your data can tell you about taking your business forward.

Analytics experts from RSM talk to host Jon Cronin about getting the foundations right for implementing a data analytics strategy, how to get everyone in the business on board and how to unlock the knowledge inside your data. 

And follow us on social:
Linkedin - https://bit.ly/3Ab7abT
Twitter - http://bit.ly/1qILii3​​
Instagram - http://bit.ly/2W60CWm

Joining Cindi today is Suzette Kent, the former US Federal Chief Information Officer. Suzette joined the Federal Government in 2018 from the financial services industry with two key goals: drive IT modernization and overcome the challenges in federal IT budgeting and funding alignment.

On this episode, Suzette and Cindi discuss the creative friction between the public and private sector, the pros and cons of how the public and private sectors operate and what they can gain by collaborating with one another, and the challenges of avoiding minutiae and focusing on the big picture when working with massive datasets. Plus, Suzette shares the origin story of the federal data strategy and how she hopes it can be used to solve the problems we face today.

Key Takeaways & Discussion Points:

• Creative friction happens when private and public sectors collaborate and each side benefits from the experience.
• You can't drive change only from a technology side; people need to be involved in the process, and this requires adaptation to the pace necessary for the task at hand.
• Why striking a balance between indexing details and focusing on outcomes can be particularly challenging when you're dealing with the overwhelming number of datasets available to the public sector, the laws that govern their use, and the sometimes conflicting purposes of multiple agencies within that structure.
• How the federal data strategy came about, what it strives to accomplish, what private sector CDOs can learn about it at strategy.data.gov, and how they can utilize the resources available at resources.data.gov.
• The outcome-driven approach to getting students truly interested in pursuing careers in data.

More About Suzette:

Suzette Kent served from 2018 to 2020 as US Federal Chief Information Officer, spearheading a wide range of technology and workforce initiatives. Her tenure was devoted to setting governmentwide standards while also giving agencies the freedom to tailor efforts in mission-appropriate ways.

Suzette was selected from the financial services industry to replace outgoing Federal CIO Tony Scott. She was a principal with Ernst & Young and had been a managing partner at Accenture and worked in other capacities at JP Morgan and the Carreker Corp. This background allowed her to see the challenges in federal IT budgeting and funding alignment and its IT modernization.

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The Data Chief is brought to you by ThoughtSpot. For more on how the most successful data leaders are driving value in their organizations, join Cindi and the ThoughtSpot team at Beyond 2020, the leading data & analytics event of the year. Go to www.thoughtspot.com/beyond2020 for more information.

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For full show notes and more, go to thedatachief.com.

This month we’re talking about cloud native data strategy, the unique features of Azure Cosmos DB, and what's new and exciting with Microsoft's cloud native NoSQL database offering in 2020. We're joined by special guests Dave Judd, Application Development Practice Lead at ObjectSharp, and Mark Brown, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft for Cosmos DB.

Minutes

• 0:15 - Intro to the show
• 1:13 - Dave Judd introduces himself to the show and his work as Application Development Practice Lead
• 1:45 - Mark Brown introduces himself to the show and his work at Microsoft as Principal Program Manager for Cosmos DB
• 3:07 - Jeff kicks off discussion on the background of what is Cosmos DB: what it is, why it’s important
• 3:50 - Mark Brown describes Cosmos DB - a NoSQL data store built on and for Azure - and what sets it apart: it’s a NoSQL database with all of the benefits that come with that (schema agnostic, multi-model - supports a number of APIs); horizontally partitioned (scale out vs scale up); fully managed (provision an account in the portal or using a script or ARM template, set throughput, and you’re up and running). Main use cases are high availability and global distribution; Azure can replicate your data globally, allowing seamless failover to other regions if needed; Azure also provides an SLA on latency, with a guarantee of less than 10 ms. It’s the only data service in Azure with 5 9s of availability. A great solution for customers that need low latency and / or high resiliency.
• 7:15 - Dave Judd talks about why Cosmos DB has become such a preference for the work he’s been doing at ObjectSharp for its clients, namely: ease of use, incredibly low latency and performance, and global replication allows for better performance for users everywhere - bringing the data closer to the end-user for faster round-tripping
• 09:20 - Dave Judd talks about using the Cosmos DB Change Feed to allow streaming of data into other places for reporting and analytics
• 09:50 - Mark Brown talks about customers using Cosmos DB as a cache
• 10:00 - Jeff discusses the practical significance of Cosmos DB - how it solves real business problems and architectures and is simple to adopt, and not just tech for tech’s sake
• 11:07 - Dave Judd comments on the barrier to entry being small, unless you’re not used to working with NoSQL, but notes that the multiple APIs available make the barriers to entry even smaller, depending on your background
• 12:48 - Mark Brown talks about the Mongo DB support on Cosmos and efforts to make the Mongo experience on Cosmos DB even better
• 13:25 - Nick asks Mark Brown to talk about what’s new and exciting for Cosmos DB in 2020, and announcements that were made at Microsoft Ignite 2020
• 14:00 - Mark Brown discusses “auto pilot” - Cosmos DB’s new autoscale capability - solves the problem of not knowing how much throughput to provision for their database (e.g. spikes in traffic hitting an app or site). Auto pilot is available in preview. Customers can set maximum level of throughput for their container, and Azure will auto scale up and down as required. Mark notes that this is important not just for traffic spikes but also testing.
• 17:00 - Dave Judd talks about how ObjectSharp has written its own auto scale technology for its clients historically, and how this now will save time to be able to use Microsoft’s solution
• 18:00 - Mark Brown talks about Azure Synapse - Microsoft’s next generation data warehouse solution. The vision is to use Cosmos with Synapse to get operational data and do analytics out of the Synapse portal. Any time you ingest or write data into Cosmos, they will automatically ETL that and you can write queries using Spark to assess your analytics in Synapse. Don’t need to create your own pipelines anymore.
• 20:23 - Mark Brown talks about Notebooks support - which you can use to do analytics all within Cosmos
• 20:57 - Mark Brown talks about bulk operations support in v 3.0 of the SDK. Before you used to have to use a different library, but now it’s built into the SDK.
• 21:30 - Mark Brown talks about the Cosmos DB’s team work on private endpoints and their relevance for data protection and security of your data in the Azure Cloud, preventing data exfiltration by ensuring everything is on private IPs.
• 23:00 - Jeff and Mark Brown talk about customer success stories involving Cosmos DB, real world examples. Mark notes that Cosmos is very effective in microservice architectures because of its change feed. You can subscribe to the change feed using Azure Functions and the Cosmos bindings. Makes it super easy to set up a pub/sub, asynchronous, event-driven architecture, which is important for use cases in IoT and retail.
• 26:40 - Jeff talks about the relevance of Cosmos DB not just for big companies but also smaller companies that want to use modern cloud native architecture to succeed
• 27:00 - Dave Judd talks about ObjectSharp’s use of Cosmos DB and its change feed for client projects.
• 28:00 - Dave Judd talks about his work on a project for a global mining company, and how he’s using Cosmos DB to give the company real-time visibility into data coming from many disparate sources (e.g. IoT, etc.) so that it can better plan and make decisions. Cosmos DB plays an important role because of its global replication capabilities, which allow the data to be replicated and delivered quickly to end-users at multiple locations around the world, with low latency.

Links

• ObjectSharp
• ObjectSharp’s seminar on building modern Serverless applications
• Cosmos DB
• Mark Brown (@markjbrown)
• Dave Judd (LinkedIn)
• Jeff Zado (LinkedIn)
• What’s the latest in Azure Cosmos DB (YouTube, from Microsoft Ignite)