FWB Park Brown and Deloitte Host Data Insights Round Table Dinner

On 22^nd January, FWB Park Brown and Deloitte hosted a Data Insights round table Dinner with speakers Jarmo Eskelinen, Director of the Data Driven Innovation (DDI) initiative for the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Deal, and Andy Gauld, Partner and leader of Deloitte’s ‘Insights Driven Organisation (IDO)’ proposition.

The explosion in the amount of data being created today has been astonishing and the trend is set to continue with some predicting growth in the global datasphere from 33 zettabytes in 2018 to 175 zettabytes in 2025 (IDC White Paper, Nov 2018). The way in which data is gathered, analysed and used has far reaching impacts on us as consumers and society at large.

The inclusion of Data Driven Innovation within the City Region Deal reflects the growing importance of data in economic growth, social change, and public services. Through the DDI initiative Scotland has a stated ambition to establish the data capital of Europe in Edinburgh, ensuring that key trends are identified across sectors in order to improve services for consumers and citizens. In this vastly more volatile, uncertain and complex world, organisations are increasingly finding that experience and intuition are valuable but insufficient. Organisations are beginning to recognise that generating valuable data-driven insights is now critical to inform decision making.

We had 20 leaders and influencers from across all sectors in Scotland to ensure as full a discussion as possible about the challenges and opportunities around how organisations can harness the power of data driven insights and to be able to share some best practice around this important area.

Sectors represented included retail, engineering, academia, government, hospitality, healthcare, consultancy, housebuilding and investment.

The discussion focused around the ‘Data driven journey’ that many of the organisations around the table were embarking on.  One of the key issues is that data generation is abundant – it is the analysis of this to impact bottom line financial results, society and culture that are the burning issues.  There needs to be a shift in focus in culture and the adoption of technology, driven from the top in organisations – those who do this will be the most successful in the technology evolution that will define 2020 and beyond.

Skills also featured heavily in the discussion and while data scientists and ‘Chief Disruptor’ or ‘Chief Digital Officer’ roles are being recruited to help organisations with their ‘Data Driven Journey’, we all agreed that our learning and development curriculum need to support digital strategy across the entire organisation. Additionally, we need to equip leaders and, in fact, the workforce at all levels with confidence around digital disruption and the skills to drive this. Companies and individuals should be taking a lifelong learning approach given that with constant change digital skills will be out of date 12-24 months after they are gained.

Jarmo Eskelinen is the Director of the Data Driven Innovation (DDI) initiative, a key part of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal. He was previously the Chief Innovation and Technology Officer at Future Cities Catapult in London and prior to that was CEO of Forum Virium Helsinki, the innovation lab of the City of Helsinki.

Andy Gauld is a Deloitte Consulting partner and leads the ‘Insights Driven Organisation (IDO)’ proposition globally which helps organisations with their analytics transformation journeys. Andy has a wealth of expertise as an analytics specialist with over 20 years of consulting experience gained in a number of different industries.

If you would like to speak to a member of the team about this, or future events around Data, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Ailsa Sutherland, Director, FWB Park Brown at ailsa@fwbparkbrown.com.