Business Data and AI Transformation

Outstanding insights help you make better decisions, bringing personalisation and relevance to your end-to-end customer experience. The importance of data and its utility has never been greater, but organisations must develop a relevant and adaptive data strategy to take advantage.

Our Solution

Our Business Data and AI Transformation solution helps you create a compelling data strategy or successfully execute and optimise your current approach to take advantage of the benefits rapidly. We share our learning and expertise, focusing on the maturity of your data environment, asking questions such as:

  • What customer and operational model benefits do you wish to achieve through data?
  • Where is your data?
  • How much data do we have or have responsibility for?
  • What regulations is it subject to?
  • What purpose does it fulfil (or what should it)?
  • What is the path to move from today’s situation to tomorrow’s needs?

Together we deliver a robust data vision, strategy, plan and approach that enhances your business and operating model. Allowing your data to play a vital role in insight-driven decision making, customer experience improvements, operational efficiencies through AI, and risk identification and mitigation.

Andrew Salmon
Managing Partner

Andrew Salmon

Solving These Challenges and Bringing These Benefits

Addressing These Core Challenges

  • Data is not understood or recognised as a core asset by key stakeholders or the organisation.
  • The role of data  is not fully integrated into your organisation’s business and innovation strategy.
  • The business has a wealth of data with commercial value internally or externally, but this is not realised. Or even worse, it is just seen as a  cost.
  • Data is considered solely from the technical or regulatory perspective.
  • Your data is gathered and structured in silos, or limited value is delivered from your data lake investments.
  • The organisation is potentially exposed to fines through non-compliance with data regulations.

Delivering These Good Outcomes

  • C-Suite and beyond understand data’s importance commercially, operationally and from a regulatory perspective.
  • Clarity on data’s role in the broader business strategy and the benefits it will drive.
  • Business functions understand thier role in their data activities and take ownership and accountability.
  • The whole organisation has insights that allow for sound, data-based decisions, increasing team confidence.
  • Data provides a strong and relevant customer experience at all touchpoints.
  • Clear insights into risks and how to manage them within your customer base.
  • Foundation for the use of AI as part of your business and operating models, with an innovative AI Factory capability for competitive advantage.
  • Use Data and AI to design your future products and services and more certainty of their success with your customers.
  • Better operating models with the right data, right place, right time, in the right format in the right volume. Enabling the benefits above, controlling costs, and producing strong ROI.

What We Do

Our approach to Business Data and AI Transformation uses a comprehensive blueprint to develop or optimise your data strategy and approach by reviewing and defining the critical areas that data can enable and enrich. Setting the scope where changes must be made, identifying priorities, and calibrating with the existing strategy roadmap to guide delivery. We focus, as required, on these areas:

Reporting and Management Insights

  • A critical benefit of any data strategy work is defining the ideal reporting and management/business insights required for any data environment.
  • Information scope, structure, frequency, and other dimensions are defined to provide the target output. Strengthening your ability to make better decisions.
Customer Experience

  • Customers now demand superb experiences across all touch-points; multi-channel, personalised, relevant, competitive and rapid. Combined to deliver the right experience.
  • Data structure and enablement engine are critical to producing the above.
  • Delivering greater acquisition, retention and advocacy. Boosting revenues and performance.
Go-to-Market and Communications

  • Facilitating the right communications and messaging to new prospects, existing and lapsed customers.
  • Formulating suitable sequences in the buy-cycle to ensure relevant and meaningful communication; your data approach can enable or hinder this.
  • Success boosts revenues and ROI.
Customer Management and Risk

  • Understanding your customers’ commercial benefits and associated risks is essential for any organisation but super critical for those in the financial services market.
  • Generating a 360 view of your customer base, segmentation, and risk criteria are vital for your organisation’s commercial well being and exposure.
Proposition and Pricing Innovation

  • Insights into new and existing customers can provide valuable direction to generate new propositions, products and pricing structures. Guiding successful innovation.
  • Using enriched internal data-augmented with external sources-can de-risk the chances of failure through ideation and selection, and definition. Protecting investment and growing ROI.
Operational Processes and AI

  • We can construct and deliver a partnership plan in parallel to the sales and account management efforts.
  • Identifying opportunities to work with relevant and compelling partner companies to accelerate success further. Bringing benefits in sales, propositional fit for customers, and joint marketing collaboration. Growing revenues and producing a compelling return-on-investment.
Data Processes: Regulation & Compliance

  • The strengthening and complexity of data laws such as GDPR compliance and global processing require organisations to have data handling and operational processes which are compliant and protect from significant regulatory fines. However, they also need to enable a fast-paced and responsive business.
  • A critical part of the data enablement engine is orchestrating your data processes to protect your business while accelerating innovation and decision-making.
Organisation, Teams and Suppliers

  • Another critical area of your data enablement environment is your people. Whether it’s your internal teams or mission-critical external suppliers.
  • Investing to ensure all areas of your business and supply chain understand the importance of data, the processes used, and its role within.
Data and Security Platform

  • At the heart of the data strategy is your data and security platform.
  • This needs to be designed, built and operated to ensure your business has the right data, with the right quality, place, time, format, volume, and protections.
  • Controlling costs and producing strong ROI. Making the most of any investments in data lakes, interrogation engines, or delivery mechanisms.

How it is Delivered

We deliver the data strategy process based on four core principles; comprehensively evaluate all dependencies, but only do what is needed, achieve benefits quickly, and progress in a ‘planned and agile manner’. Delivered through 5 stages:

1. Initial Programme Governance & Delivery Framework

2. Insight & Analysis

3. Creation of Data Strategy, Plan & Roadmap

4. Integrated Delivery & Governance

5. Measured & Iterated

1. Initial Programme Governance & Delivery Framework

  • A compelling data vision, strategy and plan is complex and takes time. This activity is put under project control and governance to oversee the process and ensure its timely delivery.
  • A project framework is put in place that mirrors the steps of our approach. Activities, responsibilities and timelines are set. Decision-making authority is agreed so the programme can rapidly progress.
  • Critical success factors for the programme are identified and used to enable the measurement phases below.
  • C-level team understanding and sponsorship is gained.

2. Insight & Analysis

  • To develop the data strategy or optimise activities in place you need a clear picture of your company ambitions and current capabilities.
  • Answering core questions related to company objectives, strategy, business insights, customer experience, customer management, go-to-market, innovation, operations, technology, and employee experience.
  • This is augmented by understanding likely changes in external environments such as customer behaviours and regulations. And what technology changes and new external sources of data may further enrich what can be achieved.
  • Providing insights into the role of the data strategy to successful deliver company objectives.

3. Creation of Data Strategy, Plan & Roadmap

  • Armed with a comprehensive fact-base, the DWG team works with the senior leadership team to identify the role of data to meet the company objectives and strategy.
  • Identifying activities in two ways: firstly, those to enable the current direction, and secondly, those which could augment and enrich any current plans – including the role of AI. Resolving pain-points and unlocking opportunities.
  • With the timeline and dependency mapped, this is calibrated into any existing strategy delivery roadmap, supported by critical success KPIs and investment cases.

4. Integrated Delivery & Governance

  • The delivery roadmap guides the data strategy changes. Planning and change are controlled and measured centrally to ensure everything happens at the right time, and clear reporting informs stakeholders of progress and success.
  • Delivery is conducted through agile sprints—growing success and momentum.
  • All supported by clear and meaningful internal communications to reduce fears and enable buy-in across the entire organisation.

5. Measured & Iterated

  • Critical KPIs are used to measure success and the need for iteration for all stages and streams. Baking adaptability into the approach ensures agility to any changing conditions and business goals.

Meet the Team

DWG is one of the UK’s most experienced digital transformation consultancies, with a team of 50+ senior digital and data experts, internationally experienced. Meet some of them:

Seun Adewuyi
Seun Adewuyi
Data Scientist
pilar guerrero
Pilar Guerrero
Marketing Strategy & Planning Expert
Chris Poulton
Chris Poulton
Business Change Expert
Gavin McLauchlan
Gavin McLauchlan
Partner, B2B
Andrew Salmon
Andrew Salmon
Managing Partner

Previous success

Enterprise Data Strategy

Business Data and AI Transformation HMRC image

As one of the largest central government departments-undertaking some of the most significant data programmes in the UK- support was needed to create a cohesive, holistic view of all their data projects and workstreams, helping them to orchestrate a joined-up programme and plan in the context of a pragmatic and business-led data strategy.

We coached and empowered the team to rapidly ‘upskill’ their understanding of the wider programme and create a robust Enterprise Data Strategy. Our advice helped the business to:

  • Better understand the vital role data played in organisational success.

  • Engender improved collaboration across the whole organisation on their data initiatives and break down silos.

  • Propose and implement changes to data governance and target operating model to support better data outcomes.

  • Create a joined-up data strategy and strategic roadmap aligned with the wider organisational strategy.

  • Engage with the broader business to ensure buy into the Enterprise Data Strategy

  • Enable the creation of insightful investment cases on broader data initiatives across the organisation.

The HMRC team, with our support, rose to the challenge to rapidly create The Enterprise Data Strategy and gain approval from the ExCom Strategy Committee. The teams’ knowledge of data as a core asset and its applications has massively expanded. The data strategy now gives context to the delivery and implementation of several multi-million programmes. DWG continues to advise in this stage of the plan.

A new data strategy and implementation

Business Data and AI Transformation TalkTalk Hero image

Following a series of acquisitions and significant organic growth, TalkTalk was faced with the need to rationalise six consumer billing engines and migrate into a new singular strategic CRM and Billing platform. The aim was to improve the accuracy and quality of this critical customer experience component while reducing costs and the complexity of its platform.

  • Creating a new data strategy, producing the target environment and business rules that ultimately supported the successful migration.

  • Implemented the associated governance and data quality workstreams.

  • Completed multiple data cleanse and migration events.

  • Launched new analytical solutions for the business to use.

The consolidation enabled:

  • An £80m per annum Opex saving.

  • Increased sales conversion and service scores.

  • And improved visibility of data and reporting at the C-suite level.

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