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Nov. 28, 2020

Aligning Data Strategy and Business Strategy

Aligning Data Strategy and Business Strategy

Ryan chats with Sarbani Bose, Managing Director at Ei Square® Ltd., about effective data strategy and management.

Well-managed data serves as a single source of truth for driving business efficiencies and results. In this episode, you'll hear from Sarbani Bose, Managing Director at Ei Square® Ltd., about how to align people, process, technology, and culture to build a robust data strategy that supports organisational goals.

The ei²® team is a niche consultancy who best works in big companies and small to medium enterprises. Their Team have many years’ experience in providing solutions to business problems – from Data Strategy, Big Data Analysis, Insights and Reporting, Performance and Systems/Data Integration, Business Intelligence, Development, Solutions Design, Quality Assurance and Testing. They have worked in a wide variety of industry sectors including postal and media licencing, investment banking, telecommunications, travel, defence, manufacturing, retail, finance, HR, Legal, Housing, Pharmaceutical and Education.

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Transcript

Ryan Purvis  0:00  
Hello, and welcome to the digital workspace works podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in their field story from the frontlines, the problems they face and how they solve them. The years they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took that will help you to get to the script for the digital workspace inner workings.

Sarbani Bose  0:31  
Hello, everyone. I'm Sarbani Bose, Managing Director of Vi squared limited of 20 years experience in digital transformation, more recently with Virgin Media, in their multimillion pound mobile Transformation Program, looking after their data reporting and controls work stream, so helping all business intelligence, reports and tools for every customer facing departments. Data Analytics, digital transformation is my area of expertise. At Ai Squared, we assist organizations to become more mature in their data driven journey. So we help them to bring data at the center of their decision making process.

Ryan Purvis  1:19  
Oh, fantastic. And just for For everyone else, what do you think the digital workspace means to you?

Sarbani Bose  1:26  
I think, first and foremost, digital workspace is more about an organizations or teams culture, and how do they adapt or take on board the evolving technologies that are in place? How do they make most use of the technology that they are currently using, and be open minded to utilizing the technologies? So you know, and also, from this connected workplace can digitally connected workplace? How do we make the best use of the technology so that this is your workspaces, is having that open mind being receptive, and not being frustrated at in getting yourself to a position where you may find yourself to be more challenged? And so that's what digital workspace mean, for me.

Ryan Purvis  2:21  
Yeah. Benefits friction.

Unknown Speaker  2:23  
Yes,

Ryan Purvis  2:25  
that's a key thing to euro. Well, I mean, obviously, we haven't talked about this in detail, but you mentioned the the customer facing tools like CRM, and, and call center tools or other stuff as well.

Sarbani Bose  2:39  
And every department has their own set of tools. So to have a data centric to those tools. So a sales department might look into their, you know, the customer CRM, for example, the marketing bill look into their campaigns and see how the return on investment on the campaigns are looking, or which campaigns are more successful. So every department has tools that they use to, you know, to benefit their functional space to be more effective. And that's what I mean by customer facing tools. They could have their own choice of the tools but whatever tools they are using, making data as the centric in terms of driving the efficiency of the department is quite important.

Ryan Purvis  3:35  
If you've got multiple tools that store data specifically in specific ways, you know first name as long as you first name it could be you know, name, how did you I mean, how would you approach that with the customer What are we this sort of starting point.

Sarbani Bose  3:50  
So the first thing we do is a data strategy pace. So say for example, depends on which department Commission's the project data strategy piece looks into what exactly they would like to get out of the project. So for example, let's take an example of the CRM and the customers and the misalignment of the fields. So, the customer data might not necessarily be only in their CRM database, some might come through a third party data or some the marketing team might be looking at a potential customers data and that may be interested in another department corpse functional team. So the data strategy would be to bring all these different data points from different software's and different third party together keeping quite in focus of the of the end goal the customer commissioned the project for. So in this instance, we are talking about, you know, a customer data, the misalignment, you go through that strategy piece of bringing all the customer data across from different departments into a single place. And then look into the data management function of it, you know, accessibility, reliability of information, timeliness of information to the different departments, and then implementing that function to make sure that your customer name, your standardization is in place. So in it, all the people within the organization receives the exact detail of the data and understands that data point correctly. So standardization of a particular surname being in that field, and has to be like that. So the governance the tools that go with it, so having that standardization process through it as a part of the implementation of that strategy piece.

Ryan Purvis  5:59  
Yeah, we've been through a few of those in previous roles. And it's not a trivial thing to do specifically here to Master Data Management and figuring out, you know, if your golden source is going to be golden, you know, what feeds that and making sure that you've got what's the integrity of the data?

Sarbani Bose  6:18  
Absolutely. And we talk a lot about, you know, the single version of the truth in having that single version of the truth. I mean, you could have multiple, the one set of data showing different versions, depending on your audience, but the base foundation should be a single version. So like I was talking about the marketing might need the success of a campaign to be one metric. But the, you know, the CMO might want to see the ROI on that campaign. So it is it's what you show to the target audience, based on the foundational data being the single version of truth.

Ryan Purvis  7:07  
Yeah, yeah. I totally get that. I think. And I think about some of the stuff I've done previously. Your your challenges, it's not so much that each division has their own tools is that the humans tend to work outside of those tools.

Unknown Speaker  7:19  
Yes,

Ryan Purvis  7:20  
because the tools tend to be too restrictive, because the tools don't develop or aren't, aren't as flexible as the workplaces. So prices can't change, too quick enough. So the human works around a way to cheat devices to get the job done.

Sarbani Bose  7:35  
Absolutely. Absolutely. And we have seen time and time again, that's why culture is very important. As an handbuilding clients, you know, there is always that reluctance to going back to digital works is there's always that reluctance to try and go out of one's comfort zone. And so the culture making the customers believe and empowering them with the tools in not a geeky way, but in a very business sort of way in making them understand the data, the way they understanding hand, holding them to the point that they feel comfortable that this is this tools are helping them to be more efficient, rather than is a hindrance. And I mean, data strategy, digital transformation fails because of because we don't look into the culture element. A quick enough or do not put focus enough on that. Yeah, I

Ryan Purvis  8:33  
think it comes down to having good executive sponsorship as well.

Unknown Speaker  8:36  
Mm hmm.

Ryan Purvis  8:36  
You top down buying and support to to bring down the bureaucracy of an organization.

Unknown Speaker  8:43  
Yes,

Ryan Purvis  8:44  
yes. Which, which is fine. If you're a smaller business necessarily with a little flatter when you get into these corporates that have, you know, many towers and the tower the days of burning cross towers. Yes, we're trying to get the daily flow across. towers.

Sarbani Bose  9:01  
That's that's one of the Sorry to interrupt. Right. And that's one of the job for the CEOs to be more strategically paid, placed, in terms of adding that value of the information to be a value of the corporates, you know, it's it should be centrally placed as an information is an asset and to the corporate strategy. And it's not just an IT function.

Ryan Purvis  9:28  
Yeah, I think you mentioned the title CDO, and you don't see many CEOs don't

Sarbani Bose  9:32  
you? Don't I bet that is again, because it is still inflammation is not considered as an asset in our in the corporate strategy. world. It's it is I read an article where Gartner says there's only 50% you will see within the corporate strategy, that information is mentioned as an asset whereas they expect by 2022 you No 90% will start speaking of it and putting that in the in their corporate strategy. There is not enough seniors Absolutely. And by that same article 30% will only talk or bring the information into their corporate strategy by 2022. And the CDs will be central. When it comes to getting the data to bind with the corporate strategy.

Ryan Purvis  10:28  
Do you think that's because the the sort of legacy of building solutions in the environment is made so complicated to bring the data together? There's almost a fear factor of doing it, or do you think it's something else?

Sarbani Bose  10:43  
I have a feeling because I think it the business and IT were very separate. And if you want to bring data to be aligned with the corporate strategy, I don't think it can be told as this is an IT function, it is a collaborative function to reach to that end goal. You definitely I would say, you need more of business input than it input to reach that end goal. And because of that hard wall present between business and IT, that is where I think it has failed to bring the data Central.

Ryan Purvis  11:25  
Yeah, I mean, is it previous roles, I've seen that exactly, it's, it's almost over the fence exercise, sometimes where the business wants to do something, it needs to just do it, or the business gets tired of waiting for it to do because it has too many priorities. They're gonna do it themselves, and then they can't work out why they can't get it to work with any other systems inside because, you know, it becomes a religious war as opposed to a collaborative exercise.

Sarbani Bose  11:51  
Absolutely. And, and the one tells the other, but as I see it, it is not either the businesses or the it is it is a collaborative team. Any successful data projects cannot be delivered to the requirements of the business without a proper input from the business.

Ryan Purvis  12:13  
Yeah, so I mean, if you if you were to look at the landscape now, sort of 2020 and you mentioned 2022, or what do you think was, you know, COVID in mind, and and all that next next year will look like for many companies in the digital realm.

Sarbani Bose  12:28  
I think the traditional way of marketing has been put on hold to some extent, people will try and get more out of the data that they currently collect, people will focus a bit more on their less engaged customers, people who have been accumulating or running businesses with data for long time will try and focus a lot on the data front. And pandemic has just accelerated that pandemic has just brought to the forefront and process efficiency, digitally being more connected, remote working, enabling remote working. So imagine not only just utilizing the tools that are there, as a result of, you know, virtual working, after you have established an infrastructure of virtually working in a clever way, in a smarter way, people will then start to think how can we best utilize it more? How can we drive it better? I think that's what that's what's going to happen. And talk off office spaces talk off, and your voice systems, people will start to dig more into their first party data.

Ryan Purvis  13:49  
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned boyfriend, and that is the thing that I was thinking about the other day that once upon a time unified comms was meant to be a one on one number, connect to any device. Haha, that's almost now happened, where you just one one app where there's multiple apps that someone can communicate with you on. And you can handle your business or in fact, in some cases, it's easier and quicker to handle your request via WhatsApp.

Unknown Speaker  14:21  
Mm hmm.

Ryan Purvis  14:22  
This whole, you know, a chatbot of some sort that can answer the first easy kind of questions and then go into you talk to humans that are answered. And that sort of feeds into your data being used to make decisions because based on those interactions through a very controlled channel, you see the data with the data are being measured through the process you can channel investment to to improve the customer experience.

Sarbani Bose  14:49  
Absolutely. So so that has almost happened, but I don't see enough of people than utilizing the accumulation of data to increase the customer experience or to reach out to less engaged people and the corporate side are using it the bigger corporates the SME world, not so much.

Ryan Purvis  15:07  
Hmm. I think it comes down to two resources, you can look at that kind of stuff, you need a data scientist you need someone looking at the data

Sarbani Bose  15:19  
at the data and extracting value from the data. Yeah.

Ryan Purvis  15:24  
Is that where you guys come in?

Sarbani Bose  15:26  
Yes, yes, absolutely, we we. So there are a couple of things we come in from First of all, strategy point where people have not necessarily placed the data, all the data that they collect in a unified platform for scalability purposes, as well, that is the first point. And the second point is analyzing that data and extracting value from that data.

Ryan Purvis  15:52  
And what what's a typical project look like in the sense of timeframes and investment figures? But, you know, what was your sort of common or your sweet spot? So

Sarbani Bose  16:03  
our sweet spots are first going through and building the strategy and then implementing it anywhere from six months to nine months? Our projects last, a data strategy and implementation project.

Ryan Purvis  16:19  
Okay, and are you making quite a lot of use of the cloud to deliver ci?

Sarbani Bose  16:22  
Vi? We are mostly cloud.

Ryan Purvis  16:25  
Okay. Has that changed? No. We, as the cloud has become more and more prevalent? Is this technology making the conditions easier?

Sarbani Bose  16:35  
I would not say easier, because you have challenges. Everywhere, technologically, even on cloud, you have challenges. I think from a client's perspective, it definitely has given them the flexibility where they do not need to cater or think about the infrastructure support or support being maintained constantly. They just need to pay for the scalability purpose. And so that has definitely become easier. There are challenges irrespective whether you go cloud or on premise. But no, I think the main challenges we definitely face in terms of our projects is getting hold of the data that they use in a timely fashion.

Ryan Purvis  17:30  
Yeah, it's funny you say, because I'm just thinking, because the technology in the cloud environment has improved a lot. In fact, you got a different problem, I think there's too much choice. Too many options are so similar that you have just, you know, almost you feel like you're gonna make a mistake, because you don't know exactly which one to use. But then once you've made that decision, it's about getting the data. And, you know, having worked with some systems that didn't come with API's, for example, to figure out getting the data out of there using you know, various techniques and mechanisms.

Unknown Speaker  18:01  
Exactly.

Ryan Purvis  18:03  
Yeah. So we talked about, we talked about the data making decisions, are you providing me the mechanisms or ways to to show people ways to make decisions with data? Or are you looking at some sort of operational intelligence that say using rules automatically make decisions,

Sarbani Bose  18:24  
not automatically made decisions, and we bring the data to help them make those decisions to analyze the data from a strategic point. Put those metrics in front to help them make decisions, not automatically. So we haven't gone towards the AI implementation of use cases. But, for example, the churns the customer churn, per channels, that helps them refocus their energy on the certain channels where the churn rate is more it is assisting businesses to refocus their energy where it will drive most revenue or cost costs.

Ryan Purvis  19:14  
And churn model I almost think is one of those models that could be be sold as an asset in our own marketplace. Is it something that you're seeing in the in the marketplace now that people are selling the algorithms are still very much

Sarbani Bose  19:31  
resembles their own? Everyone builds their own the what I am seeing is everyone builds their own there are bigger corporates who are already you know, putting use case AI use case on the churn models. And by I don't think I have come across where somebody selling a car model.

Ryan Purvis  19:51  
Yeah, it's interesting. So you almost think that would be the natural, you know, one of these big providers would say here here use our recommendation service or use our tune model service and Just pump your data because because for the SME that don't have the capacity to go build their own train model. They're looking for something in front of the credit card. And

Sarbani Bose  20:09  
yes, maybe down the line, you never know, it may be in few years time with all AI and machine learning and lot of businesses using a lot of AI clever tools there. And I will not be surprised if we see a churn model come up, which could be customizable, depending on the sector depending on particular industry particular team.

Ryan Purvis  20:35  
No, definitely, isn't it? This may change tack a little bit. So So you've been I mean, you guys office boundary work from home or what is the what how did you

Sarbani Bose  20:45  
arrive at their office bound until March and very flexible ways of working, we don't have any rules in terms of unique to be in the office seven, five days a week, nine to six, we don't have such rules at all. I like the consultants to be present two to three days a week in the office. But from April we are homebound and we will be sorted at least quarter one of next year. We have a very flexible virtual open door policy. We meet regularly we talk regularly. So one of the things as a manager I had to go through during the initial lockdown period was to not able to understand the body language when I'm talking to our team of consultants, what's bothering them, the normal office coffee machine talk on the informal chats and gave a lot of things behind the person behind what's going on outside of the work. And that was a journey I had to navigate. During the initial days. We are the decision not to go back to Office till March is because we navigated that quite well. Our virtual open door policy is really working very well. So we are all cloud based. So I don't think we will go back till March for sure. And we have not we have not been impacted by not having an office. Sorry, shortens contribution. That's okay.

Ryan Purvis  22:43  
Yeah. I mean, that's a common trend that I've seen amongst most most businesses is that the the need to have an office is almost redundant. And you're going to book co working space or you're going to book a meeting room for the day, once a week everyone can meet in that place and use it for purpose as opposed to

Sarbani Bose  23:03  
Yeah, sorry, I wouldn't say it's redundant. Because I think like I said, the buzz of the place, talking to people that has will not go away. I would I would not go as far to say it is redundant. But like I said, during the pandemic, it hasn't impacted working remotely, or working flexibly, I think going forward, you would definitely see a lot of the SME businesses take up co working space. And like you said, and also it depends on business to business, some businesses, you know, when you're onboarding employees, your culture, your ethics, the morals, everything else, and how do you make them feel part of the team? all of that together? I think we'll decide whether one needs to have a permanent office or not. I'm loving her. She's

Ryan Purvis  24:15  
done it. I think I think all businesses that can pretty much read

Sarbani Bose  24:23  
it. I mean, I mean, look at us now. We are operating very well without having an office. And so and there will be businesses going forward who wouldn't need an office at all? And please, please don't call, but I think it is. I think it really is a personal case by case that that will take effect. Whenever we come to a normality, whatever that may look like. And it won't be a generic as to one end. The other as to you be completely virtual or, you know, completely off is based. Definitely it will. It will trend more towards co working and virtual and flexible.

Ryan Purvis  25:34  
Sorry about that we are no no, don't

Sarbani Bose  25:35  
be at all. Well,

Ryan Purvis  25:38  
she's she's not being fed. So it's all good.

Sarbani Bose  25:42  
You were doing so?

Ryan Purvis  25:45  
Yeah, she's actually quite good bus today is just here we get to this sort of time of the day she starts getting a bit normal.

Sarbani Bose  25:52  
Is she she's sleeping through the night.

Unknown Speaker  25:55  
Five hours now.

Unknown Speaker  25:57  
Wow, that's good.

Ryan Purvis  26:00  
Yeah. Six weeks. I mean, my son was nothing like that. He was about 15 months was like every three hours he's awake. So this is quite good.

Sarbani Bose  26:08  
I had a different my my son was okay. He is the eldest one but my daughter. Oh, my God. didn't sleep till two, three years. I couldn't sleep. So five hours. Blimey, that's a blessing.

Ryan Purvis  26:20  
Yeah, no, I'll take it. I'll take it. She goes to bed about 10. And then wakes up about well say 10 1030. That gives him about 334. Which is actually quite nice. Because then I get up and I go to work and I do my stuff. And yeah, because I wanted another son is another toddler. And in obviously working mode once once he's up in about these, he's on a nursery he needs to be looked after. So the to my wife and eyes. It's a lot of double teaming.

Unknown Speaker  26:45  
Yes, yeah.

Ryan Purvis  26:48  
So

Sarbani Bose  26:50  
unlike we've been talking about work environments, and working, and this is one of the things that has, you know, it's a shame that pandemic has to bring this on, but getting an getting closer to your colleagues personal life and having that personal touch is quite, quite nice to use in zoom calls, you know, people, the kids come and sit or the cat is coming over. Nice, you know, they, at the end of the day, it's there, everybody's a human being you sometimes when you are on that middle machine and working it's it's sometimes difficult to realize when all the time you're thinking about projects, deliveries, stakeholders, meetings and everything else, sometimes easy to forget, we are all human beings trying to get get on with our lives as well.

Ryan Purvis  27:43  
Yeah, we do we go a bit robotic, and it's almost the minute you get to the office, you know, you have this this Go go go Just do it. mentality. Whereas now you got to be integrated, you got to, you know, do a call and make lunch and, you know, whatever else you have to do with the family, while still being results, in fact, is almost more results are intended as opposed to putting the hours in?

Sarbani Bose  28:09  
Yes. I don't know why, you know, organizations or business don't think of being more results oriented, to be honest. They should and everything should be I know, your sales team gets commissioned based on the sales. I think everybody should have results oriented approach. And, yeah,

Ryan Purvis  28:29  
I think a big factor that is, as you mentioned before, is culture but it's also trust. And understanding that some people will work differently. Hello, working nice. Not during the day. And yeah, vice versa.

Sarbani Bose  28:43  
Yes, and it is both ways, isn't it? The trust should be both ways. We, I am really proud of the way we work. It's a small team, but I'm really proud because nobody Mac Mike, nobody has to be micromanaged. You give responsibility to the people of their work, and they own that piece of work to be delivered. So, and trust bills that way you got to trust the person. I'm not saying you wouldn't come across that odd occasion where it just doesn't line up. But that is that is how the person is is as there's no nothing personal in it. It's just the personality and how you work

Ryan Purvis  29:21  
differently. And I think you so become a bit more insightful about colleagues and how they work and we're talking about how the office is potentially redundant. For a lot of people that don't have the space, it's not a done that they need to have an office to go to war on cowork space or whatever it is to go. Yeah.

Sarbani Bose  29:44  
Absolutely. And the mental health that comes with it. You know, you are if you think about the office working gosh, that feels like ages ago, right? It's only been about for 989 months, but if you think about that, you just you know you're doing a piece of work you Turn around, and you just hear a very interesting conversation going on. And those, you missed that, and that, that creates a dialogue or conversation that can, you know, keep you refreshed, and that's little breaks from your regular work makes a difference.

Ryan Purvis  30:22  
Yeah, you need to have buffers. And that's, I think what a lot of people struggle with, if you have struggled with not having as much as you don't like commute. And I think the word hate is probably descriptive. But it is an important part of your day in the sense that you've got time to yourself, your time to think your time to read and all that. Whereas at home, you're blending home activities with work activities, you don't have those buffers, and then also you have people well, you know, your accounting is filled up with meetings, because that's how people interact, spend the whole day talking to you on the phone, because, you know, your diary is full.

Sarbani Bose  31:00  
Absolutely and, and that line, you know, you get up in the morning and you go to that office, that time you take to travel is your time is your personal time coming back again, that time is your personal time. And that and that gave a very nice break between your personal and your work life. That got blurred as well, in this pandemic, and not everybody is quite strict in stopping work. People are working long hours, and and that will have different effects mentally as the less physically.

Ryan Purvis  31:39  
Yeah, I mean, I've heard I've heard various tips and tricks and things like if you if you were to break up the Mondays, the Monday to Friday versus the weekend, you got to watch different TV. So you watch movies on weekends, and you're serious during the week and also having different views. You set out different clothes for the weekend. Just so you know that that's the weekend even though you pretty much wearing some of the stuff. I don't know what you do, too.

Sarbani Bose  32:07  
You know, I wear the clothes thing is always been there. So there is no change. You know, I'm quite, I'm quite strict in actually getting up. And even though it's it's just one room to the study or to another room for the office space. I'm quite strict in the dressing up sense. And but I think I still forget the day during the weekdays. Especially with the halftime when the school started before it was difficult because this every the kids were homeschooled. So you wouldn't know from you know, Monday to and then it got better from September and now the kids are on halftime. I was thinking today whether it is Wednesday or Tuesday. So I think a day of the week, and I sometimes have to keep revisiting the calendar to say yes, it is Wednesday.

Ryan Purvis  33:07  
Cheese, this is actually only Tuesday, because I thought it was the Thursday. That was the best. I'm pretty much done from I think we have some very content. Is there anything else you want to talk about?

Sarbani Bose  33:23  
I wanted to talk about maybe, what do you think in terms of the SME sector? And how do they see the data being a value addition to their strategy piece? Or what do you see when you talk to other organizations?

Ryan Purvis  33:42  
So yeah, that's actually a good question. I so So typically, when I talk to an SME, unless the business is built around data, they don't typically evaluate. And it's almost, you know, the Patreon problem of they need to make, they need to make revenue. So they focus on making revenue. And they do it the hard way. And this is probably very unfair, but then you know, when the opportunity is to take a step back and look at what they've got and, and fix certain processes and internal operational things. I'll give you an example. You've got a software the service product has been built. It has a user management component to it. But they've got a separate series and they have a separate billing system. And none of those systems talk to each other. Things like managing contracts, managing the support of the customer, managing the count manager of those customers, all those things are handled in different silos. And it makes it that much more harder, more difficult to do and, and and the argument always be well, it's fine because all I have to do is work or make some spreadsheet and I can get away with it. But there's no sort of thought Excel spreadsheet you have to do recall them and figure out who you were and you know that five minutes or 10 minutes adds up to the point that maybe your investment in doing The right thing is cheap, in comparison to how much you're wasting, and then problem perpetuates. It's fine. Maybe you've got one salesperson. But when you go to five salespeople, and five sales Pete five salespeople that are in different countries. Yeah, dealing with different things, and there's no, there's no uniformity, which is what those tools will do, they'll force uniformity, which is also a bad thing in some sense. But you get what I'm saying in the sense that by by breaking down the core process of your business, and there's only three to five core business, you get those things, right. And it makes other things easier, and you get time back.

Sarbani Bose  35:38  
Exactly. And this, this, I think, needs to happen quite at the start of the process. So part of the business plan on lead already should be about how do they accumulate store data and use data going forward that should already be in their business plan in of any SME startups going forward? This is one of the reasons why I am so passionately driving Ai Squared, mainly driving awareness to the SME sector, because having worked in the corporate world for the last 20 odd years, they are very good in understanding what data can bring, they invest heavily, they are Messier, much more Messier because of the amount of different systems they have. But they do understand the value. And this is one of the things I do like to talk about is the awareness of what data can do to the SME sector.

Ryan Purvis  36:35  
Oh, yeah. Right, I think I think is something that if you look at what the pandemic is forced, not only is it forced everyone to use technology, and to be able to catch up to what technology people were doing anyway. But it was also forced people and companies in pretty native way to to let people go. And those people had to start their own businesses. So here's a lot of more micro entities becoming SMEs. And the point is, is getting gifts, as part of the foundations makes it easier to operate, because I think all the tools are there, I don't think

Sarbani Bose  37:09  
No, absolutely, the tools are there. And even businesses who go through that digital transformation, right, they want to reduce their usage of spreadsheets, they want to reduce and effectively more gain more insight from the data that they have been collecting. And they need to as they're going through the Transformation Program, they need to seriously think about the data strategy that will that will play a role going forward. And and this is, this is something we highly encourage any discussions we have with our clients about getting the strategy piece, right.

Ryan Purvis  37:51  
Where can people get a hold of you? Social media, or?

Sarbani Bose  37:54  
Yes, so LinkedIn, you can get hold of me on LinkedIn. So bonobos are AI square. If you go to va square.co.uk you can get hold of us as well.

Ryan Purvis  38:05  
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Sarbani RoseProfile Photo

Sarbani Rose

Managing Director, Ei Squared Ltd

Sarbani Bose has 20 years’ corporate experience around
digital transformation, specially around data analytics
and using data smartly. Most recently, before starting Ei
Square 18 months ago, she was at Virgin Media and
part of a multi-million-pound transformation team
delivering business intelligence improvements across a
wide range of customer-facing departments.
As Managing Director of Ei Square she assists
companies with their data strategy by bringing silo data
sources across different departments into a single
platform keeping the focus on the business strategy.