You Don’t Need an Army: How the Right Data Strategy Changes Everything

Join the London Snowflake User Group at Big Data LDN for a session with Chris Smith, Group Enterprise Data & Analytics Manager at GlobalData, on how a clear strategy and the right tools can let a small data team have an outsized impact.

Chris has spent 15+ years working with enterprise BI, but what makes his story at GlobalData particularly interesting is the scale of change he has driven without building an army of analysts.

When Chris joined GlobalData, a 4,000-person data and analytics business, internal reporting was still heavily dependent on Excel. There were no company-wide dashboards or self-service analytics, and teams were spending huge amounts of time producing and maintaining spreadsheets.

In just seven months, Chris helped take GlobalData from zero internal dashboards to company-wide analytics adoption. One finance process that previously took four or five people an entire week every month now takes a couple of minutes and a single click. Around 250 accountants are being freed from repetitive reporting work so they can spend more time actually analysing the numbers and supporting the business.

But this isn't really a talk about dashboards, those talks are everywhere!

👉 Chris will share how GlobalData approached the much harder parts: strategy, culture, adoption and choosing technology that removes work rather than creating another layer of it.

Rather than forcing people away from Excel overnight, Chris used his data stack to meet teams where they were, automate the painful parts, and gradually change how people worked. The result has seen his small data team move from producing reports on request to being pulled into strategic conversations across the business.

Please note: If you are attending other sessions at Big Data LDN you will need to secure a ticket on their official site. If you are ONLY joining for the User Group session, you can enter at the time of our meetup using your London User Group RSVP details.