E104 - Brian Ferris - Listen More & Talk Less, Collaborating with the Marketing Team

The Analytics Show

Do you know what other teams are up to at your organisation?

Or are you blissfully unaware as you carry on your own work in your own team?

Data science teams tend to work quietly in the background - most of us being introverted - just doing our duty and thinking to ourselves;

“I don’t need to talk to anyone today. As long as I’m doing good work…”

How can a data analytics team align their work with business goals without collaborating with other teams - namely the marketing team?

You don’t need to do all the talking. But you will need to do some listening.

Meet Brian Ferris

Brian’s Role as a Data Analytics Leader at Loyalty New Zealand

Brian Ferris is the Chief Data, Analytics and Technology Officer at Loyalty New Zealand. Launched in 1996, Loyalty NZ is New Zealand’s expert on customer loyalty. They specialise in using big data to help NZ businesses know more about what their customers want from them, and how they can best deliver it. They’re most famous for the Fly Buys programme, with over 2.4 million cardholders across 74% of New Zealand households, and partners with 40 industry-leading brands.

At Loyalty NZ, Brian is championing a high performing agile culture and reinventing Loyalty D&A and Tech with new platforms and modern technologies. To date, they have decommissioned three of the four on-prem legacy solutions and completed a full migration to the cloud in March 2022. In addition, they have re-organised the delivery into an agile model, increasing throughput, reliability and team retention.

Brian’s Other Work in Business Intelligence and Data Analytics

​Brian has been working in Information Technology for since 2000 - for 22 years. He spent 9 years in IT consulting before moving to the client side. He has held BI Architect and Design roles with European Central Bank, British American Tobacco, and Heineken before becoming a Director of Data & Analytics EMEA at Nike. Prior to that, Brian was working in supply chain operations.

Marketing Teams, Collaboration, and Customer Engagement

In this exclusive analytics podcast episode, Brian shares:

• His most vivid memories from his time working in Europe
• His suggestions for fellow Kiwis in venturing to Europe
• His current role as the Chief Data, Analytics and Technology Officer at Loyalty New Zealand
• Advice on making use of data in the modern world
• How he builds a partnership with other teams to create a cohesive strategy
• The concept of doing marketing in a 1-on-1 with customers
• The ingredients to get this right before starting to scale
• The challenges he has faced in achieving this
• Advice for those who are so focused on getting the data right that they avoid conversation
• Learning skill sets to shift to the other side of the paradigm
• Whether people overlook copywriting with persuasion
• Getting the data foundation right, especially for a Customer Data Platform
• How Google's phasing out of cookies will impact the digital marketing world and what second party data is
• How companies should prepare for this transition
• His advice for data analytics team leaders looking to encourage partnership with the marketing team to build up customer engagement

If you are a data analytics team leader looking to encourage partnership and collaboration among your team and the marketing team, this is the episode you do not want to miss out on.

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