Sun Life,VP Data and Analytics: Data Factory Principles Aid in Making the Right Data Available at the Right Time for the Right Reason

Sun Life,VP Data and Analytics: Data Factory Principles Aid in Making the Right Data Available at the Right Time for the Right Reason

David Atkinson, VP Data and Analytics, Sun Life (Toronto, Canada), speaks with Christopher Bergh, CEO of Data Kitchen, about Sun Life's digital transformation and its efforts to become a digital-first company to provide better digital experiences for clients.

Atkinson explains their steps and initiatives to create better digital experiences for clients in terms of, "how do we help our clients better through the channels in the ways they want?" and create a personal experience for them. He explains how DevOps is part of the digital transformation, as is Agile, data, and data engineering principles, spin offs like data ops and model ops; these really helped accelerate their digital journey and bring capabilities to market faster. He shared how leveraging data factory principles like these really helped Sun Life accelerate its ability to make the right data available at the right times for the right reason.

He advises people to think about the transition to the Agile framework, as it's been central and instrumental in breaking through the traditional IT and business divide. Multidisciplinary Agile pod teams are in place at Sun Life, and just by looking at them from the outside, it would be difficult to differentiate who is from business and who is from the IT team. Everyone is focused on delivering great work. Within just the data analytics team, 60% of their work is now Agile, and typically these pods are eight to ten resources, including both business and IT. 

As the teams are typically multidisciplinary, learning new skills through cross-training is beneficial. In some business areas, data teams are still better suited to the traditional and waterfall-based approaches. By and large, Sun Life has had an excellent uptake of Agile as a preferred delivery model across the organization. 

While discussing transformation and mindset in an organization, Atkinson briefs that transformation and mindset have really been led for Sun Life right from the top of the organization on down. Sun Life's CEO or CIO were highly supportive in really pushing the journey along. But internal buy-in is important too. The main focus has been leaning into product development models that are focused on the client outcome. It is more than just solution development, it's honing a product over an entire life cycle.  

Key ingredients for success have included a focus on data analytics, building out and modernizing the tech stack, moving to the cloud, Agile changing the way work was going on, partnership with the business dev-ops processes and principles, leveraging APIs, and looking for ways to integrate new capabilities more quickly. "I think these all have to go together to be successful in this area," says Atkinson. "I don't think any one thing by itself is going to help us become a truly digital enterprise through our transformation." 

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