(Europe) Paul Jones, Director of Data Analytics and AI at Baringa, speaks with Robert Lutton, Vice President of Sandhill Consultants, about the ideal approach to starting a data governance program and applying data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. 

According to Jones, organizations planning to start a data governance program should ask the following key questions:

• What are you trying to do as a business? 

• What data is needed to support that?

• What issues are there regarding data, or what do you want to do with that data? 

He says that the most common mistake organizations make is trying to do too much too fast. They focus on finding data owners and setting up data governance forums and data quality meetings when they should identify the one use they want to drive value.

He shares that Baringa follows a structured approach, which starts with identifying business outcomes, linking to the business strategy, identifying the challenges and opportunities, looking at the current state and developing a target state, and then creating a roadmap to execute it.

Jones continues, noting that the organization follows an agile approach to the roadmap, picking the value-driving use cases while also building the foundations to move on to the next objective.

Discussing the internal application of technologies like advanced analytics, AI, and ML, he says that Baringa regularly runs hackathons to look at internal data and explore. He also mentions using automation in the finance system and putting proposals through a machine-learning algorithm. Jones also notes that Baringa wants to keep exploring and experimenting with the latest technologies. 

Regarding the application of these technologies at the clients’ end, he mentions several niche use cases like automation, screen scraping, climate models, and natural language processing (NLP).

In conclusion, Jones states that all the possible applications circle back to the strategy point and the value an organization is trying to deliver. 

CDO Magazine appreciates Paul Jones for sharing his insights and data success stories with our global community.

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