Carsome, Chief Data Officer: New Talent Wants to Build Stuff Themselves

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(US and Canada) Piyush Palkar, Chief Data Officer, Carsome, shares his experience with Chris Knerr, Chief Digital Officer, Synitin, on doing business in the Asia Pacific region and the importance of a long-term roadmap in implementing data strategy.

Palkar says that while the focus on data right now is the same globally, there is an interesting characteristic amid the growing talent in the headquarters in Asian markets. “A lot of discussions are happening in organizations about buy versus build. People who are just graduating from college or with one year of experience usually want to work in companies that want to build stuff themselves.”

Most of the time, he notes, the question is, should they go in a buy-versus-build direction or work for a company that basically builds everything in-house? According to Palkar, the decision is based on pros and cons. If a ready stack solution can pace up a deliverable, the buy model is chosen.

Is the data market in Asia-Pacific-Japan more price-sensitive? Does it take effort to choose between automation and building manually? Palkar says that it depends on a company’s scale. “That is a whole thought process — which the data leader of that company needs to run — of choosing build or buy; the convincing has to be more on that side.”

Certain organizations build things themselves but struggle to scale and make it work when people who do the original dev work leave, he explains. “All of this can be taken care of while planning the roadmap. So, when we basically move into the fixed and variable budgeting, if you have already incorporated the timeline and the tools to buy, you would have the budget for those and then you wouldn't want to think of building them yourself. If this is thought of in the earliest stage, then you might go and buy a tool.”