(Oceania) Brian Ferris, CDAO, Loyalty New Zealand speaks about his career journey, the CDO’s role in strategizing, generating value from data, digital transformation culture, and the future of analytics. 

Ferris is in charge of technology, data, and analytics at Loyalty New Zealand. He plays the two separate roles of CDO and CTO and has been with the organization for about three years. He has worked with organizations like European Central Bank, Heineken, and Nike. Ferris says that it was the massive customer data accumulated over years that attracted him to Loyalty NZ.

Speaking about the role of the CDO in strategizing, he says that technology and data should not have their own strategy and should be aligned with the overall organizational strategy.

He then discusses the ways to derive value from data and says that data might be the new oil but it is crude oil. Value can be derived by placing data in front of the right people at the right time to make a key decision. 

Sharing his views on the commonality of analytics across services, Ferris opines that the fundamental basics and the ability to answer questions remain the same across sectors like fintech or health care. The biggest commonality is the need for the right data, of the right quality, and at the right time. 

He says that the building blocks remain the same and it is not a technology question, it’s about the processes built around it. With the right foundational pieces, organizations can get great outcomes even with outdated technology.

Regarding the future of marketing analytics, Ferris says that while the basic principle remains the same, only the ability to do it at scale has changed. One-to-one conversations can now be taken to millions, especially with mobile technology.

He then shifts to the topic of developing digital transformation culture, noting that any sort of digital transformation leads back to a group of humans deciding to do things differently. The human aspect is followed by outcomes, behaviors, value, and technology. Ferris maintains, however, that the culture change happens top-down, beginning with the leadership in any organization.

In concluding the conversation, Ferris talks about the future of AI and ML. He says that the biggest impact will be getting more AI and ML capabilities baked into the things around us. These technologies, he adds, will take over more than 80% of repetitive manual tasks.