(US and Canada) Rex Davis, Chief Data Officer, RBC, speaks with Maria Villar, Head of Enterprise Data Strategy and Transformation, SAP, about his journey as a data professional and his approach to executing the organization’s data strategy.

Davis comes from a retail background having worked in multiple global roles over the years. His career pivoted toward data and analytics given his interest in desegregated data. As Chief Data Officer at RBC, he manages multiple teams of “expert practitioners” working across the organization.

Sharing his experience of joining the organization in the middle of the pandemic, Davis says that once offline work is resumed, it becomes apparent that virtual work might have been a bit more difficult. He notes that RBC already had a comprehensive data strategy in place before he joined, and a major part of his role was to get the teams aligned and get the strategy executed.

Davis next sheds light on creating a model for organizing teams to deliver, especially on the self-service and analytics sides. He expresses his belief in the federated model, emphasizing that success actually lies in every part of the organization using data more effectively. Success cannot be achieved by having a single model and needs different models for different areas along the journey, he says. Some teams might be early in the journey and there may be others that are comparatively mature, Davis points out.

He concludes by saying that a major part of the execution is just aligning and pushing people in a certain required direction.