(US and Canada) Sanjay Saxena, Celebrity Financial Chief Digital and Data Officer, speaks with Robert Lutton, Sandhill Consultants Vice President, in a video interview about starting a data science career, aligning with the organization’s business strategy, the importance of a data analytics roadmap, and the skills he looks for to build his team.

Saxena states that CDOs must engage in relevant education to understand analytics. He mentions that he, too, has benefited from his programming course, and that there are lots of resources available to get deep into analytics.

Sharing insights on aligning the data strategy with the business, Saxena says that it is critical to establish a relationship with the business and then understand its priorities. 

From his experience with Celebrity Financial, Saxena says that the organization’s business has two sides – the more established home loans business, and the new, more innovative side. 

Saxena explains that, with the traditional home loans business, the challenge is to make the existing operations more effective, while on the new business side, the relationship-building part is more relevant. He reveals that data leaders have to embed themselves right from the inception of the product, even talking to the investors.

He then goes on to speak about the importance of the roadmap for enterprise data and analytics. Saxena points out that roadmaps are essential to be able to showcase the progression and sophistication being built into the decision-making process. He adds that the roadmap acts as a communication tool about the progress and the value being delivered for the business side, showing that the team understands the business priorities.

Finally, Saxena defines three critical skills that he looks for while inducting people into his team:

1. Domain and business knowledge with the curiosity to learn the data side

2. The right technology skills 

3. Collaboration efforts.

CDO Magazine thanks Sanjay Saxenafor contributing his thought leadership to our global community.

See more from Sanjay Saxena

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