Jean-Loup Loyer, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Eramet speaks with Michal Sieczko, Business Development Director, Lingaro, about the support roles necessary for a CDO and the individual responsibilities within the roles.

Loyer is an aerospace engineer by training with a strong quantitative background ideal for the analytics part of his job. Also, being an engineer, his knowledge of physics and chemistry is quite relevant to a heavy mining and metallurgy industry like Eramet.

He discusses how he leverages prior knowledge and experience to drive the strategy and other aspects of the job, such as organizational issues and communication. His initial career years in strategy consulting gave him a thorough understanding of business trends, organization, teamwork,  project prioritization.

The urge to return to numbers and quantitative analysis resulted in Loyer earning his Ph.D. in data science, which was followed by several years working in programming, coding, and product development for a cosmetics company. 

Loyer then speaks about the necessity for an organizational structure within a CDO’s role to ensure success. He says that as the chief data and analytics officer, he is in charge of both data governance and analytics, unlike chief data officers — who are mostly involved in governance — or chief AI officers. He is also involved in developing the strategy needed to leverage data to make the company model deliver, and to ensure that the data is also properly controlled.

Loyer highlights three main activities or roles within his team. First is project management. “It’s very important to manage resources properly to understand the operational needs of our businesses and train people to achieve and get funding. Since we are developing a lot of projects, we need people in project management, and that’s really represented as more or less 50% of our investments,” Loyer says. The second team is technical and related to analytics, data science, ML, and AI expertise. “I have a lead data scientist on my team and a technical lead managing several data scientists or data analysts, and they handle the delivery of the projects,” he further explains.

The third role is data governance. “That’s very important to have because even with the best algorithms, if you have bad quality data, you will have bad recommendations,” Loyer emphasizes. “We have these rules to get logs of data, increase the quality of businesses, and take good care of that data as valuable assets.”

He is also part of the team that is involved in strategy and digital programs. The team prioritizes the company’s digital roadmap as well as its broader strategy roadmap. 

Regarding overall structure, Loyer says that it is decentralized, with digital officers and data specialists within main entities. “You won’t be able to achieve good results if you don’t have people on the field, working with colleagues on the businesses and ensuring that the quality is a good quality,” he says.

He notes that a fair amount of effort goes into managing the differences across the various departments within the company. “It is done to be sure that our priorities are aligned with that of the company’s and these departments,” Loyer concludes.