Nicola Thomson

Enterprise Finance AI: Transforming Financial Information at Scale

The Challenge The organisation’s central finance function supports a workforce of approximately 30,000 employees and more than 3,000 cost centre managers operating across multiple regions. Financial information was spread across multiple transaction systems, creating a fragmented view of spend and compliance. As a result, finance teams struggled to: Even where issues were known to exist,…

The Ultimate Guide to Data & AI Strategy

Interest, innovation, and investment in data and AI have surged in recent years. Every company wants to be data-driven. Every CEO wants to know what AI can do for them. Everyone wants to disrupt their industry and build a future around AI. Who is this Guide for? This guide is for CDOs, CIOs, and business…

AI Use Case Discovery in Higher Education: Identifying Where AI Truly Adds Value

A member of the prestigious Russell Group of world-class, research-intensive universities, our client delivers teaching excellence and equip their graduates to go further, faster. Our Softcat Partnership As a long-term trusted advisor, Softcat was asked for recommendations on a partner who could work closely as a true data partner with this university. Oakland Everything Data…

Zoe Shaughnessy Talks Utilities, Open Data, and Olympic Weightlifting

Diving into the Details with Zoe Shaughnessy, Senior Business Analyst. It’s time for the second installment of our Spotlight Series. This time it’s Zoe Shaughnessy in the hotseat. Zoe is one of the Senior Business Analysts at Oakland. In this spotlight Zoe speaks to Nicola, our Head of Marketing about her enthusiasm for the utilities sector and the last 18 months working on Open Data.

Turning Data Governance into £85 Million of Opportunity

How we improved data quality and management for a large utilities client to identify solutions with the potential to unlock £85 million in value.

Rajan Chavda Discusses MS Fabric

A Technical Deep Dive with Rajan Chavda, Senior Solutions Architect. For our first Spotlight interview, Nicola, our Head of Marketing, sat down with Rajan Chavda to discuss how Microsoft Fabric is paving the way for analytics and AI adoption, the shift from infrastructure management to plug-and-play analytics, and why the single source of truth remains the enterprise’s main goal.

Rebuilding a data platform from the ground up with Microsoft Fabric

Our client is one of the UK’s leading transport organisations. Facing increasing business challenges, it needed to take full control of its data.

Building a Data-Driven Professional Services Firm: A Data Strategy Journey

A leading UK accountancy and advisory firm on an exciting growth journey, expanding both organically and through acquisitions, needed the data capability to scale with it.