Nicola Thomson

£2.3 million annual savings for CHC

CHC is a global organisation providing specialist transportation services to offshore oil and gas platforms, medical evacuation and civilian search and rescue. The company runs more than 250 aircraft across 30 countries, with major operating units in Australia, Brazil, Norway and the UK.

The highly variable nature of the business, with unique contracts and locations across each operating region, had made it challenging to establish a meaningful set of metrics to track performance and drive improvement. This was compounded by a series of acquisitions that further complicated reporting, and a move from regional to centralised operational control, driving the need for common and standardised measures across the business.

Quality organisation of the year and A 53% uplift in sales for Hiab

Hiab is the world’s leading provider of on-road load handling equipment, intelligent services and smart and connected solutions.

With ambitious growth targets and an obsession for quality, Hiab understood how quality could be a differentiator in the market and a mechanism to unlock growth potential. And they brought us in to help ensure that quality.

Network Rail CDO

Network Rail own, operate and develop Britain’s railway infrastructure. That’s 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts, and the thousands of signals, level crossings, and stations. They also run 20 of the UK’s largest stations.

As a business they identified information as one of their most significant corporate risks and had recently appointed a Chief Data Officer (CDO) to meet this challenge. Whilst the CDO was senior in status, she required a supporting team and infrastructure to assist the new role.

UK Power Networks Improving Data Governance and Data Management

UK Power Networks (UKPN) had the ambition to become a truly data-centric utility where data was treated as an essential business asset. While many in the business acknowledged the importance of data, there was no consistent view of how to create a true data culture.

Improving data governance and data management would provide a way for the organisation to understand and manage business risk, unlocking the value in data assets and enabling innovation.

Yorkshire Water Bio-Waste Modelling

A core component of water management is the treatment of wastewater and its by-products, colloquially known as sludge. To do this effectively, the Yorkshire Water wastewater team required a bio-waste water solution that could distil a complex network of sites and production data into a minimum cost treatment schedule, allowing them to plan the sludge management process more efficiently.

Alongside this, the end-users wanted a solution that they could ‘tweak’ and re-run, either to incorporate recent site changes/impacts or plan for potential operational scenarios. And at the same time, Yorkshire Water wanted to achieve an outcome with minimal OPEX expenditure.

Business intelligence reporting and intelligent forecasting for Network Rail

In recent years, Network Rail has been impacted by significant organisational, digital and cultural change.

Growing demands for greater efficiency and effectiveness have resulted in a need for more intelligent reporting and decision analytics, especially within Network Rail’s Regional Capital Delivery teams.

Adopting a devolution strategy required Network Rail to ensure that each region had the business intelligence and intelligent forecasting capabilities necessary to deliver major capital projects that gave outstanding value to the taxpayer whilst meeting stringent government guidelines.

Executing a Data Strategy for Yorkshire Water

Yorkshire Water faces similar pressures and demands as many other utilities, and has long realised that data is a core asset in helping them to deliver smarter network and customer operations.

This need to utilise their data assets to help exploit and capitalise their physical assets led them to undertake a complex, multiyear data transformation. This case study explains the vital delivery role provided by The Oakland Group in executing a data strategy across a broad set of areas within the data transformation initiative.

Creating a data platform for a major UK media organisation

Subscriber growing pains The media company had struggled to increase its subscriber base within its digital products group and was losing out on advertising revenue to competing products and formats. This demand for growth and competitive advantage created urgency and an aggressive timeline for the business to develop and deploy new capabilities. Central to the…

How to write your data strategy

Data: it’s the best of times and the worst of times.

Over the last two decades, there’s been a huge surge in interest, innovation, and investment in data. It’s hard to find a company that doesn’t want to be more data-driven or a CEO who isn’t interested. Data professionals have never been in higher demand, and new ideas, technologies, and career paths are hitting the market at warp speed. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? But remember: the data industry is really good at gloss.

The reality for most companies is very different. The chasm between the hype and the reality has probably never been wider. Many businesses are still grappling with the basics.

Data Governance by Stealth: The Lighthouse Concept

Having delivered a number of large data governance programs, we’re in the fortunate position to look in the rear-view mirror and spot those critical activities that held the key to success.

We’ve curated those learnings into this guide to provide a ‘warts and all’ account of what you can expect as you embark on your own data governance journey.

Unlocking Your Data Future with a Platform

Data Platforms are EVERYWHERE but which is right for you? When Gartner names one of its top strategic trends for 2022 as Cloud-Native Platforms you know this isn’t a trend that is here today and gone tomorrow.

By 2025, cloud-native platforms will serve as the foundation for more than 95% of new digital initiatives – up from less than 40% in 2021.

Evolving next generation analytics capabilities with Parcel2Go

The starting point – ‘where are we?’ By modern standards, Parcel2Go had already achieved a great deal but was still keen to build on its foundation of past success and look to the future. Parcel2Go invited Oakland to help chart their next phase of data-driven growth, starting with a comprehensive ‘Data Capability Assessment’ and data…