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Discover a wealth of data innovation and expertise within the Oakland blog hub – equipping you with all the latest industry knowledge to help your business get the most from its data.

Post The Building Safety Act 2022 – How do you manage your data?

The Building Safety Act 2022 – How do you manage your data?

With new duties introduced from 12th April 2023, the construction industry should be mobilising itself to fulfill its obligations starting with planning gateway one with the next milestones just around the corner. The Building Safety Act is a comprehensive change in the regulation with significant impacts on Data and how it should be managed. The…

Post People, The missing element in Data Governance

People, The missing element in Data Governance

An F1 team could have the fastest, most reliable car out of all the other teams in the line-up – the technology being used is cutting edge, something other teams are yet to adopt or invest in. Unfortunately, despite having this technological advantage, the F1 team boss has failed to look at his driver (People)…

Post Sometimes a Target Operating Model is all the fix you need.

Sometimes a Target Operating Model is all the fix you need.

When you try your best but you don’t succeed; it’s strategy that you want but not what you need…  We thought we’d switch to a bit of Indie-Brit-Pop plagiarism for this blog, considering it relates to fixing things. In our previous blog, we covered the first two pain points experienced by businesses implementing their strategy…

Post Demystifying Data Ownership

Demystifying Data Ownership

Most organisations rely on their data as a strategic asset to thrive and operate efficiently in the most competitive business landscape. Maintaining a smoothly running operation backed with data requires careful consideration of data ownership, a crucial but often neglected aspect.   While data ownership might appear to be a simple concept, implementing it can pose…

Post Will the real Data Strategy please stand up!? 

Will the real Data Strategy please stand up!? 

We don’t have a particular affinity with 00’s hip-hop. But we tend to hear something like this when data projects admit they are in difficulty or aren’t getting traction. It’s generally the data strategy that’s to blame, right?  Not in our experience.   Don’t get me wrong, the data strategy could just be ‘wrong’ but it’s…

Post Accepting Anxiety

Accepting Anxiety

Everyone suffers with anxiety to some degree at times. Yes – everyone! Even those people who seem uber confident and appear to have the world at their feet. We have become masters of disguise and in reality we all have our doubts and worries and those pesky little thoughts which play on our minds and…

Post What are the costs of poor quality data?

What are the costs of poor quality data?

Poor data quality costs businesses, charities, and governments trillions of pounds each year. Most organisations talk of digital transformation, and as business becomes ever increasingly digitised and complex, this cost is likely to increase. Managing data quality issues is seen as one of the most significant challenges for leaders. Gartner research highlighted 60% of respondents…

Post How To Create a Data Product-Focused Data Strategy

How To Create a Data Product-Focused Data Strategy

Data engineering and storage costs are rising rapidly, with a 30% increase in 2022 (US and European cloud prices set to soar in 2023 – Techzine Europe). As US and European cloud prices were set to soar in 2023, data leaders searched for ways to maintain delivery speed while improving data governance and managing budgets….

Post Thinking of doing Data Mesh? – Start with Data Products

Thinking of doing Data Mesh? – Start with Data Products

Data mesh has been the number one topic of conversation among the data crowd over the past few years. From the CDO Exchange to Big Data London, which even had a stage dedicated to the subject! The four principles of data mesh have been debated, dissected, and diagnosed at length via books, blogs, conferences, and…

Post Can you really build a cloud data platform in six weeks?

Can you really build a cloud data platform in six weeks?

In short: yes, but no, but yes…sort of…it depends. For a better answer, let’s start by describing what we mean by a cloud data platform, as it can mean a few different things. Generally, it refers to a series of different components and resources deployed in the cloud to ingest, store, process, and report upon…

Post A data strategy is not a ‘strategy for data’ 

A data strategy is not a ‘strategy for data’ 

Most data strategies fail to make it from reading material to change accelerant. This means that they don’t create tangible outcomes. Worse, they fail to address gaps in understanding and expectation. Simply, they don’t achieve relevance. When this happens, data and analytics remain an isolated technical domain focused on core activities’ ‘numerical exhaust.’  Why does…

Post How to manage spiralling cloud costs

How to manage spiralling cloud costs

“81% of IT teams directed to reduce or halt cloud spending by C-suite” VentureBeats, 2022 “Organisations with little or no cloud cost optimisation plans end up overspending on cloud services by up to 70% without deriving the expected value from it”  Gartner, 2022 Big Tech under pressure from cost-conscious cloud customers (ft.com) The cost of…