What do you do here at News UK?

I work in business analytics, within the strategy arm of the commercial department. In simple terms, my job is to provide anyone in the department with the information they require. We provide support to strategy leaders helping them to make informed decisions on the commercial direction of the business. With the insight of the right information and detailed analysis we can gain an advantage against our competitors.

What does your average day involve?

My average day can vary significantly depending on the immediate concerns. It could be using data analysis to answer a burning question from sales or strategy heads, or it could be working on a longer term strategic project, using data to help focus the current business strategies, gain a better understanding of our clients’ requirements or use our products to best suit our customers.

How  did you get started at News UK? 

I graduated from Nottingham University with a degree in Mathematics and Management. After returning home to Cheltenham and working for a year in management accountancy with an engineering firm, I decided it wasn’t for me and I decided to move to the big city. I was fortunate the recruitment agency I was with secured me an interview here at News UK and my manager in his own words ‘took a punt’ on me!

What has been your biggest achievement this year?

The piece of work I’ve been most proud of is the visual representation of CHUM (Client Health Utility Model). Using a predictive insight tool (from our data science team) the output is presented in a real time dashboard. It enables our sales executives to access a wealth of information, prioritise and formulate a strategy within minutes whereas it might previously have taken them days. This work has now been presented to UK CEO/CFO level and more recently to Lachlan Murdoch in New York. It is likely that this piece of work was a significant reason as to why I won the ‘David Walsh Award’ at our commercial conference; an award for an individual outside of the sales team who may not be the first point of contact for our clients but whose efforts or work indirectly improve our external profile, customer relationships or the way in which we sell to or service our clients.

What’s the biggest challenge in your work?

Whenever there is data there is always an element of data cleansing; turning unusable, unreliable information into data that can be trusted and used to make informed decisions. This can be a long and arduous task which requires patience. Data driven insights based on incorrect data are likely to lead to poor decisions. Therefore these tasks, however challenging, are necessary. Once complete, the trust in information from end users is clearly vastly improved.